OpenOffice.org 2.3 will officially be released on Monday. But if you're the impatient sort, you can download it this weekend. The software has been distributed to download mirrors including OSUOSL a few days early in order to make launch day run a bit more smoothly.
All you have to do is select OpenOffice.org 2.3, choose your operating system and language, and away you go. There are a ton of bug fixes and feature updates since OpenOffice 2.2 was launched. Here are just a few.
New export filter for writing Wiki pages
Spell check 1 letter words
New chart wizard
A whole slew of new local data including Jewish holidays in the US, and updated currency in Venezuela
Zoho is always up to something. The company that seems like it never stops to breath has released another update to their Zoho suite, Start.
The Start beta is a not another Zoho application, it is merely an integrated Start page for all of your other Zoho applications. Think of it as a desktop for all things Zoho. When logging in at zoho.com, users are forwarded to start.zoho.com which aggregates all Zoho data for the user account. The current version of Zoho Start integrates Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show, with all data having the ability to be tagged with keywords, shared, exported and organized all from this simple interface.
Thanks Zoho, for making it extra difficult to choose between Zoho's suite of applications, and Google's Docs/Apps.
With some students already in school, and some preparing to enter yet another journey into a new semester, let DLS make your studies that much more organized with a few free desktop and web applications that will make your school life that much more enjoyable.
From free document creation applications, online to-do's and organization applications, users are faced with a decision, go for the costly desktop versions and upgrade every few years, or stay ahead of the curve with free web based applications that are constantly updating with new growing feature sets. The choice has never been easier.
This DLS special feature lists out current tools that are floating around the web as highly competitive alternatives for both students and professionals.
Developers are jumping on the new Facebook API, creating sometimes 'useless' add-ons for the social network. Zoho has stepped in and added the ability to GTD while peddling through Facebook.
Zoho tries its best to stay on top of wherever their users might be, they were the first online office productivity toolset to announce they had an iPhone compatible application ready to go for Apple's newest users, and now users of Facebook are able to see the light. Facebook can get a little distracting at times, whether it's at school or work, so why not build in the ability to create and work on documents directly through the application that you spend the most time on throughout the day. 30% of Zoho's users are students so it's a perfect fit, chat with friends and get work done at the same time.
Zoho's new integration to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations directly from Facebook accounts is a simple add on available here. Creating a new document or viewing one opens up another browser tab, or window, allowing you to do your Facebook thing while working in another tab.
Zoho, the makers of the powerful set of online office productivity tools has just announced iZoho, a version of their software that has been optimized for the iPhone's touch screen.
ZoHo are the makers behind the web based productivity tool set that includes Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Notebook, and Zoho Mail. Their new iZoho is accessible through http://www.izoho.com, and can be played with in a regular browser window. However resizing seems to get a little mucky. If this application actually does manage to work with Apple's new iPhone (the developers unfortunately didn't have one for testing), I'm sure that many users of other online office applications will be thinking about switching over quickly. As it stands now Zoho has been the only company to come forward and say their online office productivity sets work with Apple's iPhone.
First there was WriteRoom, which gave Mac users a very simple black interface in which to write. No distractions, just a black screen with glowing green letters, which probably appeals particularly to people that have been working with computers long enough to remember monochromatic terminals.
And it was a very cool idea, but there was nothing similar for Windows. Until Dark Room came along. Dark Room basically emulates WriteRoom's functionality on Windows.
So what's missing? A web-based version, of course.
Now, normally I'd say that doing a web-based version of a text editor when very strong versions offering identical functionality already exist on both Windows and Mac would not be worthwhile. But as much as Writer, the web based version, is simply replicated the functionality of these other applications, it still stands on its own merits.
Two things about it make it worth having in your bookmarks. The first is that you can use it anywhere. No memory key to carry around, no worrying about what OS you're using. It just works, wherever you are. The second is that if you create an account, all of your documents also follow you around.
So if you like the look and feel of Dark Room or WriteRoom, check out Writer.
A new blog-writing service, with full-featured web-based html editor called WriteToMyBlog is floating in the ether this morning, found by LifeHacker. I tried it out, and it does have a a lot of editing features, but I was a little disappointed by the lack of clear UI when setting a blog. It didn't seem to work with my blogs. The other thing I wish for in this app is the ability to save drafts without sending them to a blog in published status, but many blogging apps don't have that anyway. WriteToMyBlog is a decent service, and I think many of our readers will love it, but I am a bit more picky, and don't like a few of the features because they don't cater to my particular blogging situation. It works great for most others however.
Microsoft has released a beta version of Windows Live Writer, a new desktop-based blogging tool. Despite Windows Live Spaces, I never really expected Microsoft to release a blogging tool, especially a general-purpose one, but it has. And I've got to say, for Microsoft, I'm impressed. I encountered a few of the same issues that Paul Kedrosky did: Writer forced me to use a wizard to set up my blog, and would only let me manually configure it once it got confused, the "Web Layout" is completely useless on my blog, and the "Web Preview" wasn't even close to accurate.
However, overall I found Windows Live Writer fairly well put-together. I tested it with my WordPress blog, and it did most of the things I expected and a few I was pleasantly surprised by. In particular, its image editing and uploading features are surprisingly powerful. It let me load images, add effects, adjustments, and text watermarks, and then it automatically uploaded them when I posted to my WordPress blog. It even let me paste screenshots directly into the editing area, but a Crop function was curiously missing. Apart from that, the only major thing missing from the image functions was the ability to add an image that's already been uploaded, or exists on another web site.
Windows Live Writer defaults to WYSIWYG, which annoyed me, but I was amazed that the HTML it generates isn't particularly ugly and actually validates. Thankfully, it seems that no cues were taken from FrontPage. Writer has a lot of convenience features that aren't unexpected but are welcome. Spell-check is built-in but unfortunately not as-you-type like in Word or Firefox (oddly, it doesn't know the word "blogging") and Writer can be configured to automatically save drafts. It also has an "Insert Map" feature for quickly embedding Windows Live Local maps in blog posts, which is mostly fluff but may be handy for some users.
I was disappointed that Windows Live Writer doesn't support tagging via the popular Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for WordPress, but I've yet to encounter a blogging tool that does. Speaking of plugins, however, Writer itself has a plugin interface and a free SDK, which will hopefully encourage developers to add this sort of functionality.
Perhaps the biggest annoyance I encountered with Windows Live Writer was the temporary post it created in my blog without asking. It was set to private, so I was the only one who saw it, but it still felt like an imposition.
You can see a few screenshots of WIndows Live Writer in action (including one of the errant temporary post) after the jump.
On Friday I linked to a little app for OS X called WriteRoom, which is a minimalist word processor for writers. A few of the commenters didn't quite "get" it (sorry, folks, but maximizing Word and changing the colors isn't remotely equivalent to a distraction-free writing environment*), but a lot of writers certainly do, including one developer who missed it so much when he had to use Windows that he just built a Windows version. Dark Room is a WriteRoom clone for Windows that's just as minimal and just as free.
*Though one commenter suggested installing Word 5.5 for DOS, which is closer.
OpenOffice.org 2.3 will officially be released on Monday. But if you're the impatient sort, you can download it this weekend. The software has been distributed to download mirrors including OSUOSL a few days early in order to make launch day run a bit more smoothly.
First there was WriteRoom, which gave Mac users a very simple black interface in which to write. No distractions, just a black screen with glowing green letters, which probably appeals particularly to people that have been working with computers long enough to remember monochromatic terminals.
