Office Archive

I don’t know about you, but often when I am sitting at my desk I wonder, “how can I make my computer chair move around the office faster? How can I make it more aerodynamic…more better?” Then I stop wondering and start coding again.

Just south of Frankfurt, Germany, in a small town named Bad Koenig, an annual race takes place that is very different than the NYC Marathon. It’s the third annual office chair race and this year there were 64 competitors that took to the starting line. (as an aside, Staples really needs to sponsor this race!) Speeds hit an all-time high of over 22mph for the 200-meter downhill course.

Luxembourg’s Pierre Feller took the title after completing the run in just 26.95 seconds – a new world’s record. Heiko Winter won the best-designed chair award – he dressed up his chair like a horse! (see photo on right)

To make things interesting, riders had to maneuver around jumps and turns while still attempting to tweet their location on foursquare and post a photo on Facebook. The race looks like a ton of fun and I hope we see something similar here in the U.S.

Check out the video from the race below from The Sun newspaper.
Continue reading “On Your Marks…Get Set…Go Race Those Computer Chairs!” »

We’ve heard from multiple sources that presentation sharing service SlideShare has been down for over 4 hours. The SlideShare Twitter account notes that they are installing some new software on their servers and the service will be back pretty soon. Here’s their message regarding the downtime, “HEADSUP: Our servers are getting brand new software installed. They’ll be back at your service pretty soon!”

It’s a perfect time for this type of maintenance. Most people are off from work today and it’s still early in the U.S. Normally I wouldn’t even share this type of downtime however there’s an important lesson regarding communication that we can all learn from.

There’s no message on the SlideShare blog nor on the home page regarding the downtime today while they install new software. Unlike a typical downtime, SlideShare apparently still has access to the site (the homepage loads just fine) and blog.

Always remember that your customers may not all be on Twitter, Facebook or any of the other social networks. Use your own site, blog, etc. to communicate important updates. In this case I would update the home page with a brief note that points to a blog entry. I’d also update the 500 error page below with a link to the blog post. This will keep their customers in the know regarding what’s up and the customer won’t be wondering why their desired presentation didn’t load.

Here’s the message that is received when you attempt to load a presentation:

Microsoft Office 2010 will include the ability to save documents to and open documents from a repository on the Web. Further, you’ll be able to actually open the documents in your browser and perform minor edits. Until that functionality is enabled, though, you have another option to do the same thing (actually, since we have yet to actually see the collaboration and cloud storage features in Office 2010 – they have not yet been enabled in the beta – the alternative might even be better than what’s coming).

OffiSync allows you to save your documents to and open documents from a GoogleDocs account. You can associate multiple Google accounts with your Office installation, easily switching back and forth between those accounts. With OffiSync, you can do all of the following: Continue reading “OffiSync Lets You Save Your Office Documents Online” »

Microsoft briefly posted an Office 2010 technical preview site but quickly removed it as it appeared to be posted early in error. There’s still a Google cache of the site which you can review.

Here’s the overview of the Office 2010 Web Applications version:

Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online. View documents across PCs, mobile phones, and the Web without compromising document fidelity. Create new documents and do basic editing using the familiar Office interface. By offering more ways to access files from almost anywhere, Office Web Applications enable you to get things done according to your schedule.

The Microsoft employee in the video, Monica Mendoza, is very lucky it seems – first she was able to go work in Europe then take a trip to Las Vegas. If the video doesn’t work below – click here to view it.

After talking to a few of my friends who use Google Docs heavily, they say the demo video and images make Office 2010 look much more powerful. We’ve covered online office provider Zoho many times on CN – it will be interesting to get their take on the Office 2010 release.

I can only guess this is what Robert Scoble was very excited about on Friendfeed last week but said he was embargoed until today.

Over the past week online office provider Zoho has had a bit of fun leading up to announcing their new product launch. First they teased us with a riddle, then they posted a tetris-style image of the new service. Today they have announced that the new product is Zoho Projects 2.0.

The idea is that this new version adds a “social layer” to the more traditional project management tools. Zoho notes on the Projects 2.0 release, “Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional ‘project management’ space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal. It’s not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It’s about how people interact and what they need while working on something – whether it’s a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one.”

I love this line, “Many times when we hear ‘Project’ he instantly think of a PMI-certified guy with a huge Gantt chart taped in his office door. But every team is always working in some sort of project, whether that’s formally defined or not. And that is where Zoho Projects helps.” Gosh I miss those corporate America Gantt charts each and every day!

Krishnan Subramanian at Cloudave has a great writeup of the Zoho Projects 2.0 launch. Here’s a short video describing the new product:
Continue reading “Remember That Zoho Secret Launch? It’s Zoho Projects 2.0” »

This weekend Online office and tools provider Zoho announced that they are launching a new product this week. They didn’t provide any details except a mad libs comment. Today they posted a bit more about the upcoming launch.

What we know as of tonight:

• The new service will incorporate at least 5 of the current Zoho apps
• The new service will integrate with a popular Microsoft product (it’s not sharepoint)

I would like to caution other startups before they try this “peek-a-day” launch method. It works for Zoho because they are huge and well respected. It’s not something I would suggest any startup use as a launch strategy.

Here’s a screenshot of what the app will look like using Tetris-vision:

So leave your ideas in the comments. It looks like there will be some nav bar across the top (blue) and some sort of menu or widgets on the left (brown). It’s probably not Zoho-Flight Simulator.

Some startups give exclusives (sadly)… some startups go with embargoes… some startups just go. Online office and tools provider Zoho has announced that they will be launching “something” this week. They promise that the launch will happen before July 4th.

This is all we have to go on from the blog post:

“We also promise you will really really like this new shiny thing. It will change the way you  _________ (can’t tell you that just yet, as it’d give it away). In fact, we challenge you to try out Zoho _________ for a month, and then you’ll wonder how you worked without it before.”

Leave your thoughts in the comments on what Zoho will be launching. The ideas on the Zoho thread include a Zoho toolbar for Firefox, Zoho Store, new reports implementation and complete online and offline functionality for all Zoho tools. There was another idea that it’s the launch of Zoho Cheeseburgers but that was denied quickly as apparently Zoho doesn’t want to get Grimace mad.