Arvind September 27, 2006 10: 40 pm Comments (0)
Dean Ernst, our man at Zoho Experience (we talked about him before) has uploaded his first video. He interviews Vijay of Zoho Show. Have a peek.
Hey Robert, it will be great hearing feedback from a pro like you on Dean’s first attempt.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Raju Vegesna September 27, 2006 10: 22 pm Comments (0)
If you have’nt tried Orca Desktop app (in Beta), you probably should give it a try. It is a well implemented virtual desktop application. You can try it here. [login as demo/demo]
Orca folks integrated Zoho apps into their desktop. You can launch Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet from their Virtual Desktop. This is a good first step integration. Here is a screenshot.
 
Looking forward for more such integrations.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Ramesh September 27, 2006 04: 57 am Comments (0)
One of our users of Zoho Polls has created this wonderful poll to demonstrate Range Voting.
http://zohopolls.com/brokenladder/2008-u-s-presidential-election-poll-using
We used to call it a rating poll, which is a type of range voting. From the above poll, we came to know about range voting and got introduced to rangevoting.org, the Center for Range Voting (CRV). Its goals are to educate the public about the advantages of range voting and comparative disadvantages of other systems and to lobby for its adoption.
We have always felt that range voting is the best approach to arrive at a general consensus. We have ourselves used this rating approach to decide on home page designs, song selection for performances, rating the food, deciding on the name of a product / service that we are building, etc.
As per the description of the poll featured above:
This mock election should help gain insight into the 2008 U.S. Presidential race, as well as demonstrate the superiority of Range Voting to other voting methods.
Rate any candidates you want to. You can just ignore any candidate that you don’t care about, or don’t know enough about to vote on; your non-vote simply won’t affect that candidate. The candidate with the highest average rating wins. Simple, huh?!
Finally, notice something interesting about this election? We’re running several candidates, giving voters real choice. With Range Voting, you don’t get the kind of Perot/Nader spoiler effect, where voting for a “third party” candidate effectively works as a vote for your least favorite candidate. That’s a quality that you won’t find in other alternative voting methods, like instant runoff voting.
That is the power of range voting. You get to rate each item in the poll and the one with the highest average rating wins. This will be inline with the general consensus of the voters. Visit rangevoting.org for more details.
That said, the normal voting / plurality voting poll is also useful in different scenarios. The type of poll basically depends on your need.
Here is a pie chart which depicts the percentage split-up of voting and rating polls created by the users of Zoho Polls. Even though the number of rating polls is less than voting polls, 37% is still a very good number.
We are also discussing with rangevoting.org and betterpolls.com, another poll service, on how we can work together for the improvement of the service.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Arvind September 27, 2006 04: 31 am Comments (0)
Found a couple of poems with Zoho in them.
Yo ho ho
I discovered Zoho
I created a doc
web-based (no shock).
With just a little moxy
I tried out 30 boxes
Input a few dates
and I’m feeling just great
But it’s getting kind of late
And this rhyme’s begun to deflate………….
It’s Monday night, my brain is fried,
But I want that player, so I tried.
First in Zoho, but it wouldn’t blog,
So now in Writely, I continue to slog.It’s really cool, many uses I can see,
Plus advantages for you and me.
Open anywhere, no discs, no fuss.
Of all the tools, this is a must.So goodnight, bloggers fair.
I’ll try to post this, do I dare?
Third time is charmed, I hope and pray,
Because it’s way too late to play!
Aint that cute to have Zoho form a part of poems? 
Thanks folks!
A note for those of you (like ‘the Happy Reader’) not being able to post to blogger.com blogs from Zoho Writer : We are facing some intermittent problems when posting to blogger.com blogs due to something being wrong with Blogger’s Atom API that Zoho Writer depends on to post to blogger.com blogs. This thread has the details. We are waiting for the Google Blogger team to find the root cause of this issue & have a permanent solution. In the meantime, please try reposting to your blog after a few minutes & it may succeed (it is working for me now).
If the posting to your blog still fails, please try the workaround posted here :
http://forums.zohowriter.com/viewtopic.php?p=53287#53287
Do try posting using the above methodology. If you still face any issues, you can write to me at aravind[at]zoho[dot]com.
Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Kindly bear with us till we get this issue fully resolved.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Srinidhi September 26, 2006 08: 07 am Comments (0)
Did you know that Zoho Sheet’s ’sheet-level’ sharing options can be a powerful tool in enhancing your ‘online collaboration’ experience?
Whether it is
You can share entire workbooks with users, hide individual sheets from users whom you don’t want it displayed while displaying it to others at the same time, or just form your own group of users granted with different access privileges depending on your specific needs.
As soon as you’re done creating a spreadsheet that is ready to be shared, you can find that Zoho Sheet contains an easy-to-find menu option called ‘Share’ (placed conveniently in the top menu bar - you can’t miss it).
The ‘Share’ option offers you a small controls platform using which you can allow/restrict people to access your spreadsheets.
You can choose between multiple options - marking your whole workbook (Entire Document) as ‘Shared’ - with ‘Read Only’ access to some users and ‘Read/Write’ access to others, or marking individual worksheets as ‘Shared’ with different privileges for different users.
On clicking the ‘Share’ option, we find that it contains two tabs - ‘Share’ & ‘Shared Details’. The ‘Share’ option helps us set the above-mentioned sharing privileges, while the ‘Shared Details’ contains information about the sharing levels set & helps us view the share options we’ve set for our spreadsheet when we return later.
You can change/remove your settings from the ‘Share’ menu or access it even from the sheet name tab.
The potential uses for such sharing are many and can be used by users across all walks of life - whether you work in an organization where multiple users need to process/work on the same worksheet with different access levels provided to each user depending on hierarchy or responsibilities or you are a Marine Biologist performing research with collaborators across continents or you are a University Lecture Assistant who needs to collate intra-department/class results internally with other departments before publishing collated results to students - Zoho Sheet’s ’sheet-level’ sharing is for you!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Arvind September 26, 2006 04: 08 am Comments (0)
Zoho’s online office suite apps, Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet & Zoho Show got extensively reviewed by Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab. From the review :
Many companies have tried with limited success to take on Microsoft Office. … Recently a number of Web apps have been appointed the “MS Office killers” for various reasons. I think the demise of Microsoft’s cash cow is greatly over exaggerated , but the online versions succeed in usability where their downloadable counterparts have failed at providing a highly usable experience . My favorite of this category is Zoho Office Suite, which includes a spreadsheet, word processor and basic presentation maker.
If you need most of the features of Microsoft Word, but it isn’t on your computer or simply isn’t in your budget, you could download one of those bulky free Office Suites, like OpenOffice or Software 602, but there’s an easier solution. Zoho Writer is a browser-based word processing application with every feature I typically use in Microsoft Word.
Zoho Sheet is perfect for light duty spreadsheet usage. It does all the basic spreadsheet calculations. Zoho Sheet imports data from existing Excel and OpenOffice Calc files as well as CSV files. Like Zoho Writer you can either work in a mode that requires no login or create an account to maintain a set of online spreadsheet files.
Like PowerPoint, Zoho Show creates slide decks for presentations. From adding graphics and text, to adding timed transitions, Zoho Show will do basic presentation tasks. … , Zoho Show is quick and easy to use - and if you’ve got an Internet connection, you never need to worry about not being able to access your presentation from any machine with Firefox or Internet Explorer.
And Jake pointed out about the various Zoho applications requiring signing up for each
one separately & Zoho Show’s lack of audio/video support. We will addressing them soon. Thanks Jake, for the wonderful review!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Raju Vegesna September 25, 2006 11: 31 pm Comments (0)
We are glad to announce a partnership with WebEx. Zoho is excited to be part of WebEx Connect.
The partnership starts with Zoho CRM integration and will span across most of Zoho applications. The next update of Zoho CRM will have the ability to schedule/start WebEx Meetings directly from Zoho CRM interface. Here is a quick screenshot.
Here is a press release on this.
Looking forward for a strong relationship.
Raju
Update : For a quick overview, please have a look at the video on Zoho CRM - WebEx Integration
Live Demo: http://webex.zohocrm.com
User Name/Password: demo@zohocrm.com/demouser
Popularity: 18% [?]
Arvind September 25, 2006 08: 12 pm Comments (0)
Zoho Planner had an update a few hours earlier that brought in some cool new features.
We receive constant feedback from Safari & Opera users to make Zoho applications work on these browsers. As the first Zoho app, Zoho Planner now works on Safari (2.0+) & Opera (9.0+). Zoho Planner already supports Firefox, Mozilla & Internet Explorer.
We have tested Zoho Planner on multiple versions of both the browsers. There may be untested versions, so do write to us if you come across any issues.
Users have been asking to collapse & expand todo lists & notes. This has been done in the latest update. Another feature to roll in is the facility to delete all your completed todo list items in one go.
Till now you can private share your pages with Read & Write (Edit) privilege or have them shared to public. Now you can private share your pages in Zoho Planner with Read Only (View) permission too.
Check out the latest Zoho Planner & tell us what you think. Do write to us if you have any specific feature requests.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Arvind September 20, 2006 09: 55 pm Comments (0)
The Zoho Creator home page has been sporting two small TV icons for the last few days now.
Have you clicked on them? Try the second icon titled ‘Spreadsheet to Web Application‘. You will find a neat demo explaining how easy & at the same time how powerful Zoho Creator is. It will be great hearing your feedback. And, if you have similar demo requests (for Zoho Creator or for any Zoho service), do send in your suggestions to aravind(at)zoho.com.
ps: Did you try placing the accent of the voice behind the demo? Not an American one, right? 
The voice is of Dean Ernst the man from NZ/OZ!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Arvind September 20, 2006 08: 30 pm Comments (0)
Noticed anything different in working with Zoho Writer since yesterday? We have done some html compression tweaks that makes working with Zoho Writer a little faster. Loading of files & switching between tabs should happen faster than before. An exception in this update is the initial loading time when you login. It remains the same as before & we will be working on making it faster too.
Another cool update to happen is with Zoho QuickRead. You can now save an online document (.doc, .sxw, .odt, .rtf) opened with Zoho QuickRead to your Zoho Writer account directly.
Open up an online document with QuickRead & the top panel looks as above. Click on the ‘Edit’ link. If you are already logged in to Zoho Writer, the next screen will look as below
You can click on the ‘Save to My Account’ link to save the opened document to your Zoho Writer account directly.
Similar changes will be done to Zoho Sheet & Zoho Show - opening spreadsheets/presentations available online with QuickRead & adding them directly to your Zoho Sheet/Show accounts - soon.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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