It is nice that Chennai will be hosting its first BarCamp soon (April 8 & 9, 2006). We at Zoho plan to be there.
One thing that perplexed me – there’s been a BarCamp Delhi recently but Bangalore hasn’t hosted one yet!
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Social Networking
This post’s been brewing for a few weeks now. Google’s acquisition of Writely can be called as a trigger pulse for this post.
Orkut is still a very popular social networking site, atleast among the school and college community (which forms a large group of web users). Since its launch two years back, it has grown in magnitude and it is sort of a social status symbol to have an Orkut Profile, owing to its “Invite only” nature. Although it has grown over the years in terms of the number of users, feature-wise it is still primitive, considering how quickly Google is trying to give it’s products and services a face-lift by using AJAX.
Social Networking sites have a lot of potential, and if only a service with some of the following features were to be introduced, it’ll be a huge success. (Like what Meebo did, and how everyone else was grateful to Meebo for it 
)
Firstly, a strong ‘Search within website’ service.
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Web Services + Software: Engineering Elegance
Did you notice the quote ‘Web Services + Software: Engineering Elegance’ in our www.zoho.com home page? I am not sure how many people really understood the meaning of this or even cared to think about it. If you are someone like me, you would have probably ignored as some marketing junk.
There is certainly a powerful message behind the statement. What does this mean? Simply put, for every Zoho Service you see listed in Zoho.com, you’ll see a product along with it and for every product, you’ll see a service for it.
This means, a product like Zoho Virtual Office will also be available as an online service and a service like Zoho Writer will also be available as a product (….and it doesnt just stop with that ).
Both Service and Product have their own advantages and disadvantages. Not all are happy with just one.
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Google buys Writely
Google buys Writely
Om mentioned it yesterday in his blogs about Google in talks with Writely for a possible acquisition. I thought it is yet another rumour, but turns out, it is true. The news is final and is announced in Writely’s blogs. Google buys writely. This should be certainly exciting for our friends at Writely.
It’ll be interesting to see how Google deploys Writely as Google’s deployment is mostly on Linux and writely works only on Windows.
Raju
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Search based UI Navigation, Toolbar customization & more
We had an update yesterday that introduced this new concept of search based UI navigation. Just type in a few words of what you would like to do in the ‘Search’ box of your Zoho account. You will be provided with link(s) that take you to the respective destination(s). The screenshot below shows the links for exporting your Zoho Writer docs to pdf/sxw/word formats.
Finding all those toolbar buttons a triffle too much? You can customize the toolbar now. Select only the buttons you use frequently.
Many of you had asked for easier handling of email IDs when you share docs. Zoho Writer now allows auto-completion of email IDs.
You can also ‘Insert’ from a set of email IDs.
When you post to your blog from Zoho Writer, there is this limitation of time being set to PST. WordPress bloggers can now have the time of posting set to their localtime.
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Zoho Creator is LIVE NOW!
You may notice something special about Zoho Creator now.
We have quietly and completely moved out of the closed beta test…into a public beta.
Now everyone can visit Zoho Creator, browse popular / public applications, copy them and customize to their needs or create their own application from scratch.
We are delighted to report that during the private beta we got 1000+ registrations, 400+ applications created from scratch and countless of them being copied (well, some for testing and some for use).
Let me give you a quick update on what we were working under the private beta wraps.
- Create application using a template
- Create View with pre-set criteria
- Add Tags to your applications
- Filter, Search and Rearrange Columns in Views
- New Skins
- New UI
and loads of enhancements everywhere…
Some of the feedback we received during the private beta test:
“ZohoCreator which lets end-users create simple web applications with no coding knowledge can certainly be put into the innovative bucket.”
~ Phil Sim, http://squash.wordpress.com
“It’s pretty safe to say that a tool that allows anyone to create a web application to their own requirements is pretty darn useful.”
~ Stephen, Shadows in Motion
“Zoho Creator makes it remarkably easy to create very simple tracking applications, and parent-child relationships are handled so well you don’t even need to know what that means to use it.”
~ http://brainpipe.wordpress.com/
“I have given it a try and I love it.
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Newsvine
Newsvine was launched a couple of days back and is running full steam ahead. For the uninitiated, Newsvine is a social News website that features stories from Main Stream Media and amateur writers alike. The best part about Newsvine, apart from the AJAX interface for Seeders or people who submit content, is that it is a comment and chat enabled site. Which means readers can comment, discuss and argue about a news item, apart from contributing their own. Also, using the ‘Link’, option, a person can link to a story from a popular news site or cross-post a blog entry. Tagging is the new web standard, and Newsvine is no exception. They have something called the “Code of Honor” which is a rule book that, apart from the usual instruction, says, “Write descriptive Title” and “Tag correctly”
Clearly, Newsvine is an improvisation of existing News Aggregators.
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