StartupSquad at Wordpress

Yesterday I came across Allen’s blog where he is reportedly saying that he peeked through Google Docs javascript code few days which indicates that Google Docs team is working on providing an offline version of it’s document editing tools. Searching through the javascript code today I was not able to locate any mention of the word ‘localhost’ which obviously Google would have removed by now.

The blog post aside I personally believe that Google would be launching this new feature sometime soon. Especially after the buyout of iRows team and the integration of Google Spreadsheets and Writely being completed last month, this seems to be a logical next step in terms of its strategy for its collaborative tools and Google Desktop. Besides this we have the upcoming launch of Vista+Office 2007 that adds the extra fire power. Earlier Zimbra became the first company to demonstrate offline version of its collaboration suite.  Google would have loved to be there, but maybe next time.

Having an offline version of the document and spreadsheets editor operating through the browser is great option for users who are on slower internet connections. Instead of trying to push large amounts of data at once, Google can do incremental push overtime without slowing down the users machine/browser performance. Leaving the slow internet group aside, Google Gmail+Docs Offline + Webaroo give an added reason to keep our laptops humming in subways and planes. Off course Writely team will be working hard on getting it unmatched collaborative editing and sync working in the right way.

Apart from the futuristic view, Google Docs spellchecker now supports more than 30 languages. Checkout the small arrow next to next to “Check Spelling”.

Links:
iRows team moves to Google
Zimbra introduces offline-online sync
Finally – Writely to start using Google Login

Couple of months back iRows team had indicated that they were looking for an early exit. Today Itai and Yoah from iRows posted on the iRows blog that they are officially joining Google and will be shutting down iRows on 31st December 2006. iRows users have been asked to move their spreadsheets over to Google Docs.

This year has been really low for the collaboration technologies. After hectic activity late last year and until start of this year, where we saw number of startups providing Office20 tools, things seemed to have cooled down now. Notable startups in the timespan include Writely, Trumba, EditGrid, iRows, Numsum, Thumstacks, Preezo, CentralDesktop, Zimbra, Jotspot, and Kiko. Writely, Jotspot, and now iRows have been gobbled up by Google. Kiko went the ebay way. Trumba now caters to enterprise users. Thumbstacks and Numsum have pretty much silent for past few months. So all we are left with is Zimbra, EditGrid, Preezo, and CentralDesktop. Was this our Office20?

Related -ive:
iRows looking for early exit
Trumba hikes price, changes focus group

Related +ive:
EditGrid Spreadsheets now has Live Chat
Zimbra introduces offline-online sync

Links:
iRows

Adobe today introduced Adobe Document Center(ADC), which is a hosted service enabling business users to protect and share their documents. Using the web-based service users can manage their Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel documents in a much more secure fashion.

ADC users can dynamically grant and revoke access to documents distributed inside or outside their firewall, as well as audit actions such as opening, adding comments to, or printing those documents. The best advantage offered by ADC is that documents cannot be shared further with other users without the knowledge of the author. ADC users can also set expiration date on document sharing, add new versions for a document, and revoke access after distribution. ADC provides complete tracking information about the document including the who has received the document, and what changes have been made to the document.

In order to use ADC users can create files with Adobe Acrobat 8 and apply the security settings from within Acrobat. Users need to install plug-ins for applying security settings to Microsoft Word and Excel 2003 files. To view and interact with documents controlled through Adobe Document Center, recipients need to have the free version of Adobe Reader 8 software installed to access the PDF files and the plug-in to access Word and Excel files. Recipients will have to login with their Adobe ID to access the documents. ADC also offers an integration with Microsoft Outlook to enable emailing of secure PDF attachments.

Currently you can try out the free trial version of ADC. Adobe is planning to launch the product sometime early next year for a special six-month introductory subscription price of US$19.99/month, or US$199/year per user. The introductory subscription price enables users to protect up to five documents for a period of one year. I think the document count is too low for any large scale user adoption.

You need to keep couple of things in mind before you think about trying out ADC. You will have to download and install Adobe 8 Standard or Professional, which is 263 MB in size and is on 30 day trail basis.  This is the same  for both sender and receiver since Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 is not currently available for download. Also the page to download plug-in for Microsoft Word and Excel is not coming up. So all you can try out right now is the Adobe Acrobat integration.

Links:
Adobe Document Center

Couple of developers from London and Sydney have been quietly working on providing apps that seems to be shaping up well. Helicoid team till now have launched Helipad, Tiktrac,  Basecamp Mobile, Multitap.net and are working on launching another 2 applications Ebiwrite, and Bugtagger. Applications in themselves might not be feature packed but what I really like about the offerings is the clean and consistent, RSS feeds, API access, tagging, and access to your applications through mobile browser.

Recently Helicoid team launched their Helipad application that provides web-based document editing ability. Helipad provides features like document auto-save, textile formatting, tagging, preview, setting account template, and sharing of documents with public. Using the Helipad’s XML API other users can build add-ons or create/update/get/delete their documents. Best part about the application is that you can also edit and view you documents from your mobile.

Another application Tiktrac is a simple timesheets management application. You can start off by creating clients and add timesheets, and tasks using the Ajax based interface. Tiktrac provides easy access to view, edit, close, and search tasks in the timesheets. You can also generate few basic reports like Overall Statistics, Time user/month for each client, Cost per month, Time per-person, and Time per-sheet. You can also add more people to you account and set their access levels. Tiktrac provides monthly views of your timesheets and ability to export them into CSV and XML formats. You can also subscribe to various RSS feeds including open tasks, all tasks, tasks for a spreadsheet, and many more which are password protected. Tiktrac enables you to make changes to few important settings including Time and date format, currency, and linking your existing app to Tiktrac. Other features include API access, mobile access, and ability to set account template. One limiting factor I see is that Tiktrac gives you predefined fields in a tasklist(Ref, started, completed, who, time, done, description). I think users should be able to add their own custom fields are at least able to modify the existing field names, which will make it easier to extend the application. 

Overall I think this is a great effort on part of the Alex and Gabriel to develop these applications in a span of few months.

Links:
Helipad
Tiktrac
Bugtagger
Ebiwrite
Basecamp Mobile
Multitap

Zimbra is working hard in maintaining its lead in the messaging and collaboration tools market. Zimbra today introduced the one of the best features to be launched as part of its excellent collaboration suite’s next release. Zimbra users will soon be able to work with their Zimbra AJAX UI in offline mode.

Using the same AJAX client UI users will be able to compose, delete, move, search, tag, organize their messages and edit their contact and event information in offline mode and later sync back to Zimbra when they get online. This 2 way sync will give users an enhanced experience and ability to be productive in absence of network connectivity. As part of this release, Zimbra will enable sync’ing of both POP account and RSS feed folders, and support for IMAP will be added at a later time.

Zimbra will also be introducing mail identities feature in the next release. Users will be able to set their from address while sending out emails. As it seems right now,  Zimbra will automatically sets the FROM address to the account  at which the email was addressed to. This feature should be similar to what we already have in Gmail.

I think Google-Docs, and EditGrid should take some cue from Zimbra and start working on offline clients for their word and spreadsheet processing tools. Having a similar setup as Wikicalc and being able to install and run these tools on the localhost and later sync back to the server will be one of the best features they can add.

Links:
Zimbra