Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is where a business or person does not have to save their programs or data on one stored computer or hard drive and access it via that. They are able to access these from any computer or laptop with and active internet connection. They can use as much as much as the service as they want and it is fully managed by the provider, therefore maintainance is low for the user as the provider will assure this. The user usually pays to use the service either by the hour or by the minute.

The video above gives a rough outline on cloud computing.

(Image showing how cloud computing can benefit companies)

Some popular cloud based applications are:

• Adobe Photoshop Express
• Apple MobileMe
• Glide OS
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Office Live Workspace
• Zoho Office

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Agility improved (rapid and in-expensive use of resources)
• Cost reduced as no purchase costs for one time use of software, the provider takes this purchase. Less It knowledge required. The user doesnt have to worry about setting up and running of servers.
• Independence on location and device use, allows users to access their files and programs from wherever they may be with any system with an active internet connection.
• File and program sharing is made easy, anyone with the details can access the files and programs from wherever they may be. (with an active internet connection)
• Larger storage areas than on private machines available.
• Less staff required as no technical staff needed to update the software.

Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

Usage laws are a major problem for cloud computing, whereas a company may be based in the Uk but the cloud computing company in the US. This means that the UK based company has to comply to the US terms and conditions and laws due to them being the providers.

Previous Legals issues with cloud computing:

“In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term “cloud computing” (U.S. Trademark 77,139,082) in the United States. The “Notice of Allowance” the company received in July 2008 was cancelled in August, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application less than a week later.

In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to be run over a network. Founder and president, Richard Stallman has also warned that cloud computing “will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time.“

(The above legal issues where taken from Wikipedia)

The reliance of cloud computing can cause problems for growing e-commerce websites due to the growing demand. Websites such as Amazon have seen greater downtime in the past few years due to this with the systems crashing with Amazon being down for around 7/8 hours at one point.

Ca y est Zoho vient de publier son annonce sur son blog pour la sortie de ce nouveau produit (voir mon précédent billet). Vous pourrez donc éditer et créer des nouveaux documents en ligne à partir de votre SharePoint. En plus Zoho a ajouté un module pour chatter avec vos collègues pendant que vous travaillez sur le document.

Niveau prix comme toujours avec Zoho cela est très raisonnable. Il vous en coûtera 2$/utilisateur/mois pour un contrat annuel ou sinon ce sera 3$/utilisateur/mois. Il est possible de faire un essai de 30 jours avant de souscrire et ce nouvel outil est compatible Microsoft SharePoint 2003 et 2007.

Annonce sur leur blog.

Site officiel de Zoho Office pour SharePoint.

La semaine dernière Zoho annonçait sur son blog la sortie d’un nouveau produit et il semble que ce soit la possibilité d’intégrer Zoho Office (Writer, Show et Sheet) à votre site SharePoint. Après installation, vous pouvez choisir d’éditer vos documents directement en ligne avec les outils Zoho au lieu de passer par les applications traditionnelles.

Il n’y a pas de page, sur le site de Zoho, actuellement pour ce produit mais juste deux vidéos.

Installation

Aperçu

Il faut attendre un peu pour l’annonce officielle et connaitre les détails de cette offre.

By Brad Linder, Downloadsquad

ThinkFree Office is a web-based office suite similar to Google Docs and Zoho Office. But the ThinkFree folks set themselves apart from the crowd last year when they released a desktop client that lets you edit documents on your computer and synchronize them with a web server.

Now ThinkFree is back with a Flash-based document viewer that you can embed on any web page. Just upload your Word, Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint file and ThinkFree will spit out some code you can use to share the document. Honestly, the new ThinkFree UNI-Paper service looks pretty much the same as the embedded document viewers from Issuu, docstoc, and Scribd. But the difference is that UNI-Paper is linked to a powerful web-based office suite, so you can edit your documents and then grab the embed code all from one place.

Für alle, die schon länger auf vorblog mit dabei sind, ist Scrivener kein neuer Begriff; für die meisten anderen vermutlich auch nicht. Falls doch: Eine ganz kurze Einleitung mit dem Thema “Was ist Scrivener”:

Scrivener von Literature & Latte ist ein “nicht-lineares” Schriftsteller-Programm für den Mac. Es erlaubt das einbinden verschiedener Datein (PDF’s, Bilder, docs, Musik,…) in ein Programmfenster, verwalten von Bibliographien, hat einen Full-Screen Modus, und integriert Version Control sowie die Möglichkeit ein viele gängige Formate (u.a. auch LaTeX) zu exportieren. Genialse Software also.

Wie an anderer Stelle bereits erwähnt, ist das Problem mit Scrivener, dass es a) nur auf Mac läuft und b) Closed Source ist. Eine Portierung auf Windows oder gar Linux ist nicht geplant, was vermut(l)ich daran liegt, dass der Programmierer das Programm größtenteils aus Programmen (bzw. deren APIs) und Funktionen des Mac-Betriebssystems zusammensetzt (und weniger daran, dass es in Cocoa programmiert ist).

Zoho wird vielen allerdings kein geläufiger Begriff sein – Zoho ist eine Online-Office-Suite im Google Docs Stil, nur wesentlich besser und wesentlich umfangreicher. Dabei ist u.a. auch ein Tool, die sich Zoho Notebook nennt und als online M$ Office OneNote (notetaking) Ersatz verstanden werden kann. Für alle, die nicht das Glück haben, einen Mac zu besitzen, oder die geeignete “kriminelle Energie”, sich ein MacOSx86 auf einem normalen PC zu installieren haben, habe ich hier eine Idee vorzubringen, wie man sich mit Zoho Notebook, Zoho Writer, einer beliebigen Kombination aus anderen Zoho (oder auch anderen Web2.0-)Diensten und eventuell Firefox Prism einen Online-Scrivener-Ersatz basteln kann.

Das gesamte Konzept basiert darauf, dass es möglich ist, in Zoho Notebook alle möglichen Websiten und insbesondere Zoho-Dokumente zu embedden (live einfügen). Zoho Notebook ist also unser “Rahmenprogramm”, dem wir beliebige Funktionalität und Struktur verleihen. Ich werde hier nur ein ganz einfaches Beispiel konstruieren, das eine Idee davon verleihen soll, was möglich ist.

Ich will eine Startseite mit Fortschrittsinformationen und einer strukturell-dramaturgischen Übersicht über das Buch, eine Brainstorming-Seite, für jedes Kapitel eine eigene Seite mit inspirativem Kapitel-Photo und einem last.fm-Mediaplayer und ein Scrapbook, in dem ich schnell Einfälle niederschreiben kann um sie erste später zu verarbeiten.

Dazu erstellen ich zuerst ein Notebook mit dem Namen “Mein Buch” und dann 5 Seiten (auf Deutsch mit “Hinzufügen:Leeres” links oben).

Startseite:
Links eine simple Text ToDo-Liste und rechts in einem weiteren Textfeld oder graphisch dargestellt (wie es einem lieber ist) die struktrelle Übersicht. Dazwischen zeichne ich zwecks Übersichtlichkeit einen dicken schwarzen Strich. Die ToDo-Liste kann ich auch über einen anderen Dienst und die Übersicht mit Zoho Writer/Sheet/Presentation, bubbl.us,…erstellen aber ich mache es so einfach wie möglich.

Brainstorming-Seite:
Über “Hinzufügen:URL” oder “Hinzufügen:Website” ebedde ich bubble.us und/oder mindmeister und/oder Mindomo. Alle drei sind online Brainstormin/Mindmapping Tools, die z.T. gratis zu verwenden sind. alles, was man benötigt, ist ein Account bei der jeweiligen Plattform. Ich verwende bubble.us. Einerseits aus Tradition, andererseits wegen der Möglichlkeit Mindmaps als Bild zu exportieren und diese dann paralell im Notebook einzufügen, wenn ich will.

Außerdem kann über die Zoho Notebook eigenen Tools Brainstormen oder strukturieren: Wichtig dafür ist neben der Zeichenfunktion (Frei-Hand, Lineal und vordefinierte Formen) auch das Simple-Text-Feld bei dem man keine Formatierungsoptionen hat, von denen man abgelenkt werden könnte.

Scrapbook-Seite:
Die einzige Anforderung an diese Seite ist ihre bloße Existenz. Struktur ist wegen der temporären Natur nicht notwendig, das einfügen externer Tools ebensowenig.

Im Scrapbook kann man neben Text (Ideen oder Zitate) auch Bilder, Links oder ganze Webseiten einfügen – wie es einem beliebt.

Kapitel-Seite(n):
Ich beginne damit, ein neues Zoho Writer Document einzufügen. Dies geht ohne weitere Umstände über “Hinzufügen: Writer”. Dann muss ich noch den Namen des Dokuments eingeben, etwa “Mein Buch: Erstes Kapitel”, und mein Editor ist fertig. Fehlen nur noch Bild und Media-Player.
Das Bild füge ich einfach ein über “Hinzufügen: Bild” -> Hochladen.
Für den Media-Player gehe ich zuerste auf last.fm/widgets und erstelle mir dort ein persönliches Radio-Widget (aus meiner Musiksammlung – wozu man einen account bei last.fm benötigt). Nebenbei bemerkt empfehle ich die Farbe des Players mit der Farbe des Notebooks abzustimmen und beides generell eher in blau zu halten.
Den Code füge ich im Notebook dann über “Hinzufügen: HTML” ein, schiebe den Player an die gewünschte Stelle und voilá!

Es empfiehlt sich des weitern, alle Felder, ob nun eingefügte Websiten, den Player oder das Editor-Feld über die Pinnadel rechts oben im jeweiligen Feld zu fixieren.

Um PDF’s einzufügen kann man sich z.B. Scribd bedienen. Grundsätzlich kann jeder Web2.0 Dienst in Zoho Notebook benutzt werden (ja, sogar Twitter, auch das kann zum schreiben ganz nützlich sein. in der Art: Nachricht an mich selbst).

Besonders interesannt wird dieser Scrivener-Ersatz, wenn es darum geht, zu mehrt n einem Buch zu schreiben, da nicht nur jedes Team-Mitglied, nach enstprechender Rechte-Vergabe die Dokumente bearbeiten kann (wenn erwünscht auch in der gerade erstellen Scrivener-Umgebung), sonderd dies auch noch gleichzeitig geht, man dabei chatten kann oder über skype telephonieren.

We have been using Microsoft Office over 15 years, some of us even longer. Very few of us question why, even though it slows down our computers and the majority of us only use about 10 per cent of the available features, even though we pay for them all. Maybe it’s time we take a look at what else is out there.

The most common reason people stick with Microsoft Office is because we’re familiar with it. Let’s face it, we don’t like change, even if that change may be better and more efficient. Another reason is that people are comfortable with it, and of course because everyone else seems to use it.

The best competitor right now is ‘Open Office’. It’s called that because it is developed by a very large community of people who donate their time to the worthwhile cause. It’s completely compatible with Microsoft Office, and it’s free. You can get it from http://www.openoffice.org. Their goal right now is simply to get people to use it.

Consumer perspective seems to be encouraging, albeit sceptical. People don’t want to take the time to learn something new, but considering the lack of a price tag and compatibility with Microsoft Office, consumers seem more than willing to take a look.

“I’d definitely check it out, I would,” says Steph Norris, a first-year nursing student at the college, but says

sticking with a new product would “depend on how much I like it. Free stuff would be nice.”

With students, learning new programs in addition to their course load isn’t appealing, so alternative programs need to be easy to use and not require much of a learning curve. They don’t need every feature known to man built-in, they just want something that works.

“You have to go with something that you know, you don’t have time during the school year to learn something new [in addition to everything else],” says Norris.

With the internet gaining strength over the past decade, many companies, such as Google, are taking their applications online instead of selling their boxed software in stores. Google has ‘Docs’ and ‘Google Spreadsheets’. Another company is Zoho Office, which is also free.

Even with the convenience, some are not yet comfortable with storing their documents online, and consumers don’t fully trust the internet, so companies need to do more to gain customer trust.

“I don’t know if I’d trust the online programs,” says Mike Campon, an Environment Sciences student at the college, “I don’t believe they are as secure as they say they are.”

As for whether online applications are beginning to makes a dent in boxed software sales, the answer seems to be no.

“[There isn’t] an awareness and people are set in their ways, and it’s brand loyalty,” says Julian Clement, an Entertainment Associate at the Future Shop in Medicine Hat, “[there is a]lack of information out there about online software.”

Unless you’re “in-the-know”, customers only seem to be aware of the software on the shelves and don’t seem to trust anything else. With the vast amount of features, Microsoft Office seems more targeted toward business, while the alternatives are aimed at home users.

“If people were more aware [of the alternatives], they might definitely second guess that decision [to buy Microsoft Office],” says Candace Knelsen, the department manager for Electronics at the Lethbridge south Wal-Mart location, though she says that “sales seem to be as strong as ever.”

One solution to bloated software that includes features most people never use is called ‘modular software’. Microsoft is a perfect example, with many experts predicting Windows 7 will be sold as a basic operating system, and customers can buy or subscribe to add-ons and other features.

“I want the computer to come with the basics with the option to expand, but I want them to make it easy to find and download the add-ons,” says Paul Sywanyk, a third-year Conservation Enforcement student.

Sywanyk brings up a valid point. Companies will need to make it easy to obtain the additional features, and the lack of doing so will only bring confusion and hassle to the already complex software industry.

Customers are tired of bloated software that is difficult to use and that slows down our computers. We are becoming more aware of other choices in the software market, and we’re making it clear through the internet and our spending habits that we just want something that works and that isn’t a hassle to use.

Have you ever been through a scenario where you logged into an online application at your friends house to show him something exciting and later on your drive back, you start to wonder whether you really logged out of the application later?

You don’t have to worry about it anymore. Zoho today introduced remote sign-out meaning you can log off from any other computer. Go to Zoho –> User Sessions and close all expect your current session.

By default, Zoho Accounts automatically ends all sessions older than 7 days. Active sessions for the past 7 days are listed in the sessions screen (including the current session) with additional information like Start Time, IP Address etc. You have options to end individual sessions or end all sessions (excluding the current one).

[via Zoho Blog]

“Cloud Computing is all the rage,” says InfoWeek. “Some analysts and vendors,” they say, “define cloud computing narrowly as an updated version of utility computing: basically virtual servers available over the Internet. Others go very broad, arguing anything you consume outside the firewall is “in the cloud,” including conventional outsourcing,” the article goes on to say. Those who don’t have a Cloud Computing offering, but still want to be considered chic go with the InfoWeek’s broader definition.

The GoogleGazer prefers to define Cloud Computing as highly scalable distributed services, available on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, what we like to call “Rent-a-cloud.”

The idea of Cloud Computing is certainly not new. In his autobiography, Dr. Jack B. Dennis, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT (and MIT Class of ‘53), and a pioneer in the development of computer science wrote in 2003:

In 1960 Professor John McCarthy, now at Stanford University and known for his contributions to artificial intelligence, led the “Long Range Computer Study Group” (LRCSG) which proposed objectives for MIT’s future computer systems. I had the privilege of participating in the work of the LRCSG, which led to Project MAC and the Multics computer and operating system, under the organizational leadership of Prof. Robert Fano and the technical guidance of Prof. Fernando Corbat.

At this time Prof. Fano had a vision of the Computer Utility  the concept of the computer system as a repository for the knowledge of a community data and procedures in a form that could be readily shared a repository that could be built upon to create ever more powerful procedures, services, and active knowledge from those already in place. Prof. Corbat’s goal was to provide the kind of central computer installation and operating system that could make this vision a reality. With funding from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the result was Multics.

For those under sixty, and probably not old enough to remember, MULTICS (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was an extremely influential early time-sharing operating system, started in 1964. It proved that [mainframe-based] computing could serve many people in remote locations at the same time. It set creative minds to thinking about a generally available computer utility, connected to your house through a cable. The GoogleGazer still has an original copy of Fred Gruenberger’s influential book, Computers and Communications; Toward a Computer Utility, which he read when it first appeared in 1968, back when the GoogleGazer was an undergraduate and bra-burning and anti-Vietnam demonstrations preoccupied the college campuses, and nearly all computing was based on mainframes and batch processing. Gruenberger posited a “computing utility” which would operate much like an electrical utility, letting you draw as much or as little as you need, while paying only for what you use was articulated in detail.

Back to InfoWeek.

Utility computing, InfoWeek goes on to say,

is a [type of Cloud Computing that provides a] way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities.

Sure sounds like Gruenberger’s computer utility to the GoogleGazer.

This form of rent-a-cloud, as we noted earlier, is offered commercially by Amazon.com, Google, Sun (zembly.com for creating and hosting social applications, and Network.com for pay-as-you-go computing), IBM, and others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. In InfoWeeks’s view, “Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter.” However, the GoogleGazer knows that many smaller, fast-growing high-tech outfits run their entire business off of the “Cloud” of one of these major vendors, and by all reports, reliability exceeds that of most IT shops.

Software As A Service (SAAS) is a type of cloud computing that delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com, according to InfoWeek,  is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SaaS is also common for HR applications and is also used in ERP applications from vendors such as Workday. More recently, as we have noted,  SaaS applications, such as Google Apps and Zoho Office are causing Billionaire’s Agita to Steve Ballmer and his competitors, as they are encroaching on ground long firmly held by Microsoft Office (a risk Microsoft was forced to disclose in its SEC filings). APIs are also increasingly available in the Cloud that enable developers to exploit functionality of others over the Internet, rather than developing, hosting, and delivering it themselves. These range from providers offering discrete business services — such as Strike Iron and Xignite – to the full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, Yahoo BOSS. The U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg, and even online banking and conventional credit card processing services are headed in this direction.

So while the technology may be different, updated, and certainly faster, cheaper, more pervasive, and much more scalable, at the end of the day, Cloud Computing is a centralized mainframe-like core with distributed nodes, in a prettier, sexier new miniskirt. But hey, we like the pretty dress, and the GoogleGazer believes that Cloud Computing not only is not a fad, but it presages a fundamental paradigm shift that will have as powerful an effect on society as the Internet itself, and will turn out to be truly disruptive technology.

“Strong words,” you say? Well stay tuned for further proof as Cloud Computing matures over the next five years. Remember, you heard it first from the GoogleGazer.

Se c’è una applicazione che tantissimi usano più o meno quotidianamente da quando avevano il 486 questa è sicuramente Office, in particolare nelle svariate declinazioni di Microsoft. Oggi la suite che risiede in quasi ogni pc (e mac, perché no? :| ) continua ad essere il punto di riferimento, vuoi per l’usabilità, vuoi per l’esperienza che abbiamo dagli innumerevoli anni di utilizzo, vuoi perché è lo standard de facto quanto a fogli di testo, fogli di calcolo, ecc… La concorrenza non è però mai stata così minacciosa, e se OpenOffice ha ottenuto buoni risultati sino ad ora quanto a diffusione non si può certo dire che sia a livelli dell’office di mamma Microsoft. Il software supportato da Sun e dalla sua eccezionale comunità è il principale fra i competitors, ma altri si affacciano all’orizzonte (anzi sono già fra noi): il particolare è che chi vuole scalzare Big M dal suo (uno dei tanti eh ) trono sembra dover combattere usando come “ring” un bel server anziché il nostro computer su cui “gira” l’intera suite. Infatti dopo Google Docs e Spreadsheet a cascata abbiamo una serie di suite office, più o meno complete quanto a funzioni e funzionalità offerte, che hanno la peculiarità di essere online come quella offerta dal colosso di Mountain View. Di Google Docs non credo serva dire molto, chi ha un account Google è probabile l’abbia provata: per esperienza diretta l’ho trovata molto comoda per lavorare a distanza con un’altra persona alla modifica in contemporanea di uno stesso documento di testo. I tool a disposizione sono abbastanza completi e l’usabilità impeccabile direi. Interessante la soluzione di Zoho, che offre una suite da ufficio completa, con Writer, Sheet (foglio di calcolo) e Show (presentazioni). I tre strumenti sfruttano una interfaccia Ajax, e quindi sono carini, semplici e i tempi di caricamento (non dimentichiamo che siamo pur sempre nel web…) sono veloci. Purtroppo ci sono dei difetti: i tre tool sono parecchio differenti quanto ad interfaccia grafica, risultando quindi anche per questo poco integrati fra loro; e le funzionalità (discorso che vale abbastanza anche per Google Docs comunque) non sono ancora all’altezza di quelle di una suite installabile in locale. Ottima caratteristica però è la possibilità attraverso Google Gears (si veda il mio post precedente) di usare la suite anche offline (così come fa anche lo stracitato Google Docs): una vera comodità. Infine Think Free Online, con i suoi tool Writer, Calc e Show. É una suite meno evoluta delle altre due per quanto a tempi di caricamento dell’interfaccia grafica e a tempi di esecuzione, ma è comunque completa nelle funzionalità. Apre e salva nei formati di Microsoft Office 2007 (Open Xml) e salva in Pdf (come G Docs). Non supporta però (…peccato ) i formati Open Document di OpenOffice (ricordo l’importanza di questi formati che sono un vero e proprio Standard, con tanto di certificazione ISO, e non a caso Microsoft sta spingendo molto per ottenere una certificazione di questo tipo anche per il suo formato aperto).
Considerazioni di Geekonomist: per il momento nessuno scalzerà le suite office dai nostri computer, e Microsoft prospererà ancora a lungo in questo settore (sperando che OpenOffice cresca costantemente, e che il suo formato aperto porti alla fine degli standard proprietari in questi ambiti…). Ma quello che è interessante notare è che le suite online hanno già oggi qualcosa che le suite tradizionali non offrono: nei loro limiti dettati anche dall’essere pur sempre degli applicativi web based, le suite di Google, Zoho e Think Free permettono di essere usate praticamente ovunque e di aver accesso ai propri documenti risiedenti nei server delle società che offrono il servizio, senza avere a disposizione nemmeno il proprio pc (si, lo so, il discorso della sicurezza meriterebbe una riflessione a parte: può non un privato, ma un’azienda lasciare i propri delicati documenti nei server di una società esterna fidandosi ciecamente? posso fidarmi a consultare i miei documenti da un computer pubblico?). Inoltre le suite online permettono la collaborazione contemporanea di più utenti nella redazione del documento, cosa non trascurabile. Insomma mi sembra ci siano grosse prospettive per questi applicativi, e anche la possibilità che attraverso dei servizi aggiuntivi, ovviamente a pagamento, vengano offerte future interessanti, in particolare per le aziende (Google Apps docet ). Per ora non possiamo fare altro che aspettare che le soluzioni web based crescano al livello delle suite classiche, poi magari l’office sul proprio pc potrebbe diventare solo un lontano ricordo.

The safest most secure app for browsing the internet currently available just got better and has more improvements on the way. Are you ready for the latest Mozilla release? Firefox 3 Beta 4 is available for download, but before you go running off like some half cocked Microsoft groupie notice the “beta” tag.

Hello!! The internet is a dangerous place. The Remote Helpdesk 1 Team continues to be amused (we can no longer say amazed) at people who would not dare to venture into certain parts of a city but who seemingly rush into the internet’s dark corners and dimly lighted streets ill prepared.

Before you sail into a storm baton down the hatches, and before you cruise into hacker, virus, trojan, and criminally infested areas of the world wide web at least darken the windows and arm yourself. Not to take appropriate precautions will assure your computer a visit to the infectious disease controls center if not the hard drive morgue.

Firefox developers have thus far proven themselves to the best at incorporating necessary safety features into their browser while preserving user options and cruise speeds. Online PC Repair folks feel they owe a lot of their success to getting their loyal users involved in the development and testing process. These folks, like The Tennessee Mountain Man, have helped keep the programs on track and the applications minimal. For instance, if a client wants twenty-five cents – give him a quarter like Mozilla tends to do rather that twenty-five pennies as Microsoft is famous for.

It takes a lot less resources to process one coin than it does to count twenty-five. Mozilla recognizing this has given the new “beta” release a lot of new features and improved compatibility while freeing up resources. The end result being a more nimble and faster overall browsing experience. At the same time they have enhanced Firefox’s security.

Released to the public via the Mozilla website Monday, 10 March 2008, Firefox 3 Beta 4 is in the beta stage of any software’s life cycle. Firefox 3 Beta 4 loudly proclaims that it is “for testing purposes only” therefore it is not for everyone. It you are a newbie or maybe even an intermediate internet user, the suggestion of the Computer Man would be that you use Firefox 2.0.0.12, the latest most stable full release until Firefox 3 is out of beta.

If you just can’t wait for a better browsing experience Mozilla reports “the new release includes more than 900 enhancements from beta 3, including drastic improvements to performance and memory usage, as well as fixes for stability, platform enhancements and user interface”.

But that is not the half of it… not by a long shot. “Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 31 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 12,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and
sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers improvements.”, according to Mozilla.

Enhancements like these reported on the Mozilla website:

“More Secure

* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you’re connected to. (Try it here!)
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older,
insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be
disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
* Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with Vista: Firefox now has Vista-specific icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and spell-checker in web forms and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you’re looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you’re seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
* Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline
browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

* [Improved in Beta 4!] Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in significant improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 4, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 Beta 4 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
* Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.”

Mozilla provides Firefox 3 Beta 4 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in forty different languages, and reports it can be removed without losing your bookmarks, web browsing history, extensions and other add-ons. Best of all – it is FREE ! Just download, install, and enjoy a whole new faster browsing experience if your computer meets one of the following system requirements.

Windows
Operating Systems

* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows Server 2003
* Windows Vista

Minimum Hardware

* Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended: Pentium 500MHz or greater)
* 64 MB RAM (Recommended: 128 MB RAM or greater)
* 52 MB hard drive space

Mac
Operating Systems

* Mac OS X 10.4 and later

Minimum Hardware

* Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
* 128 MB RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater)
* 200 MB hard drive space

Linux
Software Requirements
Please note that Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements.

* Linux kernel – 2.2.14 or higher with the following libraries or packages:
o glibc 2.3.2 or higher
o XFree86-3.3.6 or higher
o gtk+2.0 or higher
o fontconfig (also known as xft)
o libstdc++5

Minimum Hardware

* Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-III+ 233 MHz CPU (Recommended: 500MHz or greater)
* 64 MB RAM (Recommended: 128 MB RAM or greater)
* 52 MB hard drive space

And, if you still have not tried Mozilla Thunderbird,

get ready to kick Outlook Express to the curb!

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After finding the Zoho Office Suite, I wanted to tell all of my clients about it. But unlike MS Office, there did not appear to be much documentation or even many references to using it that were easily found on the internet. So I am starting a series about using the different applications in the suite. Today, I will be focusing on 10 things all noobs to Zoho Writer should know.

1. Assign Titles to Documents – When you create a document, you will see the title ‘Untitled’ in the top tab. If you click on the tab, you will be able to assign a title to your document. This is not a requirement, since it will be titled with the name you save it as. I like to do this first thing so that I have this task out of the way.
2. Using Templates – There are a number of predefined templates that you are able to use. What will confuse some users is the list on the left hand column. This is a list of templates that you have added to your library. If you would like to choose a new template, click the link at the top of page which is titled ‘Template Library’. This will allow you to add any of these templates to your personal library. You can find a template that suits your needs and select the link on the right that is titiled ‘Add to my Templates’. This gives you access to the template from Writer.
3. Maximize the Editor – If you don’t need the list on the left side and you would like more working area for writing, you can select the top-left pointing arrow beside the document title tag. This provides the user with a near full screen editor.
4. Export – Zoho has far surpassed Microsoft with the options they provide by default for exporting your documents. Before using this option, be sure to save your document as the export function appears to only export what has been saved. The options that exist are…
   1. Word Document – This allows you to save your document in word 97-2003 document format. This means that you can create your document from anywhere and still export it to word format to share your document with anyone who requires it be in word format.
   2. SXW – This is the OpenOffice and StarOffice format when saving a text document.
   3. PDF – Great format that can be opened by anyone who has the Adobe Reader installed. This is a great format if you have a document you don’t want others to edit.
   4. ODT – This is another OpenOffice and StarOffice extension.
   5. Rich Text Format – MS Word and Wordpad documents are often saved to this format.
   6. Text File – Saves the file as a generic text file. You will lose most formatting when using this export option.
   7. HTML – Great option if you would like to put you document on the internet.
5. Desktopize Widget of Zoho – Using the desktop widgets, you can edit your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on your desktop rather than opening your internet browswer.
6. History – Allows the user to revert back to a previously saved version of the current document. This can be very useful when you have large documents and you want to go back to a time before you made large quantities of modifications.
7. Modifing Tables – After adding a table to your document, writer makes it very easy to add additional rows and columns to your table. This is something that I always have trouble teaching others to do. With Zoho Writer, it is just a matter of a click or two and you have made your changes. By clicking on the row or column where you would like to add additional items, you are presented with a right and left or up and down arrow as well as an x. The right and left arrows add a column and the up and down adds a new row. The x will delete the column or row.
8. Publish – The user is able to publish to a blog, make the document public, or add to doc roll. Publishing to a blog will post your document content into your blog as a post. Making the document public allows other Zoho users to view your document. The doc roll provides one of the coolest features I have ever seen. Zoho provides you with the javascript code to have your documents listed on your website.

There is a ton of other options to explore in Zoho writer, so have a great time exploring all the features.

Zoho, the online Office suite company, will launch a Microsoft Office plugin today that will allow users to save documents directly to their Zoho account from Microsoft Office and Excel.

Todoz is another all in one productivity tool in the same vein as 37 signals, Zoho Office, and of course the big daddy – Google. The people over at Web Worker Daily are checking it out, and the screenshot they have – it looks decent, but all screenshots look cool. They will keep checking it out.

This online productivity marketplace is getting quite crowded these days. Should be an interesting shake down in the 1st to 2nd qtr of 2007. Who will be left standing? Technically Speaking, I probably could list who will not be left standing first.

Don’t you just love the web 2.0? I don’t even need to touch MS Office anymore, not that I have used it for a long long time (I use Portable Open Office). There are software suites out there now that are all web based. Granted it doesn’t have everything that one needs in an office suite (equation editing being an important thing) but that can be mimicked using pictures. I really recommend using Zoho Virtual Office as an alternative to other office programs. It will become even more useful as Vista looms just on the horizon making all your stuff soon to be obsolete (so run off and download linux!