While I haven’t commented much on the current war in the Middle East, it has occupied my mind from day one. I’ve been tracking blogs and media, but the bloggers over there provide so much more info. Lisa Goldman, in Israel,writes about the cross-border conversation going on between the Lebanese and Israelites. While this may not solve our issues now, it gives me hope for the future.
Page 58 of 72
As the customer-focus trend grows it is reaching some odd places–even the funeral home. New York Times describes a growing tendency among baby boomers to request customized funerals complete with refreshments, unique locations, and life videos. Actually, the life videos is a pretty good idea for posterity.
The family of one ice cream truck driver requested an ice cream truck to deliver treats at the graveside. Kinda makes me think of the old John Denver song, “Forest Lawn.”
Did you see Millions? Great little film that stirs us to think about the lack of clean water in the world. Here’s a cool way to help and give kids something fun at the same time. It’s a merry-go-round that kids push, and as they push and play, it pumps water up from deep wells. The play pumps cost about $10,000 each but you can donate any amount toward one to go in a village that needs one.
After I posted info on the various applications available online, Jeremy posted another downloadable suite called Open Office. So, I had to try it as well. Interesting, when you register the product, they ask if the reason you are using it is because you hate Microsoft. Then Boing Boing ran piece today about OpenOffice advertising on buses that go to Microsoft. That’s funny!
Anyway, I’ve tested the various apps and here’s my opinion. Open Office is pretty robust and a great downloadable option. I opened one of my Access databases in it and everything worked great. So it stays on the hard drive for when I don’t have WiFi access. But I also like the online apps because it makes it easy switching between computers.
I mainly tested the word processing and of all the apps, I liked ThinkFree. It has editing options I use like zoom, header/footer editing, etc. It runs on Java, which is a problem for some folks, and that means it runs a little slower, but the features are worth it to me. It also has a quick edit and power edit option, so for fasting editing, you can avoid the longer loading java window.
ZohoWriter and the Ajaxwriter were similar and I like them for quick edits. They run fast. I may prefer Zoho simply because it opens in another tab whereas Ajax opens a pop-up window for the document.
gOffice has a nice site but it is still a little too limited in editing options. I couldn’t figure how to change fonts.
If you haven’t tried any of these yet, you should. Open source is changing the rules and hopefully making the web what it was supposed to be. Not a place to make a few guys rich, but a place where us blokes could share our thoughts, ideas and solutions without always commodifying everything.
Mark Jenkins has posted some interesting installation pieces on streets, in nature and more. Check it out.
I stumpledupon this cool site that lets you program a text message, a time to call, and even the caller id number to call from, allowing you to send your self real time voice messages: so you call yourself tomorrow today. Play with it; it’s kinda cool.
Create stunning masterpieces like Jackson Pollock. Miltso Manetas has created a fun little create-your-own Jackson Pollock page.
Pajamas Media introduced its newest incarnation today, Politics Central. This brings to together blogs and podcasts with live interviews about the politics in our culture. One section of Politics Central is temporarily called X21 Central and its dedicated to folks who don’t fully identify with the current political labels in our culture. Sounds like me. I never know where I fit in.
Anyway, they introduced a new political group called Unity08 made up of folks who are interested in pushing the current landscape beyond the current polarization. I visited their site and am still not completely sure what they’re all about but could be an interesting group to watch. Anyone who is trying to encourage dialogue as opposed to competing monologues has got my attention.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the developments in online software, there are multiple options now available for writing documents, creating spreadsheets and even developing presentations that rival PowerPoint. I’ve played with some of these and find them pretty cool and nice alternatives to spending an enormous chunk of cash of productivity tools that come with a bunch of bells and whistles most of us don’t even need.
Here are some of the ones I came across from a simple search and checking folks like TechCrunch.
Zoho offers a whole suite of productivity tools from word processing to spreadsheets to presentation tools and more. Most are free; some have a nominal cost. I played around with the word processing and may start using it myself. It exports as a .doc and other files and has the features I use most.
gOffice offers word processing, desktop publishing, presentations, and spreadsheets.
Writely was recently purchased by Google. They’re not offering new accounts yet, so I haven’t tried it. But you can sign up for an invitation.
ThinkFree comes with a gig of free online space and offers word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. ThinkFree takes a little longer to load but appears to have a bunch of editing tools. Both the icons and toolbar emulate MS Office.
Ajaxlaunch is offering a variety of web world tools including word processing, a sketch program, a video editing program, a soon to come ajax operating system, and more. Plus it has an online forum, so it appears to be creating a little community around these developments. Looks very interesting.
Google Labs is always introducing interesting applications including spreadsheets. One tool that I’ve added to my toolbar that could be helpful for those doing research on the Internet is the Google Notebook. This allows you to capture clips of web pages with links to the page and store them in a folder that is always accessible from your toolbar.
Thumbstacks is an easy tool for building online presentations.
Empressr is also an interesting presentation tool.
If anybody has found other online office tools they like, I’d love to hear about them. Moving between several computers at different locations, I find the online apps makes it very easy for me to work on projects.
Dandlife is an interesting variation on the social networking. You tell stories and build a web stories that can interconnect with other story webs. Plus, companies can purchase these stories for brand research, case studies, etc. Marshall Kirkpatrick at Tech Crunch is uncomfortable with this idea. I’m not sure what to think. But the site is interesting.
Every day another social networking development. Seems folks are scrambling to jump in this phenomenon while it’s hot. It will be interesting to see what happens in a year or two with this stuff. After the explosion of various networks I wonder if some will fade or if there will be some connections between networks or if another form of tribalism will emerge with networks becoming more and more niche specific.
