Office 2.0

Google: 10 ways the cloud is good for business

Matthew Glotzbach from Google's enterprise products group took the stage at the Office 2.0 conference Thursday with a talk called, "10 Things I could do in the cloud today that I couldn't do a year ago."

10. Everything on the go. Glotzbach showed a picture of the iPhone, and talked about how smartphones let us do "almost anything" from the mobile phone. Of course, Glotzbach's online life is "almost entirely in the cloud," since he's a Googlehead, but he's right. Smartphones with access to tools like Google Docs are workable backups to full-sized computers.

9. Search through all my e-mail. I take issue with this claim, since I, like many other corporate e-mail users, are slaves to Exchange, and while I can occasionally get a search to run on my PC's archive of mail when I'm looking for something, I don't have access to that data when I really need it: on my iPhone.

Glotzbach also talked about how IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) opens up e-mail access to other interfaces, like Web-based and mobile clients.

8. Chat with customers and partners in any language. The real-time translation service in Google Talk has make collaborations possible that weren't before. Good point. Glotzbach did a demo on stage, showing how one invites a translator bot into a chat and uses that connection to talk with a person who speaks another language.

"It's a service you can mash up with," Glotzbach said. So "Why don't you have this in Zimbra or Google Docs?" he challenged.

7. Collaborate simply and securely on projects with Sites and Docs . It's one place for him to go to create and store project info, and it can be easily opened up to partners and other stakeholders (like journalists or the public) when needed. It helps "streamline the communication flow," he said. In this case I agree: I'm using Google Docs now for collaborating on documents inside the CNET workgroup, and when I need to share files outside of our walls, it's just as simple. … Read more

The love of work: Office 2.0

Each year at the Office 2.0 conference about Web-based business apps and processes, paid attendees get some cool gadget pre-loaded with information relevant to the conference. In 2006--the first year of the show--the gadget was an iPod Nano with the conference schedule built in. In 2007, attendees got an iPhone with links to the conference information and the show's social-networking apps pre-loaded. This year, the giveaway is an HP 2133 Mini-Note PC (the Linux version, not Windows). Given that the cost of attending the conference ($1,495--but read to the end for a discount code) is half that of two other conferences popular with the Web 2.0 crowd, Demo and TechCrunch50, one has to wonder how the organizer of the Office 2.0 is making any money. Especially since the Office 2.0 venue is leagues fancier than those other shows' locales.

Here's the secret: he isn't.

Ismael Ghalimi is doing this conference for the love of it. "I love the workmanship of work, the business of these tools," he told me. "I like interacting with the people who are passionate about this stuff. Somehow it all fits together. We don't have very sophisticated motives. It's just plain fun."

Now, to be clear, both his business and his wife benefit from the conference. Ghalimi's day job is is running Intalio, which provides open-source business process management software, both free versions as well as paid subscriptions for large companies; Intalio has about 400 customers, the newest of which is the Bank of Venezuela. Ismael's wife, May Chang Ghalimi, is CEO of the Monolab Workspace, an office suite rental business designed to be compatible with the needs of Web 2.0 start-ups. Subscriptions even come with their own carbon offsets. Exposure to the Web 2.0 productivity wonks who come to the Office 2.0 conference no doubt help the Ghalimis sell their services.

EchoSign provides paperless paper trail

The Office 2.0 conference was set up almost entirely without paper (except for some checks that paid for sponsorships). Even the contracts necessary to set up the show were signed electronically, using EchoSign. There are other companies that provide services to create legally binding signatures, such as DocuSign (review), but EchoSign has simplicity going for it.

If you want to have a document "signed" electronically, EchoSign will convert it to a PDF, send it to your designated recipient, and give you the option to have it signed via a Web form, or with a pen, via fax. … Read more

Final report: The iPhone is not open for business

At the Office 2.0 conference, as you probably know, every attendee got an iPhone with their paid admission. There was a very useful iPhone-friendly Web site set up, and several companies were showing off shiny new iPhone business applications.

But is the iPhone a business-class product? I talked to the developers making applications for this platform, and to attendees at the conference, and came up with a disheartening answer: It is not. From the two-handed interface to capricious keyboard to the slow Edge network to the lack of a real developer's interface to the phone, it's just … Read more

Jotlet calendar to sync with Outlook

Among the announcements at the Office 2.0 conference this week, Jotlet's online calendars will provide two-way synchronization with Microsoft Outlook later this month. At first glance, the calendars appear elegant and easy to use, with visual niceties such as color coding. Personal accounts are free, while corporate accounts allow a company to use branded Jotlet calendars within their Web sites. While heavily customized calendars such as those displayed during the conference demo might cost in the ballpark of between $100 to $200 per month, Jotlet's prices vary widely with the features and support offered. Jotlet allows user … Read more

Office 2.0: Ismael's secrets...and a live videocast

Ismael Ghalimi, the organizer of the Office 2.0 conference (more) is serious about living the Web 2.0 dream: Aside from a browser, he has no applications installed on his laptop, except for iWork, which he says he uses to remind himself what old-style software is like. (Even I use traditional software for writing and e-mail.)

Check out Ismael's notes on Office 2.0 services that work. And this comprehensive database of Office 2.0 applications that he's put together. Useful tips.

But what if there's no available Internet connection for Ismael when he wants to … Read more

Shiny office toys galore at Office 2.0

For a conference about getting work done, there are sure a whole lot of toys here at Office 2.0 in San Francisco. Sure many of them are old hat, like the the Nabaztag/tag, but there's some new stuff here too like Pano Logic's zero client desktop. This shiny metal cube is actually a computer--well kind of. Actually it involves setting up a a beefy server to give everyone in your office a full version of Windows sans hardware. Just give give them a keyboard, mouse, monitor and one of these shiny cubes and they're ready … Read more

Office 2.0 Launchpad rundown

The Office 2.0 Conference is only two days long, and in that time there are dozens of announcements big and small from a wide array of productivity and business companies. Amidst the bevy of panels, and discussions lies the launchpad event, a small 45-minute time slot carved out for product announcements. It's basically everyone's chance to show off their stuff, or as much as they can in the brief three minute allotments. Here's a rundown:

Zoho, mentioned itsits Zoho Business platform, which they launched this morning. We've got a full story on it here.

Veodia, the live broadcasting folks are launching a new portal for the iPhone and iPod touch. The team has been live broadcasting conference coverage all day.

TimeBridge is launching the public beta of its personal scheduling manager. It's a little bit like CircleUp ( coverage) meets Outlook, to lets you sync up your scheduling decision with your Outlook or Google Calendar. Previous Timebridge coverage can be found here.

Pano Logic has a really neat piece of hardware that does "zero client computing." This means with a server setup, you can get little portable computers that run off of these little metal cubes. This is great for small businesses who want to save some cash on desktop hardware, or who want to fool their employees into thinking they're in the future.

OpenSAM discussed creating an open set of standards for sharing online file types and information. ShareOffice is adding calendars from Jotlet, and conferencing from Persony. They've also built an iPhone app for accessing documents on ShareMethods.

Nozbe announced its business service, which features project collaboration for small and medium sized businesses. The team has also put together an iPhone-friendly version of the site for users to access projects on the go.

gOffice has a really nifty service that lets you type a Microsoft Office document on your iPhone. You can type to your heart's content, add a custom signature, and even get gOffice to print it out and send it (via snail mail) to wherever you want for a small fee.

Diigo's WebSlides to turn saved pages into slide shows

The bookmarking and reference service I use most is adding a show-and-tell slideshow feature. Diigo lets you mark up Web pages, then share and export your notes. Its new WebSlides, in closed beta testing, will enable you to create narrated presentations of Web pages that you've saved and annotated.

Diigo is meant to be more practical than something like StumbleUpon, a fun way to discover new sites. Diigo Vice President Maggie Tsai touted Diigo WebSlides at the Office 2.0 conference today as an ideal tool for teachers. Her demo showed off handy-looking recording and playback controls for making … Read more

New features for Google Spreadsheets

First, the bad news: No, Google is not announcing a business wiki or presentation product at the Office 2.0 conference. However, I did get a demo of a few new features in Google's spreadsheet.

First, there's a new autofill function. If you enter a series of consecutive numbers, it will extend the series. OK, yawn. But, using data provided by the old Google Sets experiment, the spreadsheet will automatically fill in a row or column with items it thinks match your selection if they're not in an obvious sequence. For example, highlight a name of a … Read more