Cool Wildlife Video

This video is one of the best examples I have ever seen about how team work can get you through the most complicated situations. Check out the herd of buffalos fighting back a small pride of lions. This copyrighted video was filmed at South Africa's Kruger National Park and it's also one of the most popular Youtube videos with more than 20 million views.


Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

You can read more details about this video here.

Cool Solar Powered Charger

Solio Classic Universal Hybrid Charger can be bought here for $99.95. But what is Solio exactly?
As you can read here Solio is an universal portable charger for devices such as mobile phones or mp3 players. Nothing new here! But now comes the best part as Solio has a built-in solar panel that enables you to charge your portable devices on the run and... in the wild!

Check out the CNBC video about it!

100 words about Adhocracy

Adhocracy is a type of organization being an opposite of bureaucracy. The term was popularized by Alvin Toffler (in the 1970s). Robert Waterman defined adhocracy as "any form of organization that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results.". For Henry Mintzberg, an adhocracy is a complex and dynamic organizational form suited for problem solving and innovation and thrives in a changing environment. Alvin Toffler noted that adhocracies will get more common and are likely to replace bureaucracy under the form of temporary structures, formed to solve a problem and dissolved afterwards, like cross-department teams.

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Adhocracy&id=148414521.

100 words about Activity-Based Costing

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is a methodology developed by Robert Kaplan and others (in the 1980s) for allocating costs to a product, service, customer, etc. Activities cause an organization to incur costs. Once the cost of the activities has been identified and each activity's cost has been determined, the cost of the activities is then allocated to the product, service, customer, etc. that required it. This methodology is more logical for allocating overhead than simply allocating costs based on machine hours or direct labor hours. Using ABC generated information to plan and control activities and processes drives organizations towards Activity-Based Management.

Adapted from: http://www.accountingcoach.com/accounting-terms/accounting-dictionary/index.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Activity-based_costing&id=145547335.

Cool Online Project Management Webapps VII

I have writeen some (positive) lines about Basecamp. However I found this website http://www.whybasecampsux.org/ and I think it's fare to share it with you. If you are considering Basecamp as an online project management solution for you or your company perhaps you should visit it because as any other webapp Basecamp has its own issues. You can find there a big list of alternatives to Basecamp. You can also read my posts about some of them.

Cool e-Book Reader

Kindle is Amazon's new wireless reading device. I watched the following video about it and I was impressed about its ease of use. As it works over GSM just like a common mobile phone it can be used almost everywhere! But you will only pay for the content you subscribe, not for the communications! The display also looks sharp and Amazon states that Kindle's battery will last for days which is also good! Kindle is sold out but there will be more available before Christmas! The current selling price is $399 and it is only available at the US. Boring! Sometimes globalization seems to be a slow process when it comes to new product availability... I will not discuss why because this is due to a big list of reasons like carriers, local authorities...

Cool email management app

Xobni - it's inbox backwards - markets itself as "A new look at your email - Effortlessly organize, search, and navigate your Outlook inbox". So Xobni is a downloadable app that integrates with Outlook and has the following list of features/advantages: "Lightning fast email search.", "Email analytics." (interesting!), "Navigate your inbox by people.", "Your personal assistant.", "Phone numbers extracted from emails.", "Quick attachment discovery.", "Hello, threaded conversations."

Xobni is still in beta stage but if you are an Outlook fan you should take a look at it right now. I found Xobni after reading this excellent post about Google, Yahoo and e-mail as THE social environment. Why should I need to send an invitation to connect to someone I regularly send e-mails to? The answers (or connections) are already at my inbox, just waiting for a better use!

Cool Online Storage

I recently subscribed to JungleDisk, a "reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3". I chose Jungledisk among other online storage providers because "Unlike other services, with Amazon S3 ™ there is no mimimum and no maximum amount of data you can store. You pay only for the actual amount of storage you are using.". I found JungleDisk's value proposition more interesting than competitors like Box.net or BingoDisk. I'm waiting for gDrive (not confirmed as we speak) and Microsoft's Live Drive or Skydrive to become public (still in beta).

"Jungle Disk makes it easy to store any data securely online, and access it from any computer just like a local disk drive. ". They really mean that because they developed client applications for Windows, Max OS X, Linux and USB (works with all from an USB pen). I use it like a regular drive on my home and office computers and I feel safe about my data because "When you copy a file to your Jungle Disk it is encrypted and uploaded in the background to Amazon.com's servers. ". If you want to know more about how it works just check it out here.

Cool Maps and Driving Directions

I often use Mappy whenever I need to go somewhere and I don't have my GPS with me. Mappy is a french alternative to Google Maps or Via Michelin. It has some nice features like expenses calculation and a clean interface and I guess that's why I usually go there first when I need a driving direction.

Coolest Touch Screen Ever Seen II

If you are not as fascinated about Microsoft Surface as I am perhaps you will find this video amusing!

Cool Online DB & Reporting

Zoho has surprised once again as they launched a new webapp called Zoho DB & Reporting. This webapp "Provides database and reporting functionalities coupled with web based features like sharing, tagging, publishing and more..." as you can read at Zoho's website. To understand what you can do with it I recommend you to watch the demo video here. I found the SQL support particularly interesting.

Coolest Touch Screen Ever Seen

I read a couple of months ago about Microsoft Surface and I realized it could change the way we interact with computers. For me it's some kind of interface 10.0 (forget 2.0, 3.0 and so on). I think that from time to time we see technology that can really change things and this Microsoft Surface could be one of those. It is an amazing piece of technology that fascinaste me!

Microsoft Surface isn't Minority Report's touch screens or a bigger touch screen iPod! It is much more than that! By the way this kind of techonology is called multi-input touch screen.

Surface's product overview and description taken from Microsoft's website are the following:

"Surface is the first commercially available surface computing platform from Microsoft Corporation. It turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live."

"Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. Surface can simultaneously recognize dozens and dozens of movements such as touch, gestures and will be able to recognize actual unique objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes.
Surface will ship to partners with a portfolio of basic applications, including photos, music, virtual concierge and games, which can be customized to provide their customers with unique experiences.".

The best way to understand what it is and how it can be used is to watch the videos that I found at Youtube.

Cool free video calling from any website

While I was taking a look at GigaOM I found this post about Tokbox.

You can read at Tokbox's website that "Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. Here's how it works: you sign up and we give you a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link - they click and you chat. We make it easy for you to put your TokBox on your social network profile, blog, or personal webpage. Anyone can come to your page and see a "Push to Talk" button. The click it and connect to you in real time using live video and audio.".

Sounds great doesn't it? I haven't tested it yet but I will try it for sure one of these days. Meantime I found this video at Youtube where you can watch it working.

Cool Green and Cheap Power

It's called Windbelt and it aims to be a green and cheap generator alternative set to power third world. This is the way to go towards a better future for all mankind: green and cheap power!

Check out more details here or check out the video:Third-World Wind Power: First Look.

This post is my contribution for the blog action day: "On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.".

Cool Contact Manager Webapp

I found this post at Wired's Compiler blog about the new Plaxo: "Plaxo has launched a brand new version of its popular online contact manager app as well as new and improved desktop clients. Plaxo 3.0, as the company calls the updates, boasts a number of synchronization improvements and aims to be your one-stop address book and contact manager.". The post goes on and I invite you to read it if you're a fan of Plaxo or if you are curious about it.

I tried the new Plaxo and I found it more interesting and specially useful than the older one because for instance it enables you to sync with your personal Google Calendar and your professional Outlook calendar between others. Plaxo also came up with Pulse some kind of data feeder that enables you to see and share feeds with your contacts. If you add your blog feed to your own profile Pulse notifies your contacts when you make a new post! This service is quite similar to what you see in Facebook when a friend of yours updates it's info.

I probably will use more the new Plaxo than the older one because the new sync features are great! I was expecting these kind of features from Google but Plaxo was faster! By the way Plaxo supports OpenID! Great!

Check out this video demo regarding the new Plaxo.

Cool Online Project Management Webapps VI

TaskBin is a simple yet powerful task management webapp that can be useful for teams that rely on to do lists to get things done. I got this e-mail from Preetu Gupta from Mangospring.com about TaskBin.com:

"Hi Sergio ,I just wanted to drive your kind attention to TaskBin.com a Group Tasks Management Tool for managing team and group To Do List.Being a startup venture we are typically small teams( at times spread across locations). We work closely and have numerous tasks going back and forth often over IM or email. Complex project management tools are fine but often do not help maintain a light weight queue of day to day tasks. We came up with TaskBin trying to address some of these pain areas. We make tall claims of being different and one of our kind, allowing users to work in a group setting. In TaskBin, all your tasks are visible to others and can be shared. Other members can add new tasks or edit tasks already there. It, avoids the hassle of dates and has simple priorities like Now, Today, Tomorrow, Sometime This Week, and Sometime Soon. ".

I gave TaskBin.com a try and I found it surprisingly simple and useful. It needs some work though and I would perhaps integrate it with OpenID if I was developing it. After all one standalone app can benefit from OpenID because, as I've said before, entry costs for new users are smaller (don't need to create a new username and password for every site). I invite you to give it a try!

If you want read more about Online Project Management Webapps check out my previous posts about it.

Cool Online Project Management Webapps V

Lighthouse from Artifact Software is not just another online project management webapp. Actually Ligthhouse is a specific breed of online project management tools called Software Development Management (SDM) tools. They claim to be the first of that breed!

One can read the at Artifact Software's website that "Lighthouse is the industry's first Software Development Management (SDM) system, fusing together all of the tools used in software development projects. Lighthouse includes everything needed to manage, monitor and measure requirements, tasks, defects, costs, schedules, change requests, documents, notifications, and much more.".

Lighthouse has a big list of features such as: Notifications, Bug Tracking, Change Requests Dashboards, Document Management, IDE Integration*, Issue Tracking, Requirements Resource Management, Task Management, Test Management, Timesheets, User Roles & Security, Custom APIs*, Custom Branding, Custom Dashboards*, Custom Fields*, Custom Labels*, Custom Methodology (including Agile & RUP), Custom Reports, Integrated Project Management*. The asterisk "*" means coming soon!

Going a little deeper about the Integrated Project Management (IPM) feature I read that it will let you create project plans using either Lighthouse (Premimum) or Microsoft Project. This sounds interesting because there are a lot of Microsoft Project users out there. This IPM feature will also allow you to "Easily create tasks, dependencies, and schedules. Monitor with GANTT charts or advanced reporting, and quickly identify schedule and cost variances.". Sounds great doesn't it? I'll be waiting for all these coming features!

I found Lighthouse from Artifact Software when I was looking for more info about Lighthouse from Active Reload. These two webapps have the same name and play in the same field and I think that's a little bit odd... Don't you think? I don't know who came up with the name first but one of them or both should change! My next post will be about Ligthhouse from Active Reload!

Cool Open Identity Protocol II

It seems that there is a great debate surrounding OpenID usefulness. I wrote a small post about OpenID recently and since then I became more interested about it. As I mentioned it seems that OpenID usefulness is beig debated and of course that as any technology it has pros and cons. If you want to check out what is being said take a look at JanRain's blog or NY Times Freaknomics blog.

No matter what is being said I think that OpenID is usefull and I will use it whenever I can and I encourage all webapp developers to support it! Why? Simple! If you are developing a new webapp and you support OpenID you lower the entry barriers for your users! If a prospective user wants to try your app he will only need to make login using his OpenID and he's ready to go! As a user if my registration process is simplified I will give any webapp a try! OpenID is usefull for webapps users and developers and I hope it succeeds in the competitive technology market.

Cool Online Project Management Webapps IV

I would like to talk about another online project management webapp: wrike! This one was suggested by a reader of this blog after my first post about this topic. After that I made two more posts. You can read them here: second post and third post or you can just check the content under the label project_management.

So what do I have to say about Wrike? It offers really nice features such as creating tasks through e-mail, useful gantt charts and reporting (mainly task related reports/lists)! For me it lacks a basic feature such as time tracking between others. They don't support OpenID. To wrap up I think Wrike is interesting if you want to manage tasks by e-mail (send an e-mail that creates a task) and so far as I know they are the only ones offering that feature. It's not enough to make me switch from Basecamp.

Cool Mobile Speech to Text and More II

I forgot to mention email2phone when I published my last post.

"email2phone is a service that converts ordinary text email into phone voice messages. Like ordinary email, the eMail2Phone.net phone voice messages are highly interactive and you can hear, reply-to, save, delete, skip, and send these messages. eMail2Phone.net manages these email-to-phone voice messages in two ways:
Outbound – Email messages that are sent to your phone as high-quality, phone voice messages. Inbound – Email messages that are retrieved as phone voice messages when you dial into the eMail2Phone.net system." as you can read at their website.

email2phone is available in the US, UK and Canada which makes me believe that supports only english speaking voice messages.

Cool Mobile Speech To Text and More

Stuck in traffic? Get things done anyway! How? Try Jott! As I didn't find one sentence that explains what Jott is/does I'll quote this Wikipedia article: "Jott is a voicemail service which allows its users to call a toll-free telephone number and say a small phrase, which is then transcribed to text and sent to themselves or other people through email or SMS.". At their website you can learn what else you can do with Jott: reminders, to do lists and so on! Mobile phone carriers should offer this kind of services to their customers!

Non-Us resident? Perhaps you should ask your carrier for Spinvox apps. They offer speech to text and text to speech apps such as:

• "SpinvoxmyVmail: Get voicemails as text or email: Never miss a message again;
• "SpinmyBlog - Blog from anywhere: When it suits you.";
• "SpinmyMemo: Speak reminders, memos and notes: Straight to your inbox.";
• "SpinmyBroadCast: Send text messages to groups: Simply by speaking.".

Cool Money Management Online Webapps

Need help managing your money? Get a webapp and... much more at Wesabe: "Wesabe is a community site that makes managing your money easy. Enjoy secure access to all your accounts, painless tools for taking control of your money and reaching your goals, and members’ tips and discussions to help you find the best values.".

Wesabe doesn't support your bank or you just want to easily track your expenses? Don't worry, try Gastus: "Every month you spend lots of money ... with Gastus you can keep track of your daily expenses.Gastus offers an incredibly easy way to know exactly how much you've paid every month.You can categorize expenses by types and concepts, and make nice pie charts and graphs to analyze your data. ". I am currently using Gastus because my bank isn't supported by Wesabe. Gastus is really simple and it works with OpenID! That's a best practice!

Gastus is too simple and you need something more powerful and refreshing? Try Mint because they are "refreshing money management". I can't decide between Mint and Wesabe so I recommend you Howard Lindzon's post "Mint.com vs. Wesabe.com…Cage/Cat Fight".

Cool Cornering II

If you found Carver One interesting but expensive perhaps Piaggio MP3 will suit your cool cornering needs!

I couldn't agree more with Piaggio's website: "Piaggio has come up with another revolutionary product: the Piaggio MP3, a totally innovative three-wheeler with two front wheels.".

Cool Cornering

Tired of regular cornering? Check out Carver's website. There you can read all about the Carver one: "Here is something that will make you go out of your way to find curvy roads: the Carver One! You steer it like a car, but when cornering it banks like a motorcycle while you feel like you are flying a jetfighter. The thrill of this tilting capability combined with the handling of a sports car makes for an exhilarating driving experience unlike any other!"

Cool Online Project Management Webapps III

I finally made up my mind about the online project management webapp I should use to support some of my projects. The decision wasn't easy but at the end it was not so hard at all. One of my prerequisites was the time tracking feature: GoPlan doesn't have it yet, Zoho Projects has it, online Collab doesn't have it yet (offline version has) and Basecamp is the best at it. Although Basecamp is more expensive than Zoho Projects after trying both I chose Basecamp because I'm almost sure my users will prefer the look and feel of Basecamp. If you're looking for something really cheap then you should go for Zoho Projects or Collab.

Cool Open Identity Protocol

At JanRain one can read that: "OpenID is a new way to identify yourself all over the web. With your own personal OpenID you can login to any OpenID-enabled site (there are over 1,000 of them and that number is growing everyday) and identify yourself as you.
It’s one username and one password for all of the sites that you go to. It means no more registration screens on the sites you go to. Most importantly, OpenID is open; its a protocol that has been developed by a diverse community interested in solving the identity problem once-and-for-all. You can use it at any website that is OpenID enabled as if I already had an account. It blurs the lines of where you you have an account, and the question you ask changes from “Do I have an account?” to “Is the site OpenID enabled?”".

I already created my OpenID account at myopenid.com and I am using it with two webapps that support it right now: Basecamp and Gastus. I really hope that this OpenID gets to be popular so we can drop the old password manager apps. One ID to rule them all! :)

Cool Online Project Management Webapps II

Found another interesting Project Management Webapp. It's called Collab and it's the hosted version of the open source collaboration tool Active Collab. This webapp looks great, it's very simple to use and it's really really cheap ($10/month for the richest plan)! It would suit my basic needs if it had a time tracking feature. I sent them an e-mail asking if they are considering it.

They state at their website they are the cost-effective alternative do GoPlan or Basecamp:
"Collab provides a hosted version of the popular activeCollab open source collaboration tool. All you pay is a small monthly fee for hosting and we set up a fresh install of activeCollab complete with plenty of storage space, FTP access, and a customizable URL. If you've looked at other services such as GoPlan and Basecamp, Collab is a cost-effective alternative.".


Meanwhile I found this interesting post: Basecamp, activeCollab, and Goplan compared. This comparison isn't up to date because activeCollab is now also available as a hosted webapp as I mentioned above.

Cool Online Project Management Webapps

I found these cool project management webapps: Basecamp, Goplan and Zoho Projects. They aren't Microsoft Project but I think they are ok for someone doing basic project management.

Basecamp is the most popular of the three and it's probably the best choice, although not the cheapest. Goplan is a Basecamp clone and I say it because it also lookd great and I guess the features are very similar but I'm guessing because their website isn't very clear about features. Zoho projects is perhaps the most basic project management tool one can use but it's cheap and integrates with Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show.

I haven't decided which one I will use for managing my personal projects but it will be a tough call.

Cool Online ERP

If you think your company is ready to embrace something more than an online CRM then perhaps you should check out Netsuite and Workday.

According to Netsuite's website, Netsuite is a "Comprehensive Web-based solution for midsize businesses that integrates Accounting/ERP, CRM, Ecommerce and partner collaboration capabilities.".

"Workday is delivering the first on-demand alternative to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP); a new generation of solutions designed for today's dynamic, global businesses. " as one can read at Workday's website.

Cool Lunar Challenge

X Prize Foundation and Google are sponsoring a private race to the Moon. According to their website:

"The Google Lunar X PRIZE seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change."

This is a quite interesting challenge. NASA, ESA and all the others space agencies prepare yourselves for private competitors!

Cool People Search Engine II

After making my first post about a cool people search engine called Spock someone told me about Pipl. At their website they explain why their search engine is better than regular search engines if you are searching people:

"How come the best search engines fail so miserably when it comes to people search? The answer lies in a little known but very important part of the web called "the deep web".

Also known as "invisible web", the term "deep web" refers to a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach. The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines.
Since most personal profiles, public records and other people-related documents are stored in databases and not on static web pages, most of the higher-quality information about people is simply "invisible" to a regular search engine.".

Thank you for the enlightment! It worths a try and I managed to find my Facebook profile or myLinkedin profile among others using Pipl.com.

Cool Family Tree Builder Webapp

A couple of months ago I found Geni and I created an account. I think Geni is a very cool family tree builder and it is also very simple to use. And it's free! I don't know why more common social or even professional networking tools don't offer this family tree feature.

More about Geni from their website:

"Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives' email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives.

Each family member has a profile which can be viewed by clicking their name in the tree. This helps family members learn more about each other and stay in touch. Family members can also share photos and work together to build profiles for common ancestors.".

Although it's very cool and everything I didn't found it very useful once I built my family tree. Well, I got birthday reminders... Great!

Check out Geni's video demo.

Cool People Search Engine

I found this cool personal search engine. While you can use Google to search for anything Spock was built to find people. I found it very interesting.

"Spock is the online leader in personal search, helping users find and discover people. With over one hundred million people already indexed and millions added every day, Spock is building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine." as they claim at their website.

Cool Idea Application Webapp by Salesforce.com

Yesterday Salesforce.com introduced its Salesforce Ideas.

"Salesforce Ideas is the world's first on-demand application that enables the wisdom of crowds to drive business innovation. Based on the idea popularized by the consumer Web on the power of the collective ideas of a group, salesforce.com launched its own live community called IdeaExchange a year ago, sparking a new era of transparent community collaboration. Salesforce.com's IdeaExchange has changed the face of product development by empowering the salesforce.com customer and partner community to shape future product releases through an ongoing, live public debate. To date, more than 5,000 ideas have been posted, with 92,000 promotions, and numerous ideas have been incorporated into salesforce.com and partner applications."

Now they have made it available to their customers.

"Now salesforce.com is bringing this same power of community-based innovation to its customers with Salesforce Ideas, enabling them to build their own on-demand communities with their employees, customers, partners or prospects. Every company has internal and external communities that know the business, generate ideas, and can serve as a company's innovation engine. Salesforce Ideas allows companies to unleash the power of these communities to improve their business and to deepen valued relationships. For the first time, companies can tap into customers, employees and partners across divisions, organizations, and boundaries to drive the best ideas and innovations for their business."

I am a big fan of the wisdom of crowds as an innovation process input among others.

You can read the CNN Money article here.

Cool Business Plan Webapp

Although I didn't test it properly I thought I should share another cool webapp such as PlanHQ. In a nutshell and quoting their website PlanHQ helps you: " Bring your Business Plan to life - Make a plan, make it happen and track your progress". It looks cool and useful (for US purposes). I will test it when I have the chance to do it.

Cool Online CRM Webapps

Being a CRM enthusiast I am curious about everything that is CRM related. Nowadays every piece of software is going towards the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach. So it was no surprise for me when Microsoft announced they will directly offer their Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a service (SaaS). As far as I know Salesforce works just like that and now it will be followed by Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I don't know if Siebel is going this way or not. They play in a different league, at least for now.

But what has surprised me the most was these three cool CRM webapps that I have found: Zoho CRM, Highrise and Etelos CRM. From the three I have to say that for me the only one that can be called a true CRM is Zoho CRM because it has a lot of features that one expects to found in a CRM application (Sales & Marketing, Inventory Management, Customer Support & Service, Reports & Dashboards, Outlook Plugin). And guess what? The first three users are free and you only have to pay from the 4th user and up. I think this is a great marketing move from Zoho.

Highrise tracks contacts, communications, tasks and calendar and its design is really very stylish and user friendly (as I see it).

I have to be honest, I didn't explore Etelos CRM but I took a pick at their website and I found the most interesting feature about this wannabe CRM: iGoogle integration. They also integrate it with Windows Live. This is a very cool feature because I'm still expecting for Google to come up with a real contact management tool (perhaps when it integrates Gmail with orkut). Unfortunetly Google hasn't decided to come up with a CRM tool from their own. It would fit the Google Apps portfolio for sure!

Cool Google Earth Easter Egg: Flight Simulator

Yes, it's true that Google introduced a simple flight simulator with Google Earth 4.2 release. You can read about here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-earth-easter-egg-flight.html. Have fun and be careful or you'll crash the plane!

Cool Google Docs & Spreadsheets Alternatives

I have been using Google Docs & Spreadsheets for a while but I think it lacks a lot of features and it's quite slow. I recognize though that it's great for real-time online collaboration. There is still a lot of work to be done so I can forget MS Office or OpenOffice office suites.

One of these days I decided to try Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet and I was very impressed about it. It offers more features than Google Docs & Spreadsheets and it has a MS Office like environment with which I felt very familiarized. Now check this out: they have this Zoho plugin for MSOffice that lets you open your Zoho-online-stored documents inside MSOffice Word and Excel! And the changes you make while using MSOffice are reflected to your Zoho-online-stored documents. That is great and it actually worked because I have tried it!

When I thought I had seen them all I found ThinkFree. Their slogan or perhaps their vision goes like this: "the best online office on earth". It sounded promising and I signed up to try it. I chose to create a new word document and when I realized I thought I was inside MSOffice Word because the webapp interface was just like it! Remarkable stuff! However while using Thinkfree dashboard (folders and files management) I found some glitches which help me remind they are still offering their online office suite under beta stage.