Web Office Suite: best of breed products
Written by Richard MacManus / February 21, 2006 1:59 AM
/ 8 Comments
On my ZDNet blog, I've reviewed the best Web Office products currently on the market. I believe some of these may be acquisition targets for Microsoft, Google or even Yahoo - as the big companies roll out the inevitable Web Office Suite.
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Hey Richard, great roundup, but I think Goowy should have gotten a mention as a mini-suite. Their caledar is in beta but has a lot of functionality and when you combine it with their e-mail and contacts its not a bad replacement for Outlook.
Posted by: Ryan Stewart | February 21, 2006 11:37 AM
Thanks Ryan, good point and I've added Groowy now.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | February 21, 2006 11:54 AM
Richard,
among the potential PowerPoint usurpers you should include Slidy. It's a nice project by Dave Raggett at W3C (http://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy/).
See also my review of Powerpoint replacements on Clipperz blog (http://www.clipperz.net/).
Posted by: Marco Barulli | February 21, 2006 3:07 PM
Hi,
I've been building a slideshow app at http://www.thumbstacks.com. It's a bit early, which is (maybe) why you haven't heard about it; it's only been running since January. I'd love it if you got a chance to check it out, though.
Posted by: Duncan Werner | February 21, 2006 3:50 PM
You might check out http://numbler.com - a web based collaborative spreadsheet solution.
Posted by: Carl Shimer | February 21, 2006 4:26 PM
I saw thumbstacks at BarCamp NYC, and was quite favorably impressed.
On the subject of Basecamp, I have a funny feeling that 37signals is not going to get acquired by anyone any time soon. Doesn't seem like their style.
Posted by: Bob Aman | February 21, 2006 10:12 PM
Hey Richard,
Some good essentials for running your business on the web there, always seems to be a gap around simple accounting at the moment. Online billing is getting there with billingorchard.com or Blinksale.com but past billing, web based accounting is really weak, Theres a must have for Australian's; netaccounts.com.au but it only supports aussie tax rates, sagefire.com is a very average option for the rest of the world, but definetely not served up in web 2.0 style.
Also as a starting portal for the web office I'd have to say netvibes.com is one of the best ajax based web desktops, with instant notes and todos, news reader and has integration with writely, Delicious, and others so far...
We had a go at making an integrated web office suite last year with accounting, crm, projects... evolutionone.com. We integrated opensource applications from sugarcrm.com, joomla.com and several others. While it works, its too big and complex now, we still love the concept and sunk some good cash and time into it but didn't quite get it right... this time round I think its time to focus on just simple accounting. Am I missing something or can you see the same opportunity?
Tim.
Posted by: Tim Norton | February 23, 2006 6:50 PM
These apps are great but what I'd love to see is a Prototype AJAX page that lets me put each app in its own box. That would be truly useful.
Posted by: Brokekid | March 2, 2006 8:29 AM