Online collaboration: fresh additions netspeak
Google introduces an experimental search command
Zoho lets you share your desktop
with multiple people with ease.
In the past, NetSpeak featured several online collaborative tools (such as
Vyew, Google Documents and the like.
http://www.hindu.com/biz/
2006/02/20/stories/200602 2000621600.htm).
Apart from the ones discussed earlier, several new ones have emerged recently.
This week's column profiles a few of them.
Zoho meeting
Zoho meeting, an online service meant for sharing your desktop/conducting
meetings online, is the latest collaboration tool tested by this author. After
initiating an on-line conference via Zoho from your browser, you can invite
others to join.
Now, your desktop will be available to each of the participants. Whatever you
do with the shared desktop will automatically be viewable by other participants
as well. And, if you allow, a participant can fire the programs loaded on your
machine or edit documents loaded on to it.
To initiate a Zoho meeting, access the service (http://meeting.zoho.com) and
log in to your account. Now, click on the 'Create meeting,' fill up the fields
with the required info and invite potential participants. Once t he set up is
ready, begin the meeting by clicking on 'Start' button. At this point you
will be prompted to download a client program or the Zoho Firefox extension.
Once the Zoho meeting agent is installed on your browser, you will get the
message 'Meeting started successfully', along with an icon on the system tray
(for managing the meeting).
Once a meeting is initiated on your machine, the invitees can join it by
clicking on the link provided on the invitation email. The meeting can be viewed
by selecting any one of the three viewers (Activex/JavaViewer/Flash) provided
by the service. Once the viewer is loaded on to the attendee's machine, she
will find the remote desktop shared by you, along with a menu on the top.
Unlike the existing desktop sharing programs, Zoho lets you share your desktop
with multiple people with ease. One can find multiple uses of this innovative
product. For instance, the service can be used to co-edit a document with
colleagues from different locations. This product could also be used for product
demonstration, customer support and the like.
Another notable feature of this service is the facility to embed a 'meeting' on
your Blog for helping the visitors directly access it (of course, if it
is live). A teacher could find several uses of this facility.
Coventi Pages
Another collaboration tool encountered by this author is the free online
document reviewing service, Coventi Pages (coventi.co m/).
The advantage of this service is its comment feature, where the comment on a
text snippet moves to the right margin, with direct linkage to the text. This
makes navigating the comments and the text tied to it rather easy. Your invited
reviewers can comment on any part of the text.
To comment, the invitee has to just highlight the text, select the 'Create'
option and start typing down her comment. The typed comment will automatically
appear on the right margin. For those of you who wish to review documents with
multiple reviewers, this service could come handy. The document to be reviewed
can either be created with Coventi itself or you can upload the document stored
on your desktop (in Word or Open Office format).
Safari on Windows
Safari, the popular browser from Apple, is now available on Windows too (
http://www.apple.com/safari/
). The excitement shared by a friend of NetSpeak prompted this author to test
it.
Though Safari loads faster, unlike other popular browsers, its interface is
hardly intuitive.
Firefox, with its plethora of extensions (
http://www.hindu.com/biz/2007/02/12/stories/2007021200541700
. htm), continues to be this author's favourite.
Latest from Google
Google always provides you something new to refine the search results. Recently
Google has introduced an experimental search command for invoking a timeline
search. If you wish to get the historical details of a person or subject or
event, Google's timeline search modifier is a valued addition in this regard.
For instance, the search string 'Gandhiji view:timeline' will fetch you search
results arranged in chronological fashion. This feature is available only
if you search via Google's experimental search (
http://www.google.com/experimental/
).
Yet another feature being experimented by Google is the keyboard shortcuts for
navigating the search results page. If we minimise the mouse use, we can
keep our hand healthy!
It seems Google has recognised this requirement. Google, in its experimental
search page, has introduced several keyboard short cuts for accessing the search
results (like use 'J' for the next result, 'O' for opening the current link
etc).
http://www.thehindu.com/2007/07/02/stories/2007070255331600.htm
Vikas Kapoor,
MSN+Yahoo+Skype ID: dl_vikas,
Mobile: (+91) 9891098137.
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