New Sites That Make Old Functions Easy By Rob Pegoraro Washington Post
Sunday, June 25, 2006; F05 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062400070_pf.html If you grind away in Microsoft Office for a living, the idea of a spreadsheet, word processor, photo editor or calendar that exists only as code on a Web page might seem ridiculous. But Office jockeys aren't the market for a new sort of Web-based application offered by both Internet heavyweights like Google and obscure start-ups -- all hoping to draw an audience among people who might otherwise buy a copy of Microsoft's ubiquitous suite or another traditional program. These new sites -- can we call them programs, too? -- offer a subset of the popular functions of traditional, disk-bound packages while not requiring you to install any software beyond a modern Web browser, or fuss with any funky browser plug-ins. Most don't even cost anything to use. For all the high-end features they leave out, these sites can work quite well -- even implausibly so. These Web-based programs' biggest disadvantage may be that aspect alone -- the "too good to be true" reaction caused by seeing a Web page turn into a live spreadsheet. It doesn't help that the entire concept of Web software has been discredited so many times by earlier attempts that relied on extra, often glitch-prone software running inside our browsers. What's happening now has little to do with what flopped before. Instead of asking you to wait for an ActiveX, Java or Flash component to fire up in your browser (or just crash it), this crop of Web applications -- for example, Google's Calendar and Spreadsheet, as well as Tabblo's self-titled photo-album site and Ajax13's AjaxWrite -- runs on standard Web code and scripting languages. Because of that, all you need are a copy of Mozilla Firefox (Internet Explorer for Windows is accepted at almost all of these sites; Apple's Safari is welcome at some, too) and an Internet connection, preferably broadband. You can run Windows, you can use a Mac, you can run Linux; all will do fine. These sites load only a little slower than regular Web pages but present interfaces like those of traditional software: toolbars, menus, drag-and-drop editing, keyboard-shortcut commands and so on. Clicking on any of these elements doesn't require waiting for the page to reload; things happen in real time, just as if you were using code confined to your hard drive. Google Calendar ( http://calendar.google.com ) is the best-known example in this bunch. It looks much like the calendar module in Outlook or any other personal info manager but functions with far greater simplicity. To add an event, click on the desired time on the right day; to reschedule one, drag it to a new date and time. Like Apple's iCal, Google Calendar can subscribe to published calendars online; a built-in search function simplifies finding them. You can also share your own calendar with other Web users (or save it as a desktop file), then choose whether they can view events on it or edit them, too. It has its limits -- for instance, you can't set an event to repeat every two weeks -- but in general it succeeds. If only it were usable on mobile phones' Web browsers; instead, you're limited to having Google send text messages to your phone about upcoming events. Google Spreadsheet ( http://spreadsheet.google.com ) approximates the looks of Microsoft Excel and other commercial spreadsheet applications and can even open and save Excel files. It ably handles most basic spreadsheet chores; Google Spreadsheet seems particularly appropriate for the way home users employ spreadsheets as glorified list managers. It's less adept at involved number crunching, mainly because its help pages don't explain what its inscrutable formula codes mean. (What calculation will "DB" perform, versus "DBB"?) Printing is a step too complicated as well; you have to select "Get HTML" from the File menu, then use your browser's "Print" command. Google Spreadsheet's strongest attribute is the way it lets you share your work: Instead of e-mailing a file back and forth, you can invite anybody to read or edit your spreadsheet online, then exchange text messages with them as you work together on it. Using either Google Calendar or Spreadsheet requires getting a Google account; presumably, once you do so, you'll spend that much more time on Google's sites, therefore seeing more of Google's ads. The desktop application that most closely resembles Tabblo would be Apple's iPhoto, or at least the photo-management half of it. The site ( http://www.tabblo.com ) lets you construct interactive galleries (that is, tableaux -- get it?), including captions. You can drag pictures from one spot to another, then apply a few special effects, such as sepia tones or a nifty "oil paint" look, with clicks of a mouse. These creations can be shared online or ordered in printed form (how the site aims to make its money). AjaxWrite ( http://www.ajaxwrite.com ) attempts to bring word processing to the Web and does a decent job of it. It can read Microsoft Word and other major file formats, but not without missing some formatting details. It's also lacking some common tools, such as a word count and a spell check. AjaxWrite doesn't store your work online to share with others; you must download it to your hard drive. That makes this site less versatile than the others. (Google recently bought another word-processing site, Writely, and plans to integrate that into the Google fold alongside the likes of Spreadsheet and Calendar.) These sites have the same advantage of older, simpler Web-based applications like Web-mail services: There's nothing to install, and updates arrive automatically when the Web site revises its own code. And your work is saved automatically, though keeping a backup on your computer still makes sense. But it's even more amazing how well these sites, Google's twosome in particular, can provide the online sharing and collaboration that offices have usually provided through such expensive, high-maintenance "groupware solutions" as Lotus Notes or Microsoft's Office server software. It's too easy to focus on the missing features of these sites and discount the possibility of improvement. Betting against the future can be wise when it comes to conventional software releases that see updates only every few years, but here it doesn't seem so smart. This kind of software not only has the potential to get better fast, it probably will. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
