Will Kelly

WWD Post: Acrobat.com Revamped--Better Interface, New Features

Over the weekend, Adobe launched a revamped version of Acrobat.com, its web office and collaboration suite. This is the first major upgrade to the service since it left beta last summer (as covered by Thursday) and provides some much-needed productivity enhancements to this service.

via webworkerdaily.com

WWD Post: Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps Beta Available to SharePoint Users

To coincide with the release of the desktop Office 2010 beta, Microsoft is finally embracing the web office with today’s release of Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps beta, a web version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that augments or even replaces the desktop version of Microsoft Office.

via webworkerdaily.com

WWD Post: Web Office Suites: Complementary and Coopetive Technologies

My recent post “5 Web Office Considerations: Beyond the Buzz” garnered some thought-provoking comments, which got me pondering on the proper place for the web office suite (whether it is ThinkFree, Zoho or Google Apps) in today’s world.

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WWD Post: 5 Web Office Considerations: Beyond the Buzz

Recently, we covered the release of the Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps Technical Preview. While it was great to get a first look at this release, it was even more interesting to pull back and read the flurry of blog postings, pundit pontifications, tweets and articles that were all over the web, ranging from those stating that this was the end of Microsoft Office, to those saying that Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps is going to wipe Google Apps and Zoho off the map.

via webworkerdaily.com

I am a regular user of Google Docs (in fact I wrote this WWD post in Google Docs) and have experience supporting the roll out of Microsoft Office in a major government agency. Additionally, throughout my career, I've had to resolve a number of document publishing issues rooted in Microsoft Word and templates.

Web Office suites do have their place and are examples of innovation in my opinion. However, organizations have a lot of things to consider before implementing a Web Office solution that is beyond the current buzz surrounding these services.

WWD Post: Corporate Telecommuting: The H1N1 Virus Edition

News of a possible H1N1 virus, or “Swine Flu,” pandemic is causing many commercial firms and government agencies to examine their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans so business can soldier on during the crisis. The threat of an H1N1 outbreak is even prompting the United States Centers for Disease Control to recommend that small businesses have telework and business continuity plans in place.

via webworkerdaily.com

My latest post to WebWorkerDaily was inspired by one too many discussions about how an organization can extend their infrastructure in short order to maintain a continuity of operations in the advent of an H1N1 virus outbreak.

The Intersection of Social Media, the Web Office & Technical Writing

I've been spending some of my downtime contemplating the intersection of Social Media, Web Offices, and technical writing. These technological and platform changes are going to overwhelm the technical writers who have been doing their job the same day from when they fired up their first employer's PC on day 1 of their first job out of college.

Checking Out SlideRocket

The good folks at SlideRocket hit me up on Twitter a few weeks back after reading a blog post I wrote about Acrobat.com Presentations offering me a look at their product.

PowerPoint presentations are just asking to be put online via a service like SlideRocket and Acrobat.com Presentations so I was more than happy to check out their product.

Zoho Office for SharePoint Launches

Zoho recently made a very strategic move by launching Zoho Office for SharePoint because of SharePoint's growing dominance in the enterprise. It seems everybody I am speaking to about potential projects these days is using Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 for secure document collaboration inside their firewall.

Box.net on LinkedIn

I've written before on this blog about the convergence of social networking, online collaboration tools, and the Web Office.

LinkedIn, a business-focused social networking site is jumping into that fray by offering up integration to a free Box.net account. This is a great vehicle for posting writing samples (that are in the public domain) and even Word or PDF versions of resumes to make them accessible on LinkedIn.

Google Apps Sync Disables Outlook Desktop Search

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook disables Microsoft Desktop Search according to recent news reports. While early reports on the tool touted it as a simple way to migrate from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps the fact that the application breaks Microsoft Desktop Search is a major blow to this application in my opinion.

Google Tasks and Google Calendar Integration

Google Calendar  is my calendar of choice for tracking my personal and professional lives because I switch back and forth between multiple Windows and Macintosh PCs during the course of my work day. This means that Google Calendar is always open in one or another of my browser tabs during most hours of my online/work time.

One of the many bright spots to come out of Google Labs is Google Tasks. While its initial integration with Gmail was uninspiring but Google made the right move and took the next and proper step to integrate Google Tasks with Google Calendar.

Life After MobileMe

Considering my initial experience with MobileMe, I couldn't justify renewing my account for another year. Apple really let me down with the launch of MobileMe but I plan to follow MobileMe developments and I am optimistic given time that Apple will get MobileMe back on track to reach its full potential.

As a customer, I can say Apple made the right moves with me. They gave me a great deal when the service was called .Mac and offered me free months of extra service after the botched launch and rebranding of the service. However, during this time it seemed that Apple paid zero attention to making MobileMe (a fee based service) competitive with what was going on in the Web Office, online collaboration, and

Zoho Writer 2.0 Review

I've spent the better part of my professional career with Microsoft Word open on the desktop of one computer or another. I know Microsoft Word for its strengths and been stung and even burned by its weaknesses especially at deadline time.

 While writing for Processor Magazine, I opened up my mind to  the concept of Web Office productivity applications like those from Zoho, ThinkFree, and Google. This chain of events has made me

While Google has brand, I am the first to say that Zoho is perhaps the most innovative players in the Web Office productivity space. The recent release of Zoho Writer 2.0 builds upon their innovation and offers a Web-based word processor that rivals traditional desktop word processors in terms of usability and functionality.

Microsoft Exchange Meets Competition

As Microsoft works to prepare Microsoft Exchange 2010, the venerable Microsoft Exchange is seeing new fronts open in its competition with Google.

Many skeptics see Google's entry into Office productivity and the enterprise in general as a feint towards Microsoft to keep them distracted away from the lucrative online search and advertising markets.  This skepticism crossed my mind more than once over the past few months. However, recent Google Apps service announcements show a Google Apps product road map that is maturing the service. Google Wave is another development that also has Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft's Unified Communications Services directly in its cross hairs.

My Online Presentation Service Wish List

It's no secret I am a geek about online collaboration tools and I've been spending some of my downtime thinking and writing about online collaboration tools. Web Office suites, and online presentation services.

In my ideal world, online presentation services are a direct extension of their old school desktop counterparts. For example, that means a PowerPoint presentation created in either PowerPoint 2003 or PowerPoint 2007 is fully compatible with a presentation that is online at Acrobat.com Presentations, Google Presentations, Zoho Show, or some other competing service.

My Impressions about Acrobat.com Presentations

Access to Acrobat.com Presentations is now available through Adobe Labs, a beta site future Adobe Web services offerings including Acrobat.com. You must have an Acrobat.com account in order to access Acrobat.com Presentations.

My Google Docs Wish list

More and more I use Google Docs quite frequently to captures ideas for article pitches and blog posts. It may never replace Microsoft Office for me but Google Docs is playing a growing part in my composing process.

It's no secret that I am big follower of Web Office suite developments and as such I have a wish list for Google Docs.

Huddle Workspaces on LinkedIn

I am a firm believer that the convergence of social networking and the Web Office is going to happen. There just needs to be a business-centric platform to enable this move and LinkedIn is my top candidate to enable this move.

LinkedIn does a great job of introducing new Web services and applications into their platform and I was happy to see collaborative tools enter the mix.

The True Implications of Google Wave

While I might be a bit late in writing about Google Wave, I've been a long time follower of Web Office productivity suites and Web mail and have been following the news about this upcoming Google service with great interest.

Today's workforce is at the intersection of email, instant messaging, social networking, and online collaboration. Unfortunately, to date nobody has brought forth a business-class communications solution that brings together these mediums into a complete solution.

My Acrobat.com Wishlist: Buzzword, Create PDF and MyFiles Edition

I've been getting some use out of my Acrobat.com account as of late and regularly use Buzzword and MyFiles and had a minor let down with Acrobat.com's Create PDF features. Acrobat.com is a maturing service and I have some wishes for what I want to see in future iterations of Acrobat.com.