Broadly speaking, there were three topics that I wanted to explore today. Firstly I wanted to talk to the Zoho Writer developers to see if they really intend to implement the changes that I have suggested. I wanted to explain why I thought they were important, if I needed to; and to lobby for their inclusion. Secondly, I wanted to see what was in store for the other Zoho services that we are using, and find out if there are anymore that we should be using. Finally, I wanted to find answers to some of the questions that I have been asked in Finland about Zoho: will it last, can we trust it, why should we prefer it to Google, and so on.

I have had a Box.net account for some time now. It hasn’t been very useful really. Not that there is anything specific wrong with it. I just haven’t ever really for a purpose for it. Now, with the new OpenBox system, I think that I have…

I have spent a good deal of time in the last couple of months searching for the kind of online scheduling tools that I wanted; and I think that I have finally found them. Or, more specifically, I think that I have found a set of tools that will form the basis of what I need: AirSet.

Today Google announced Google Gears, and articles have sprung up like mushrooms explaining why this is a truly historic day. If this works as claimed then the articles may all turn out to be right.

Two themes emerged at the LoW conference last week. Neither had been planned in advance, although some people who attended suspected otherwise. The first theme was Second Life as an educational tool. The second was identity.

Yesterday, at the fourth League of Worlds conference, I made a presentation entitled Augmentation, Immersion and Identity in Rosario: the trading card game, and the slide show is available at Zoho.

In February, when I was in Chennai visiting Zoho Arvind showed me Bloglines, which I subsequently explored and wrote about. It is essentially a reworking of a traditional RSS reader as an online service. Like Remember The Milk it does one thing, and it does it very well.

News travels slow round these parts. I have only just found out that there was an Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco last year.

My decision the other day to investigate the applicability of software as a service for the memi project has had some interesting preliminary results. Zoho, Omnidrive, and Adobe Remix are just some of them…

finally begins to explore Zoho Creator
realises ust how long it is since he sat down and played with something new for two hours (Zoho Creator in this particular case!)
is getting somewhere with Zoho Creator (and liking it)
has had an exciting afternoon planning something that could be very positive indeed

remembers “that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck” (Dalai Lama, 4)
@arvindnatarajan I am amazed. I have 75% of SplashMoney functionality in Creator after four (interrupted) hours of work, and 2 forum posts!
wishes Master Camie a happy graduation
has been talking with Tanneli about the future
has done this and is now finishing doing that
wants Ms Tornqvist to have a bicycling good weekend!
says a big yes to the weekend

is waiting for further developments in Rosario (among other things)
@ralfa: have you looked at Zoho Show? The screensharing there works really well. Its at http://show.zoho.com/update.do
@BryanAlexander: how did you find Smallworlds? I was fairly underwhelmed by the experience although the documentation-as-missions was nice
wants an easier day tomorrow, with less nasty surprises
moves swiftly over to TAIK for a meeting with some new (virtual) students

just learned about the new Zoho Start from Sathish. 1st impression from an eeePC: its a BIG improvement! More about this later
has planned a roadmap for Marinetta 4.0 with Catharina that looks realistic. Now all we need to do is do it!
has got this year’s AIrset arrangement into shape for the students, and is now waiting for the new interface to appear!
bids his desk farewell for today, and heads home with some special-offer cheese (which bizarrely is rationed to 3 packets per visit)

has had his latest tests, and now has a sore arm
has updated his Zoho Show presentation for tomorrow morning’s meeting with the new students, and is now leaving the building
is online on a bus on the way home

has brought the boat back to Helsinki with a trailer and parked it in a cave for the winter
notices that Zoho have made the html options in Writer much more usable and useful. I will experiment as soon as I have a spare hour.

is back at work after a night sharing a bed with a large dog thet got more proprietorial as the night went on
is watching Scoble interviewing Raju Vegesna from Zoho here: http://bit.ly/4lA6ws
has found the joy of playing multiple games of Wordscraper at once. This is what Facebook is for!
is on the metro on the way home admiring how fast the Hellotxt page loads over a usb modem

has showered and is still the only person awake round here
thinks he has spotted a serious Chrome/Zoho conflict, and will run a test later to see if he is right

is now playing with Chrome. It is neat and fast, but I miss several Firefox plugins like RTM. If only it could use the ones I need…
@arvindnatarajan is it me, or does Chrome stop Zoho Writer working offline? I installed Chrome and mine stopped working – even in Firefox!
has written his first Second Life script in months, which provided tweny minutes of entertainment in an otherwise not so interesting day
has been for a long walk with a small girl and a big dog, and now he is waiting for a neighbour to bring a freshly caught fish.
has anyone else had problems with Zoho Writer offline after installing Chrome? My eeePC has ZW offline. My XP laptop doesn’t now even in FF!

has Chrome, Firefox, Google Gears & Zoho working together at home – so what is wrong with the work laptop then?!?
@arvindnatarajan i tested it at home and it works perfectly. i will reinstall Gears on my work laptop tomorrow and see what happens then

has finished his slide show in Open Office after he failed to find a simple way of duplicating slides in Zoho Sheet. Then re reimported it
has fnished gyming and is now having lunch

has been advising the third year students: should the platform be Wordpress or Netvibes?
offers congratulations to Zoho on their third birthday. Long may they innovate
has been trying to do 3x units of work in 1x unit of time and the result has been what you would expect

has just found out about muziboo.com and will investigate further. How does it differ from Jamendo, for example?
@arvindnatarajan hi, have the plans for launching Zoho Education changed, or just the timetable?
@muziboo Ah, I see! I hadn’t quite got it when I looked the first time. That DOES sound interesting!!!
is having Twitter conversations, and finding them useful. But still thinks hellotxt is MUCH more useful than FeedFriend. Hellotxt rocks!
@arvindnatarajan Okay, I will mail Dhan tomorrow morning. Our new academic year is starting and I am eager for good news
has set up a Twine for the League of Worlds, and invited some initial members.
has finally got a fly-out menu that works, and is taking that as a sign that its time to go home…

In March, while we were in Mumbai, the rest of the family each bought an Asus eeePC, and they have proved very easy to use and very reliable. I decided to wait because I suspected that the screen (which is 800 x 400) would be too smal for my needs. Now I am spoiled for choice.

I had been discussing our uses of Zoho with Arvind, and he (and various blog postings) had been offering glimpses of an all-new, all-shiny future at Zoho. They had promised that they were introducing two new services called Zoho Business and Zoho Education, and both seemed to be applicable to what we have been doing at Arcada. I wanted to see them in action.

As I pointed out recently Zoho Writer has the potential to usher in a new way of publishing on the web. I have termed this distributed publishing and I believe that it offers considerable advantages for many tasks and for many people. However, for this process to work effectively Zoho Writer would have to output clean, standard, valid and predictable html, and at the moment it does not do this. Here is a list of what is wrong.