Feb 02 2007
The Great Web Office Experiment
From Monday 5 February I’ll be launching the ‘Web Office” experiment a 2 week trial of web 2.0 tools.
Inspired by IT Redux’s Office 2.0 and the Dot Organize ‘Organizer’s Toolcrib’ of online tools, the aim is to find out just how easy or hard it is to apply online tools to my everyday tasks. This means no more Outlook for email and calendar, Word or Excel as I’ll be using only online tools to do the same jobs.
My own perception is that online tools have the potential to allow voluntary sector organisations to more easily exploit ICT (which many aren’t doing) and better achieve their organisational goals. However, most of the UK voluntary sector (apart from the big boys like Greenpeace, NSPCC and Oxfam) are not grasping the opportunities of online tools to connect with their stakeholders.
For me, the key is going to be showing how online tools can be applied to everyday tasks. David Wilcox and Beth Kanter have develped an excellent social media game that aims to show organisations how they might apply online tools or new media to their business. The question is are web 2.0 tools suitable for business tasks like email, calendar, documents and spreadsheets?
Paul Henderson at Ruralnet did some good work on exploring how small organisations might be trained to use and exploit online tools or new media on the I-See-T project.
My basic criteria for the Web Office that the tools must all be online, free or low cost and sustainable. I’ll be putting up a more detailed page on my web 2.0 experiment next week - this will detail why I’ve chosen the tools below and list a few alternative choices.
Web Office tools:
Address Book: Plaxo
Bookmarks: del.icio.us
Calculator: Google
Email: Gmail
Calendar: Google Calendar
Documents and Spreadsheets: Zoho
File Manager: Box.net
Images: Flickr
Personalised homepage: Google
RSS Reader: Google Reader
Are you using any of the above tools or different ones for everyday business use. If so, let me know about it.
The Great Web (almost free) Office Experiment
I think it is pretty much impossible to understand how useful or not new online tools are for your personal or organisational use without trying them. It’s another world, another language and just translating the technobabble isn’t enough. Packages may
I use Zohosheet, but it’s often slow. Maddeningly slow. over a DSL connection.
For an RSS reader I use Yahoo. I like it. Easy to search, add and delete feeds. In fact, I’m teacing some kids how to personalize their Yahoo pages, with a focus on creating your own newspaper with RSS.
Miles - I’ve come across this on-line database. Its more than just a contact management system and maybe worth you adding to your portfolio? Its based on Open Source too.
Check out - http://www.lamplightdb.co.uk/
Paul