Free ‘office’ from your computer

Tired of being tied to one computer in order to write your documents or create your spreadsheets? Keep losing your USB key with all your files on them as you move from computer to computer? These days you can do quite a lot of the basic word processing and spreadsheet work using web based services.

Zoho is a comprehensive online service that offers web based alternatives to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, with a variety of other services offered as well. Most of these servcies are offered free, but some of the more advanced services may have a cost associated with them.

Google Documents is another alternative which offers you access to a spreadsheet and word processing service. This has the resources of Google behind it and the development of Google Gears means that it is only a matter of time before this will be a service that you will be able to use when you are not connected to the web as well.

Thinkfree also offers a range of web based office alternative services. Word, Excel and PowerPoint clones are all available free for use.

While none of these products offer the same functionality as Microsoft Office, they are are more than capable of doing the basic jobs that most people do everyday. They all allow you to keep your documents in one place online, so it doesn’t really matter what computer you use, as long as it is connected to the web, and with Google Gears just after being introduced, even that will not be a prerequisite in the future. Their documents are usually Microsoft Office compatible. Considering that these are very new services, they can only get more powerful and sophisticated.

Diarmuid

Swiss Army web tool

Recently released is the Hyperwords extension for Firefox. This extension is one of the most versatile I’ve seen and allows you to search, translate, map, email, print, post to your blog, and copy any text on a web page. It has a lot of power built into it and may have a few tools that you don’t need, but it is very customizable and you can quickly turn off any features you don’t require.

Currently it is only available for Firefox, but the developers are working on implementing it for other browsers and plan to have a desktop version available soon as well.

Diarmuid

surveys online

Need to get feedback from people or need survey people as part of your research? Now you can think about doing the easy way - online.

Once again web 2.0 has seen the development of services that simplify the whole process.

Wuffoo allows you to create forms for collecting data, without having to write a line of code. It will also send you results by email, as an RSS feed or as an Excel document.

SurveyMonkey is another service that allows you to quickly an powerful surveys. You can create online you can download a summary of your results in multiple formats and can download all of the raw data you’ve collected either as a spreadsheet, or in database format.

Icebrrg also allows you to do much the same as the other services. It also allows you to embed your survey into your existing website or blog. It will also host it for you if you want on its own website.

All these 3 services offer a basic service that is free. If your needs are ongoing or heavy duty, you might need to pay a little more for the service.

Diarmuid