To be “Web 2.0” compliant I guess we all need to make our office out of Web 2.0 tools and sites. I’m not about to fully dive in, but the listing above does give a bunch of great free tools for picking and choosing. Of course it sure would be nice if all these tools/sites consumed OpenIDs
The things that make up my Office 2.0 are:
- Email: Outlook 2007
I like my Exchange mail so I can get mail on my Mobile. I have email accounts on gmail, yahoo and hotmail.com/live.com. I mainly use the yahoo one as a place to signup for stuff/send spam. The UI is nice, but clunky. Actually I think all the web based mail clients are clunky (Exchanges OWA included). As I transition off using the corporate exchange server I’m planning on using hotmail.com. Primary reason is I can use the Outlook Connector and read/write my hotmail email all from outlook.
On a related note, instead of using a junk email address that I lot of people use, came across this neat site. Mint Email (A play on minute mail i tihnk). MintEmail.com gives you a four hour temporary email address. Nice and disposable. The way I like my junk accounts. Certainly has some potential. - Data Storage: SkyDrive
Once you install the ActiveX control you can drag and drop all your files making uploading quite nice. It’d be nice to download multiple files that easily. Or better yet, allow WebDAV access. I’m looking into box.net to see if I like it better. (The openbox feature is pretty promising, A look inside storage service Box.net) - Photos: Flickr
I like it. Quick and easy and the social part is fun. Its probably the Web 2.0 thing I’m smitten the most with. - Social Networking: Facebook
More grownup then myspace (less of a stalker jungle it seems at least)
I haven’t jumped in it yet, but LinkedIn and Twitter seems to be the next things I plan on checking out. - Blogging: WordPress (this place!).
Better than crappy spaces.live.com. The shame is that the Windows Live tools (Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Photogallery & Windows Live Messenger) are all pretty good. It’d be nice to use all the tools in an integrated way that Microsoft intends, but space is awkward. Its all about UI. WordPess has pettier templates. I’m sold. - RSS Reader: Outlook 2007
I still use a thick client. With data being pulled in via outlook and stored in my exchange account I can read it in on multiple machines. Searching and being able to tag posts. I’d like to try Google Reader or Fav.or.it. The advantage of one of these is I don’t have to worry about keeping a computer on with Outlook running to keep my feeds up to sync. - Tasks and Calendars: Outlook/Exchange.
I still with the traditional enterprise tools here. These are the things I need in front of me everyday and I really don’t want to go through a browser for that.
After writing all this up the one thing that presists is that there really is no one good “free” Web 2.0 app that allows you to do everything you need/want. Which is fine there’s enough pieces around that one can put together something that works for them. The only problem short of the microsoft solution, each one requires a different account for each one. That’s pretty annoying. Reflecting a bit i think the main reason i started using most of the Microsoft pieces is that it didn’t require yet another account (and subseqently another password). It’d be really nice if all these solutions really got onboard with an OpenID solution.
I think another aspect that needs addressing is user interfaces. Not from the design aspect, as most Web 2.0 apps are really quite pretty. Its more that having to go to many different places each with their own interface and style. I have enough browser windows open with the other junk I waste my time with. I’m somewhat inspired to try to write some add-in type things for Outlook that can use some of these Web 2.0 as a datastore.
until the next..
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