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Forbes Reviews AJAX Apps for Small Businesses
prostoalex writes "Forbes magazine evaluates the variety of AJAX-powered Internet-based applications and their suitability for small businesses. The office suite replacements Forbes magazine chose are Google-centric: Google Calendar, Spreadsheets, Notebook and Gmail are the winners of their respective categories. Pageflakes and YouOS are tied for the leader's spot in 'Webtops' category."
Unless I can host the application on my internal server, it makes no sense to store data on external servers that I have no control over. Besides, if I'm going to cook the books, I want a search warrant for my place instead of a warrant telling the application provider to hand over the data.
Is why OpenOffice is rarely mentioned when talking about free alternatives to MS Office. OpenOffice if free to download and I have never found it wanting when compared with MS Office. Is it just not "cool" enough when compared to snazzy AJAX apps?
The MS Office app that is in dire need of replacement, and the app that seems most obvious to run on the web is PowerPoint. Why not build your presentation on the web and instantly share it will all of your participants, rather than having to jump through PowerPoint's terrible web publishing procedures?
So why doesn't the article mention presentation tools, and why have none of the big players (Google, Yahoo!) put out a web2.0 presentation application yet?
I know there are a many options out there -- Zoho Show, Thumbstack, S5, Empressr, Wimpypoint, PmWiki SlideShow, TiddlyWiki SlideShow, Slidy, OperaShow, TeamSlide, Carbonmade.
I don't have the time to compare them and sort them all out. Where is the big article reviewing and comparing these badly-needed tools? And why aren't the big web guys giving this essential application any attention?
Also, they forgot about EditGrid, which is based on Gnumeric and web-ified with Catalyst.
My other car is first.
I don't usually wear a tin-foil hat and I believe that most conspiracy theories are bullshit. That being said, does anyone else wonder what would happen if Google, as a publicly traded company, decided to set aside their "Don't be evil" values? The primary fiduciary duty of the leaders of a company are not to be "not evil", they are to create wealth for the shareholders. Right now it is to Google's advantage to be good just as it is to ExxonMobil's advantage to be bad, because both actions are creating wealth for the shareholders of each company. What if Google's business model doesn't sustain the profits that the shareholders expect?
Don't get me wrong: I love using Google. I think the Internet is a better place because of them. I'm just starting to worry that maybe we are depending too much on a company that, despite the best efforts and intentions of its founders, may not be able to maintain its presently outstanding values.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
No mention of @Mail which offers Ajax email, and is a download product rather then online service like the ones listed in the Forbes article. I think the Forbes article is pretty light/fluffy, but it is for their target audience anyway ....
Not to say... AJAX is an overhyped new name for JavaScript. Do you wanna know AJAX? Well, this is it:
xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=callback_js_function;
xmlHttp.open("GET",uri,true);
xmlHttp.send(null);
Those are the four lines you need to know to do AJAX. It's nothing more that JavaScript. If you already know HTML, JavaScript and CSS, you can show off your AJAX leet skills.
If you think JavaScript is going to replace C/C++/Python/whatever in the desktop anytime soon... think again. It doesn't have the power, the flexibility or the libraries needed for succeed. Hell, you can even do more serious "programming" in Flash.
$ whoami