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Forbes Reviews AJAX Apps for Small Businesses

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-than-the-cleaning-product dept.

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."

4 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Thanks, Forbes by generic-man · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "But don't throw away your desktop applications just yet. As a general rule, Ajax sites simply aren't as powerful or as useful as their desktop counterparts. Spreadsheet jockeys, for example, will want to stick with Excel for the foreseeable future."

    I also enjoy how many of the "recommended" apps are only available for use on outside servers, so no company-confidential data should ever be placed on them.

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    For more information, click here.
    1. Re:Thanks, Forbes by XorNand · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To the IT-inclined, yeah, hosting data vital your business on someone's server can make you cringe. However, to 99% of the small businesses out there, they think nothing of it. All you have to do is look to the success of Salesforce.com to see that. Or even more common: How many small businesses use IMAP (either through a client or a webmail interface)? If their webhost suddenly closed their doors, they could potentially lose years of critical correspondence.

      As an IT guy myself, I stuggle to explain this sort of stuff to small business owners. But them again, these are the same people who balk at the cost of DAT or DLT drive yet wouldn't even consider canceling their business owner's insurance policy. Go figure.

      --
      Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
  2. What I don't understand by Falesh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  3. What about Presentations? by cwgmpls · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?