Websites Important for Students and Professionals
We are witnessing a new application for the Internet. As time passes, we are seeing how the Internet is not only the information highway but also the future of how we use applications. More and more companies are finding ways of bring the programs you already use for your everyday task to a web based environment. With this in mind, I have compiled a very small list of web based tools that professionals and students alike can use.
Gmail is currently the leader in a long line of free email providers which provides large storage space. A part from large storage space, currently 2702 MB, Gmail also provides many features that both students and professionals can use.
- Free POP and ISMP access with no ads at the bottom of your emails
- 2702 MB of free storage space and increasing everyday
- Attachments up to 10MB big in size can be sent
- Excellent up time
- Superb email searching capacity
- Built in Ajax IM client
- No image ads in web based email client front end
- No advertising at the bottom of emails
- Free email forwarding to other email providers (Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail)
- Awesome spam filters
- Phishing detecting technology
- RSS feeds
Writely.com
Writely is a web tool that never became mainstream, but that is about to change since it has been acquired by Google. Writely allows you to write, upload, or email documents, either .doc or .odt format, freely onto their servers. With Writely.com you can store all of your documents online and edit them. All the end user will ever need is a Internet connection and a web browser to assess this powerful tool. Apart from storing and editing file online, you can also publish your documents as web pages or post your documents to your blog. The feature that I enjoy the most would have to be Writely’s Collaborate feature. This feature allows the document’s author to assign other users to help edit a document. The power of this feature is seen when large numbers of editors are collaborating on the same file since the document can be edited by more than one person at the same time and the changes one editor makes is seen by all the other editors at the same time.Writely is a must for anyone who works with text documents and is constantly on the go. Best part is that Writely is completely free! Thumbstacks.com
Thumbstacks.com is similar to Writely except it is designed for presentations. Thumbstacks.com allows you to create a powerpoint-like presentation that can be viewed and edited from the Internet. You can see a demo at Thumbstacks.com. Although Thumbstacks.com is very new and still very much buggy, it has great potential for becoming great in due time. As of this posting, I do not recommend Thumbstacks.com for any use other than for testing.
Numsum.com is a web based collaboration for spreadsheets just like Writely.com is a web based collaboration word processor. Numsum might not have the most attractive user interface but it makes up on features and speed. Numsum’s interface feels and looks like Microsoft’s Excel application which is a wanted feature when you don’t have time to learn where all the functions are at. A part from this, you can also upload your spreadsheets created with Microsoft Excel or with OpenOffice.org to Numsum.com with minimal formatting loss and you can export out of Numsum.com back to your favorite spreadsheet application. Numsum.com is great because like Writely, you can assign different people to collaborate on a project. Also, you can publish documents to the general public as a read only site or send a read only copy to a mailing list. Numsum.com can be used as a easy and quick way to send invoices to clients, quickly incorporate spreadsheet tables to a website, or build tables for a class assignment.
Evoca.com is a web based audio recorder. There is no software to download and it is compatible regardless of your operating system. This tool can be used by students and professionals alike as a tape recorder. The real power of evoca.com is that you are able to record straight from the website, upload a recording to the website, call via your phone or record a Skype conversation. I have given the service a try and found it to be great for taking down notes when on the go. For example, lets say you are on the road and think of a great idea. Obviously, you can not write down the idea since you are on the road, but you can call evoca.com via your cell phone and record the note. The recording will then be saved into your account for future playback. Visit techcrunch.com for a great article on Evoca.com
While editing this article, I rant into online.thinkfree.com. Thinkfree is a office suite like OpenOffice.org that sells for for about $50.00 (USD) and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. They also have a free version that they claim to be free but I have not personally tried out. From what I have read on the online.thinkfree.com website, it looks it has the same functions as the web based applications mentioned above but with beautiful user interface. This might be a product worth checking out. If you do choose to try it out, you might what to post a comment on your thoughts about online.thinkfree.com
This concludes our look at a few web based tools for both students and professionals. If you have any comments or suggestions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
March 28th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
this is great. i didnt know about some of these. i think i’ll try them. thanks
March 30th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
These websites can be really helpful thank you.