Cyberspace August 2006

Cyberspace August 2006

More office

Last month I mentioned how you can almost replace an expensive “office” suite of applications using some of Google’s products. In the same vein, Zoho has produced some very interesting applications, especially Zoho Creator (http://www.zohocreator.com). Have you ever wanted to survey your clients? You can write a survey or many other applications without programming. If you want to get your hands dirty you can also type some script code, but it’s not neccessary. Applications that others have written include a project organiser, issue tracker, donation manager, inventory manager and a mini customer relationship manager. You can copy other people’s applications and then use them privately or publish your application to the public or selected people.Other Zoho applications (http://www.zoho.com) include a “Powerpoint” style presentation writer, word processor, spreadsheet and “virtual office.” You can even write on-line examinations.

A similar suite of tools can be found at Thinkfree (http://www.thinkfree.com), which also gives you 1 GB of storage space.

PDF

One thing missing from these is a way to create PDFs. If you regularly send documents to clients you may prefer to send them as PDFs to provide weak protection against reuse or accidental editing. It also helps avoid sending hidden data along with the document that Word can often do. The full version of Adobe Acrobat is expensive, but PDF creator (http://tinyurl.com/3jqbq) is free and can do most of what you need.You might have noticed a reference to “tinyurl.com” above. Have you ever sent someone a long URL in an email, only to see it break across lines and become unusable? At Tinyurl you can enter that long url and receive a tinyurl similar to the one above. Clicking that tinyurl will take you to the original site (it’s also useful for saving space in a 600 word magazine column!).QuickiesAustLII, our venerable free legal resource, is running training courses on legal research (http://www.austlii.edu.au/training/). The courses are run in Sydney, although they can be run elsewhere if there is sufficient demand.As mentioned last month, if you’re interested in networking with other law and IT enthusiasts, fill out the survey at http://andrewcalvin.com.Saving on software MacOS X is a great alternative to Windows XP, but Linux might finally be coming of age. I’ve tried Linux many times in the past and have dismissed it as simply being way too hard. Too much has gone wrong in the installation, or once I’ve installed it I’ve wondered what to do next, since there was no software installed and no easy way to install software. That has changed and if you can buy your PCs without an operating system pre-installed you can have a business-grade operating system and Office suite (OpenOffice) using one of the flavours of Ubuntu 6.06 (http://ubuntu.com).

The main versions are Ubuntu and Kubuntu. The principal difference is the look and feel of the desktop and the size of the download. I like them both, and they installed flawlessly on three desktops, a laptop and in virtual machines (http://vmware.com).

In fact, if you install VMware player on your PC you can download a preconfigured Ubuntu installation to try it out. Alternatively, you can boot off a Ubuntu CD and trial it while running solely off the CD, or if you have a spare hard disc you can dual boot between Windows and Ubuntu until you feel comfortable. OpenOffice can read and write Microsoft documents (with some limitations), and Ubuntu can see Windows file servers and operate on a Windows or Mac network.

To be fair, with the money you save on, say six copies of Windows and MS Office (perhaps $3,800) you will need to locate a competent Linux support person. You also may be constrained if you are used to using lots of macros or other Office automation.