Topic 23: Where to from here?

Well here I am at the end of 23 things. I'm sad to see it finish! I enjoyed the mental break trying different applications each week. I had the most fun with Library Thing and image applications (Flickr, image generators). Studying online was easy and I found the module easy to navigate, perhaps because as a library studies student for several years I've had experience with online study and using Janison. I enjoyed writing my blog, it helped me focus instead of just idly clicking on links. I also enjoyed reading other participants' blogs - I "followed" everyone with a blog. Would have loved to see more entries though - but then writing isn't everyone's thing and if it is, not all have time in their work day to wax lyrical. I'll still visit my "Blogger dashboard" from time to time to read the feeds from blogs as people finish the course. Thanks to Helen and Steve for running the show, you've done a great job!

Topic 22: Web tools

I had a look at sites I was interested in and there was quite a range to choose from. I chose Picnik to look at in the end, as I enjoy digital photography and experimenting with photos. This tool would be useful for creating eye catching promotional materials for handouts or displays. Some of the features are for "premium" (paid) subscriptions but there are enough free tools to keep you busy. Here two creations of mine, using photos from Flickr:

Topic 21: Web-based documents

For this topic I signed up for Zoho Writer which was very easy as it uses your Google login and password. The introductory document that explains the features of Zoho Writer seemed like a good one to post to my blog - instead of a boring "test...testing..." type document (I lack ideas to create my own sample document today!). You can view it in the post below. It was very easy to post the document - see the previous post with the sample document to see instructions on how to post to your blog. A website like this would be great to use to share documents and collaborate with others on a document. Unlike a normal document in a network drive, more than one person at a time would be able to view it and edit it.

Welcome

Welcome to Zoho Writer
Your Word Processor on the Web

Thank you for signing up with Zoho Writer!

Zoho Writer sports a new, refreshing and intuitive user interface. It is the word processor designed for you, the next generation web citizen. Built using AJAX technology, it's fast and revolutionizes the way you work with documents. Having all your documents online (and offline too! we'll get back to that later!!), you have access to them from any computer, at home or at work. And no more emailing them back-and-forth to your colleagues, clients or friends for review, thanks to its instant collaboration, inline commenting and chat facilities.

It will take a lot more than this short welcome document to list all of Zoho Writer's features and hence a chosen few of the Zoho Writer's functionalities are mentioned below :

Elegant User Interface

Zoho Writer has undergone a makeover with a newly introduced tab-based user interface. The features are categorized under different tabs for easy accessibility. You have the flexibility of navigating around any of the tab features with a single click, thanks to the friendly toolbar. Here is how the new UI looks:

What's more, each tab in the toolbar comes with a drop down arrow that lists the features in the form of pull-down menu. Browse through the features and apply them to your document at the same time using the pull-down menu, without having to navigate away from the existing highlighted tab.

Use formatting options - Bold, italicize, underline, color your words, set background color, link to a web page, set margins, use cool smileys and do much more. Use the same keyboard shortcuts as with any other word processing application for accessing these functions.

Enhanced Sidebar

The left-side bar, that lists all your documents (personal and shared), has some nice little enhancements in the version.

Filters:
We have added few filtered views - "Shared by me", "My Public Documents" & "All". Look for the View menu in the sidebar.

File Info and Actions:
Along side each file in the sidebar, users will find an icon hovering over which will display the file info such as users shared to, public document etc. Users also have an action icon to Trash, Share, Rename or Export the specific file.

Page View Editing

The most requested and the much-awaited feature is out with Zoho Writer. Switching back-and-forth from edit view to page view will be a thing of the past. Users can edit their documents in "Page View" mode and get to know the print-layout of the document real time.

And there's no restriction on the language direction. Type content in LTR as well as RTL languages and in the same document too.

Users can also choose from among the various document page sizes - A4, Letter, Legal & Executive.

Document Info and More

Get document related information both ways - with or without a click of a mouse. With the enhanced status bar, users will get real time info on the word & character count, number of pages, author name and more. Clicking on the "Document Properties" button from the toolbar will display the relevant document info in the form of a pop-up window.

Improved Header/Footer

Add header/footer in your document on the fly. Choose from among the options of having them in one, two or three columns. There's an auto-field feature too that lets you insert Page Number, Page Count, Current Date and Author Name into the document's header and footer directly from the toolbar.

Document History - View & Compare Version

Messed up the current version of the document? Ever wondered if you could revert to an earlier version of it? With Zoho Writer, you can.

We create new versions of the document with each explicit save. At any time, you can view a document's history, seeing those previous versions and, if you want, reverting to an earlier draft.

Writer also lets you compare two versions of a document, so you can see specific changes and go back to version of your choice.

Spell Check

What's a word processor without a spell checker? Zoho Writer's does all the dirty spell checking work for you so that you needn't worry about whether it's receive or recieve

Moreover, the spell-check feature is available in more than 75 different languages. So it doesn't matter whether you are typing your document in French or Swahili.

Tags as Folders

Get the best of both worlds . Tags are the new folders. Not sure whether you want to put a document in the Sales or Marketing folder?

That's where tags-as-folders come in. Make the document available in both the folders! Now, you can click on "Tag Folders" in the Sidebar to view all your tag folders. Isn't that cool?

Post to Your Blog

Being on the web, you can post to your blog from within Zoho Writer. As you have seen above, Zoho Writer's WYSIWYG editor is more feature-rich than a typical blog editor's. Be it Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal, TypePad or any blog that supports metaWeblog API, you can make the post from Zoho Writer. You can add tags and optionally make the post as a draft as well.

Comments

Add inline comments to particular paragraphs/sentences of a document. You & your friends (or your team members & your boss) can add comments in a document you are collaborating on.

Adding contextual comments is very useful for reviewing purposes. And this comes in handy for journalists/editors & teachers/students, in particular.

Share your Documents

Zoho Writer responds to the basic human need to connect with others - share a document with others & allow them to work on it.

When you share a document in Writer, you give others access to that document so that they can view it or, if you prefer, work on it with you. And all in real time — so when someone makes a change, the document gets updated for everyone.

What's more users have the flexibility of sharing the document with individuals on a personal level or share them with multiple users belonging to a personal/organizational group at once.

Go Offline

Not sure you'll have internet access all the time? Zoho Writer allows you to take your documents offline. You can view as well as edit your latest 25 documents offline. Changes made during offline editing will be synced with the online version once you switch.

Integration With Other Zoho Apps

Zoho Writer comes from the widely diversified stable of Zoho. Signing up with Zoho Writer allows you to access a plethora of Zoho apps - be it our web based spreadsheet tool, Zoho Sheet, the online presentation creator, Zoho Show or the net meeting enabler, Zoho Meeting.

The integration doesn't stop with just single sign-on. You can embed sheets and slideshows. And here's more - any change done to the sheet/slideshow gets automatically reflected in your Zoho Writer document!

Those are just a few things that can be done with Zoho Writer. You will get to discover more as you work with it.

We have a very active users forum at http://forums.zohowriter.com/. And your queries, valuable feedback & suggestions are most welcome at feedback@zohowriter.com as well.

Again, thanks for signing up with Zoho!

Topic 20: Second life

"Second life" looks rather interesting! It appears it is a bandwith sucker so I don't think I'll install it at home. From what I've seen on you tube it looks like a fun way to interact with people and also play a virtual reality version of paper dolls (choosing outfits for your avatar, how you want it to look etc). Establishing library services, such as reference, in a virtual world is a good idea - if that's where people are it makes sense to be there too. If TAFE establish virtual classrooms it would be great to have a library presence there too, for reference and also for promoting resources and events in real life campus libraries.

PS-I wrote the above in a draft email to post to my blog later. The computer I'm using wouldn't let me get on to the Blogger dashboard - my ISP was sending a stream of automated traffic apparently and so Google said "We're sorry" via their apologetic Forbbiden 403 web page. Claire posted about the same problem on her blog so perhaps it was a network wide issue.

Topic 19: Online communities

I already have a Facebook account that I use at home so there isn't really anything I have to do for this topic. I'm not a fan as yet of TAFE SA libraries, will do that next time I'm on Facebook. The libraries' page is a good example of an organisation reaching out to users by promoting itself 'on their hometurf' and also assisting existing users of the library providing by catalogue links and contact info for all TAFE SA campus libraries.

Topic 18: Library Thing

I had a look at LibraryThing and like what I see. I currently use GoodReads via Facebook and have 150 books on that I've recalled reading or have read since joining Facebook a year ago. So I don't think I'll switch over - particularly as I use it to keep track of what I've read. LibraryThing seems to indicate you use it to catalogue books you own and I borrow a lot of books from my local public library. But it might be fun to use it for the books I actually own. I like the tagging and book recommendation functions which GoodReads doesn't have.

As for the task for this topic I found it very easy to add five books I own to LibraryThing. I have added a widget of my little library to my blog - see the right handside column under my Tags (To do the same, go to Dashboard - Layout - Page elements - Add a gadget - HTML/Java Script and copy and paste the embedded widget script from the Tools tab (clickMake a standard blog widget) of your LibraryThing page into the HTML/Java Script gadget box). Something like this would be great to use to publicise new books added to a library's collection. Perhaps a widget could be added to a student intranet page and a scrolling book image might catch a student's eye. The student could click on it and be shown the details of the book and which library has it.