not to us

I have heard several people talk about how cool the new Yahoo! mail interface is, but I hadn’t looked at it until this morning. It is sweet! It blows G-mail out of the water in looks and functionality. No one who reads this probably cares, but if you’re trying to decide between email services, definitely give the new Yahoo! email system a look.

You may or may not be aware of this, but Google has been putting together some free online services that could pose a significant challenge to Microsoft Office. They are called Writely and Google Spreadsheets. Writely is an online word processing progam, and is Google’s equivalent of Word. In fact you can open, edit, and save files in the Word file format. So, it’s very intercompatible with Microsoft stuff. You can even save files onto their servers or your hard drive. It’s pretty sweet. The only catch I see is that you have to have a “Google account” to login. If you already have a gmail account, you just use that. Otherwise you’ll can either sign up for a Gmail account, or just create a Google account using your current email address here. Google spreadsheets is a spreadsheet program (imagine that), and is Google’s equivalent of Excel. You can open, edit and save files in the Excel file format. Again, it’s very intercompatible with Microsoft stuff. You also have to have a Google account to use this. One thing about these services, is that you have to be connected to the Internet and have a relatively fast connection to use them. So, if you want to be able to edit files without being connected to the Internet, then you will still need something like Microsoft Office. Of course, if you don’t want to fork out the dough to Microsoft, you can try OpenOffice. This software is very similar to Office in almost all regards, and is also free. It too is very intercompatible with Office. I have nothing against Microsoft Office. I use it all the time. Of course, I get it for $10 at the union. I just wanted you all to be aware of other options out there. It will be interesting to see how these services compete with Office as they gain popularity.

Is it just me or is this a little scary? I love Google, but this seems like it might be going a bit too far in the attempt to learn more about customers.

I came across this article explaining how Firefox is making big strides in the competition between web browsers. Most of you know I’m a big geek and could go on and on about the benefits of Firefox. But I’ll restrain myself. I hope that when Internet Explorer 7 comes out it doesn’t push Firefox back down again, but I’m sure it will. I just wanted those of you who were unaware of browsers other than Internet Explorer to know that there are much better and safer options out there. Then again, most people reading this probably already know that.