Google Docs vs. Zoho- Head to Head (Part 1)

A reference in my post about Google winning the web apps war, followed by an exchange of comments with Arvind from Zoho, were reasons enough for me to take another poke at Zoho's Writer and Sheet applications. Although I had declared my love for Google Docs over the Zoho alternatives for reasons unknown, the feeling that Zoho had a headstart over google was rooted pretty strongly somewhere in the back of my mind. One of the reasons probably being my love for anything Indian (especially given the virtual non-existence of the country on the web 2.0 map).

Performance
I started with Zoho Sheet, since spreadsheets are my preferred format for documentation over plain (or formatted) text. The first thing that struck me was just how much more responsive it felt as compared to Google Spreadsheets. I had learned to ignore the lag I felt in Spreadsheets as a compromize for using a web app over a desktop one and expected the same, if not more from Sheet. Not done, the Chennai guys seem to believe. Zoho Sheet genuinely feels and responds as smoothly as a Microsoft Excel on my desktop!

A good measure to feel this difference is try and re-size columns and rows. The difference is absolutely huge! That Zoho also allows an input field to define row widths and column heights is just an icing on the cake for someone a compulsive format-freak like me then. Zoho Sheet also feels much faster in nearly every other area like applying cell formatting, copy-pasting or even in the undo and redo actions. It's auto-update also seems smoother than Google's, but that's probably because it is much more un-obtrusive than the ugly red update box in the top-left corner in Spreadsheets.

The same cannot be said about the word processors though. Here, Google's offering seems to be just marginally faster than Zoho's. One of the reasons could be the much simpler interface of Docs as against Writer which - on the surface - makes Zoho Writer seem more feature-full than Google Docs (more on the feature-set later). The difference in performance is negligible though, and not nearly as obtrusive as the lag in Google Spreadsheets (especially noticeable once you have tried Zoho Sheet).

On the performance front - therefore - Zoho is a clear winner for me. The ability to work on an online version of a spreadsheet with the responsiveness of a desktop application is just too much of a killer feature.

A disclaimer here, before I end this post, is that the difference in performance is what I have personally experienced on two computers with Windows 2000 and XP installed, using Firefox 2.0 as the browser. There may be variations in results on other platforms, but I think I'm fair in my observations as long as I'm using the same browser and internet connection for both sets of applications.

In the next post, I will try to compare the features of both sets of applications...

Setting up an enterprise wiki

For over a month now, I've tried out (or tried to try out) over a dozen wiki solutions to see what fits my requirements for a knowledge management system for my team at office. The idea is to start small and then grow it one step at a time to include the entire geographically-distributed organization.

I'm absolutely sold on the fact that wiki is the way to go. The flexibility it offers for everyone involved to participate and contribute to the content - which is the key to a successful knowledge management initiative - is unparalleled. The problem though, is that I can't seem to find one single solution that scores well on all fronts without costing a bomb. It's a small team that I'm launching the initiative with and do not want to invest in thousands of dollars on Confluence and the likes.

Wikimedia, probably the first option that comes to mind thanks to the phenomenon that wikipedia is, is easy to set up on a server (I'm no techie and would ideally want something as easy as, say wordpress, to set up and start using), but way too difficult to use. Twiki & Dekiwiki, which seem to provide the ease of use I'm looking for, are too difficult to set up. I'm not a linux guy and getting these wikis set up on windows seems like a herculean task. The rest of them, if easy to use AND set up, are either hosted (not a good solution for critical, confidential, internal information) or far less attractive! I should note here that the I'm setting it up for a team of graphic designers and therefore good looks is high on priority.

So here I am, wondering what to do. Wondering whether I am actually looking in the right places at all. Hoping to see Google do something nice with Jotspot - and providing it's pro services for free - and end my search for an easy-to-use & easy-to-set-up enterprise knowledge management wiki solution.

Is Google winning the wep-app war already?

They started off well, with Gmail probably setting the trend for lightning fast, responsive (more like responsive-enough-to-put-desktop-apps-to-sham) applications on the web. Somewhere down the line though, it seemed to me like they had given up the fight.

Their personalized desktop was - and remains - a joke when compared to it's competition. The RSS reader was an absolute disaster to start with (I'd never ever dumped a web app so quickly!). And for long it was not clear what they were going to do with the Writely acquisition.

They've come back with a bang though. Google Calendar made me dump Kiko as my favorite online calendar, the new version of the reader meant NewsHutch had to be rested from my browser and Google Docs has replaced the Zoho apps for now - for reasons unknown though, since I still believe Zoho has a better feature set than Docs. I'm still waiting for them to do something with Jotspot before I can give it a serious thought as my wiki of choice.

If there's something Google hasn't captured yet, it's the personalized homepage and bookmarking segments. Netvibes still rules the roost and nothing has been able to separate me from good old del.icio.us yet. Picasa albums is also nowhere close to the Flickrs of the world yet, but I'll let that pass since I don't use them much. I've also stuck with Remember the milk as my task manager, a space where google doesn't offer anything as yet.

In summary then, Google seems to be absolutely on the right track to capture major market share in the insanely crowded web app market. What's coming next then, Google?