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Hewie's Views and Reviews Welcome to this issue of Hewie's Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/ . ++++ Write that letter on line ++++ Write that letter on line Goggle is at it again. They just purchased a few more companies. If you recall, Google bought blogger.com http://www.blogger.com and the free Picasa photo editing software http://picasa.google.com/ a while back. More recently they bought 3D rendering software company @Last and their $500 product Sketchup http://www.sketchup.com . They also bought the online word processing program, Writely, http://www.writely.com . Although they have stopped taking new registrations while switching over to Google servers, Writely looks like an interesting product. The entire Word Processor will be administered on line through your browser. If you use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Netscape (at least recent versions), you will be able to create documents. You will not need to buy or install any other software. Writely has been free, as it is still in beta. It is believed that Google will keep it free, but sell premium services for the program. You will be able to share or keep your documents private. You can collaborate with others without emailing attachments back and forth. Writely will also save to a pdf file if you wish. Although the resulting document will be HTML, it can import .doc , .rtf and other formats and then it converts them to HTML. For printing or sharing an actual file, an Acrobat pdf will be the answer. Microsoft has been teasing us with the possibility of an Internet based MS Office for a subscription fee. It looks like Google has beaten them to the punch and started the trend to online software, but without the fee. The acquisition of Sketchup is widely believed to be for the technology to enhance Google Earth http://earth.google.com but will continue to the sell the $500 program as well. ++++ Why take notes? I remember the old spy movies where the spy broke into an office and took pictures of documents with a small camera. I came across a site http://www.scanr.com/ that has a service that will be free to the causal user, but will have a monthly fee for the volume user. You take a picture of a document with your cell phone. Then you send the picture to the site via MMS, picture messaging or email. ScanR does their thing and sends the document as an Acrobat pdf file to you as an email. The service can also be utilized by taking pictures of whiteboards or faxes. If you are at meeting or a class and want to preserve what was written on the whiteboard, just snap a picture with your phone, send it to ScanR, and receive a pdf of the information. It's no wonder that phone manufacturer Samsung and other companies do not allow cell phones in the work place. What a way to do business espionage, or steal documents from your employer. Technology can be great, but also very dangerous. ++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites Fact Monster PetEducation.com 1010 WINS On-Air Online On Demand New York City 24 hour news station Daily Buzz EsoSoft Corporation statehealthfacts.org Open Source for Windows ScanR Writely |
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