Under the Radar: Office 2.0 spreadsheets and Work 2.0 services
During an afternoon session at the Under the Radar "Why Office 2.0 Matters" conference, several productivity applications were demoed that could properly be called Office 2.0 products. EditGrid is a capable online Excel wannabe, which has 80 percent of the function of the dominant spreadsheet, according to David Lee, chairman of Team and Concepts, EditGrid's parent company. It competes with Zoho Sheet, ThinkFree Calc, Google Spreadsheets, and other online spreadsheets that as yet still aren't giving Excel any trouble.
Reto Laemmler, CEO of Collaborall, demoed Xcellery, which doesn't try to clone or exceed Excel but provides a useful collaboration service for Windows Excel. Users can share and edit spreadsheets without resending new versions to collaborators to consolidate changes.The company offers a free hosted version, but is developing an advanced hosted version that will be sold on a per user subscription and an enterprise edition that works behind firewalls. Longer term, the company will apply its collaboration services to Word and PowerPoint, Laemmler said. Collaborall also is integrated with salesforce.com, and has AJAX-based editor for non-Excel users.
SmartSheets takes a different approach to spreadsheets, using the column and row metaphor to facilitate project management, and includes reporting and collaboration features in an on demand application. More from Webware on SmartSheets.
More Under the Radar coverage from Webware:
Team Work: Blogtronix, BrainKeeper, Firestoker, System One
Scrybe, Calgoo, Tungle: How to connect and stay organized
My Payment Network, SiteKreator, Terapad, Wufoo