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How are you using Zoho Notebook?
Henry Thiele’s notebook titled, Should I know Web 2.0? Nice aggregation of text, links, images, audio & video from the world wide web combined with one’s own thoughts. Simply awesome! Another cool notebook from him : Digital Storytelling. Thanks Henry!
To our readers & Zoho users : Do leave your comments on how you are using Zoho Notebook.
Export/Backup Options in Zoho
We get this question quite often -
Does Zoho offer a backup function which will let me download all my data?
We have various options depending on each Zoho service.
Zoho Writer : Offers a variety of different formats that you can export a document to - doc, docx, pdf, odf (odt), latex, sxw, html, rtf & txt. Click on Export to see the options.
Also integrates with Google Gears. Offers upto 50 documents to be downloaded to your desktop. You can access these documents from http://writer.zoho.com/offline. Click on Go Offline to download Google Gears and your Zoho Writer documents
Zoho Sheet : Click on Export. Again offers a wide variety of options from xls to pdf to ods to xml. There is also a batch export option available from the sidebar.
Zoho Show : Open a presentation. Click on Export and you will see the options available (ppt, pdf, pps and odp)
Zoho Projects : Export all your tasks as an xls or csv file. Under Tasks and Milestones, click on Export button
Zoho Creator : Export all your data as xls, pdf. Also as RSS, JSON feeds etc.
Zoho Wiki : You can download all the pages of your Wiki as a zip file. Available under Settings -> Click to download the backup
Zoho CRM : Choose the module (Leads, Contacts etc) and click on Export. You can also export all your CRM data in one go also. We charge a nominal fee of $10.
Zoho DB & Reports : Export your reports as csv, pdf or an image file
Zoho Invoice : Export each invoice, estimate as pdf. Export customer’s info as VCard (vcf).
Zoho Notebook : Has an Export as mht option. The exported page can be viewed in Internet Explorer.
We will be coming up with more export options in upcoming updates.
Sorting Option in Zoho Notebook
One of the most requested feature in Zoho Notebook is the ability to sort your notebooks. We now added this functionality in our recent update. You can now sort your books alphabetically, modified date and created date.
Also, Zoho Notebook Helper extension is now approved by Mozilla and is available directly here on Mozilla add-ons site. All future updates to the extension will be available on Mozilla site.
Zoho Notebook Among PC World’s Most Innovative Products of 2007
PC World announced a list of 25 most innovative products for 2007 and we are honored to see Zoho Notebook included. The list includes both software and hardware products.
PC World Says…
Innovation: Web-only app stores just about any kind of content and allows you to share it with anyone.
Benefit: More full-featured than competing online tools.
AdventNet’s Zoho tools include everything from wiki software to customer relations management and project management applications, many of them free. Zoho Notebook (free, in public beta) continues the winning streak. You can enter text, graphics, audio, video, and embedded content from other sites onto your notebook’s pages–or use the page as a single word processing document or spreadsheet. Put together everything on a certain subject, and you’re ready to share your work with online compatriots.
As some of you may recall, Zoho Notebook was announced in Jan at DEMO conference and was open to public in May. Over the last seven months the application has been maturing rapidly with several updates and lots of regular users. Over the next few months you’ll see several updates enhancing the functionality of the application further.
We will be talking about Zoho Notebook and other Zoho applications at the Show Stoppers event in Vegas.
Enhanced plug-in, Skins Support, Shortcuts and more in Zoho Notebook
We rolled out another update to Zoho Notebook with more goodies. Here is the list.
- Enhanced Firefox Plug-in with Citations
- Skins Support
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Linking support
- and more…
Lets looks at each of these enhancements.
Citation Support in Firefox Plug-in
This is one of the most requested feature. Our new Firefox plug-in lets you easily aggregate content from the internet and it also links back to the original site with the title on the top. Here is how the aggregated content looks with the new plug-in.
You’ll notice the title on the top with a link back to the original site. You can change the title or the link using the ‘Edit Title’ icon (
).
Skins Support
If you don’t prefer the default color for the notebook, we now have two more options - Blue and Brown. You can change the Skin from the ‘Preferences’ section.
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you are used to keyboard shortcuts, some of them are supported now inside Zoho Notebook. Supported ones are - Save (CTRL + S), Copy (CTRL + C), Paste (CTRL + V), Undo (CTRL + Z) and Redo (CTRL + Y).
Linking Support
You’ll now see two new icons in the text object - 
. You can now link your content to any URL. Of course, linking between notebook pages is coming.
Other Enhancements…
Remove Sharing
If you have a shared notebook which you no longer need, you can use our new ‘Remove Sharing’ option now (
) on the menu. Now you have the control on what notebooks you want to view in your shared section.
Rename/Delete Notebook
There is a new way to rename or delete a notebook. Simply right click on the book name, you’ll see the new context menu appear.
Do give these new features a try and let us know your feedback.
Enhancements to Zoho Notebook
We made several enhancements to Zoho Notebook in a recent update. Here are the highlights of the update…
New Hand Tool
You’ll notice a new Hand Tool (
) in the drawing toolbar on the right. This tool helps you easily scroll through the content inside a page without selecting any content or using scrollbars. If you used hand tools in desktop image editing apps, you’ll feel right at home.
You might have seen the addition of more shapes in our previous update as well to this drawing toolbar.
Books Navigation
In our previous version, when you had many books created, a scrollbar appeared for books list. In the current version, we added a ‘More’ option at the bottom which brings up a simple way to view your existing books without a scrollbar. Here is the new look. Looking at the book icons, you can now easily differentiate between personal books and shared books.
Increased Page Tab Size
Many of you suggested that we increase the size of the page tab. We did that with this update. You’ll notice that the horizontal size of the page tab is almost doubled. We plan to enhance this section further by proving more alternatives for page viewing. More on that later.
Recently Used Colors:
We enhanced our color palette to remember the recent colors used in your notebook. This enhanced palette can now remember up to 24 recently used colors in your notebook.
Cover Page
When a notebook is published, a cover page will now be added by default along with the name of the book, owner name and other information.
Apart from these changes, you’ll notice an enhanced look to our tool bar along with some bug fixes. If you’d like to see some enhancements in Notebook, do let us know.
Web Apps & Collaboration: The Big Picture
Collaboration and Web Apps: The Big Picture
Previously, I talked about Collaboration being one of the key features of web applications. In this post, I want expand more on that point.
I am sure all of us agree that the key advantage of web based applications is Collaboration. There are other advantages like mobility etc. But thats for another post. Lets look at how collaboration is evolving in online applications. Before that let us look at communication applications first and later we shall talk about their role in collaboration.
Communication Apps:
Today we use different types of communication tools on a daily basis. These tools include Discussion Forums, Email, IM, Audio Conferencing, Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing etc. Some of these tools are used along with others for better/effective communication. Each of these communication tools are intrusive than the other. Forums are less intrusive than Email which is less intrusive than IM which is less intrusive than Audio Conf etc.
Collaboration Tools:
With the advent of web applications we have seen a different type of collaboration with ‘Collaborative Editing’ on content where multiple users can work on the same application/content at the same time seeing each other’s changes immediately. In this case, all users are (literally) on the same page working on the content making collaboration effective with out the hassle of emailing attachments and managing versions.
These ‘Collaborative Editing’ and ‘Virtual Whiteboard’ type of functionalities in web applications is just the stepping stone for more broader and deeper integration. These features mark a significant change in the way we work. Instead of emailing attachments, we email a link (Remember, Document is a URL). The communication tools like Email, IM etc are used for the right purpose - to communicate the changes and not for pushing the content.
Collaboration + Communication Tools
What we will see next is a combination of collaboration and communication tools. Each of the communication tools I mentioned will be integrated into web applications that focus on collaboration. A user might prefer one type of communication than the other. So it is important for web apps to provide different types of communication tools for effective collaboration.
In fact we already see this happening in our own applications. Email is integrated into Zoho Writer where you can email a document (selecting a format) directly from the application.
Similarly, Zoho Chat is integrated into Writer/Sheet/Show/Notebook etc enabling instant communication.
With the recent addition of Comments feature in Zoho Writer, a mini discussion forum is integrated to discuss the comments…and then in Zoho Notebook, we have integrated Skype for audio and video communication. You’ll see other communication tools eventually integrate into such web applications.
We certainly see this as the direction web applications will evolve integrating different types of communications in multiple ways. Instead of content revolving around communication tools, the communication tools will now revolve the content.
Enhanced Collaboration and Export option in Zoho Notebook
We rolled out an update to Zoho Notebook with some good enhancements in Collaborative Editing along with Export functionality.
Enhanced Collaborative Editing
We made several enhancements in collaborative editing. Here are some of them
- Collaborative editing now works more smoothly than ever
- In collaborative editing mode, if you reorder the pages, the pages will also be reordered for all the users working on the book immediately
- Also, if any user adds a new page and saves the book, all users working on the notebook will be notified about the page addition and will see the changes immediately at their end
Page Export
We added our first version of Export functionality in Notebook. You can now export Notebook Pages and Books in MHTML format (works in IE only). We have plans to support other export formats as well.
You’ll notice that the current export functionality is supported for Text, Images and drawing objects. We don’t include other types of content as these are web specific functions.
Apart from these two key enhancements, we also added several minor enhancements like a ‘Switch to’ option on the top to help easily navigate to other Zoho applications.
Do give these features a try and let us know what you think.
Opera Support in Zoho Notebook
We rolled out an update fixing few Opera related issues in Zoho Notebook. With this update you’ll now be able to use most of the functionality of Zoho Notebook in the latest version of Opera. I am saying most of the functionality because we know there are still some pending issues (like Chat inside Notebook) which still needs some work. This is just a start. We will keep enhancing Opera support.
If you are an Opera user and face any issues, do let us know.
Zoho Notebook Update: Page Reordering, Undo/Redo, Safari Support and more
We rolled out couple of useful updates in Zoho Notebook with some of the most requested features. These include Page Reordering, Undo/Redo, Menu at the Book level, Safari support and more.
Page Reordering
This is one of the most requested feature and we now have it available. You can now reorder your pages by simple drag and drop. Just drag the page tab (on the right) and drop it on top of the other page and the pages get reordered.
Undo/Redo 
Another added functionality is multiple Undo/Redos. Even if you deleted an object, if you are on the same page, you can retrieve it by simply undoing that action.
Book level Menu
We discussed earlier on this design and we now have this implemented. We added a small menu for the book tab on the top. This menu has book level options like Rename, Publish, Share and Delete. We plan to provide similar menu options for page level too.
Apart from these, we made several other minor enhancements (like more formatting options in Text Object) and fixed some bugs. These include Safari related bug fixes. Notebook should work fine on the latest version of Safari (3.0.2).
Do give these a try and let us know what you think. Also, if you have any immediate pain points with Notebook, please do let us know and we’ll try to address them soon.
Zoho Notebook Update: Auto-save & more
After opening up Zoho Notebook recently, we got very good response/feedback from many users like you that kept us busy enhancing the application. In the last three weeks we made several updates to notebook enhancing different aspects of the application. You can track all our updates in this notebook which can also be accessed from the ‘Updates’ link inside the application.
One of the issue mentioned by some of the users is related to save. Some said they lost some data. We apologize for this. We take this issue very seriously. Our recent updates addressed this issue in particular. There were several enhancements we rolled out for saving content, but I want to share few key ones.
- Auto-save: We implemented Auto-save for Notebook. Active notebook will now be auto-saved every one minute if there are any modifications.
- Save on Close: If you make any changes to your notebook and close the browser window without saving changes, all your content will still be saved
- Page Navigation: When you navigate across notebook pages without saving, the pages are saved automatically
Many users asked us how a book can be renamed. You can double click on the Book/Page tab to rename a book/page. In the latest update we also provided ‘Rename Book’ and ‘Rename Page’ option under the Edit Menu. We are working on contextual menus (for Book and Page) which might be a better way to provide options like Rename. Here is a proposed design. We’d love your feedback on this.
Any comments?
MIT Technology Review writes about Zoho
Richard Brandt at MIT Technology Review has an article on Zoho titled “Can Zoho beat Google?“. From the article :
Zoho has become a prolific designer of online software tools, releasing at least one new product every month for more than a year. It boasts 15 product offerings so far, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool, a Wiki, a project manager, a customer-relationship management (CRM) tool, a database, and a project-planning tool. Bloggers who have tried the software say it’s more robust than online applications offered by Google, and it offers better collaboration capabilities (for example, it lets multiple people work on a document simultaneously or sync spreadsheets with remote data from websites) than products from Microsoft. Zoho’s fans see it as the model for a new generation of Web-based applications that could displace expensive software sold by Microsoft.
Zoho is the suite to beat. A Gartner report released on March 12 placed Zoho at the top of its list of “Cool Vendors in Web 2.0,” five companies that offer “a glimpse into the future of enterprise innovations.” Says Gartner analyst Nick Gall, “Zoho is ahead in the user community and in the technology.”
Thanks to Richard Brandt & MIT! In other news, The Social Computing Magazine has a write-up on Zoho Notebook titled “Zoho Notebook: One-Stop Business Collaboration Tool“. And in a blog post on Zoho Notebook at weblogg-ed, Melinda Miller has this to say about Zoho Polls in the comments :
I really like zoho polls. One of my 4th grade teachers used it in class one time so now I use it all the time with my staff. We voted on our theme for next year, planning for next year’s holiday party, and staff shirt preferences. Here is a link to my school blog with the zoho poll embeded.
In a post titled “CRM on the Cheap“, Davey Moyers writes,
Looking for an inexpensive, robust CRM program? Why not check out Zoho CRM. The price is right, free for three users. I have been giving this system a test drive, and there’s power under the hood. Full CRM functionality. It lacks mobile capability or offline use, but otherwise this is a solid player for the individual sales rep or small team. It also boast Outlook synchronization that is as good as the competitors in this space. The features I especially find appealing are lead management, opportunity management, and sales quotes…. I spent four years using salesforce.com on a daily basis, and I would pit this program against salesforce.com in all categories save one. Offline and mobile are not yet offered. However, the print templates on Zoho are much better than salesforce.com. So you plan it, print it, execute it. Whatever “it” is.
Amit Agarwal has a nice post explaining how to embed Zoho Sheet’s charts in one’s blog. Zoho Chat’s shoutbox feature (embedding a chat window in your website) has been put to good use by a community named Cerebrals Hens Network. Cool background options, guys! And our recent REST API release got noted by Thomas Willingham & Go To India Web 2.0.
Thanks, one & all 
PodTech: Zoho, disruptor of Microsoft Office?
Earlier this month Sridhar Vembu and I had a brief discussion with Robert Scoble on various Zoho related topics. Scoble posted these videos (Discussion with Sridhar and Notebook Demo) in PodTech. Also, check out his blog post ‘Zoho: the office disrupters‘. Below are the videos.
Zoho Notebook Launches
We are happy to announce the public availability of Zoho Notebook - Beta. Existing Zoho users can login here with your Zoho ID.
As many of you know, we announced Notebook at DEMO 07 and got excellent response. While it took longer than expected to get the app out of the door, we are happy with the product functionality today.
I am not going to talk about the functionalities of the application in this post as the short video below will give you a good idea. But if you need further information, I added it here, well, in a Notebook.
We really hope you enjoy using the application and I am looking forward to hear your feedback on this.
Zoho on Wii
With nothing much to do this weekend due to rain, I decided to play with my Wii. After enabling wireless access on Wii, I installed ‘Internet Channel (Trail Version)’ as another channel (This basically is a customized Opera Browser for Wii). What surprised me is that this is a fully functional web browser (unlike other mini versions). Why do I say this?
Well, you know that the Zoho applications are JavaScript/AJAX intensive. These Zoho apps (I tested Writer, Sheet & Show) worked perfect including dragging and dropping of charts in Sheet.
Zoho Notebook is another JavaScript intensive application. When I try Notebook in Opera on WinXP, I cant draw lines or move content around. But surprisingly, even drawing lines (and dragging objects) worked perfectly on Opera for Wii. Below are some screenshots.
Of course, I do not expect people using Zoho or other web apps on their TV/Wii or iPods…but as I said earlier, this is fun.
Zoho Notebook launch video @ DEMO 07
Slowly, the dust is settling now on our recent Zoho Notebook launch at the DEMO Conference. As Aravind said in the previous post, we got a very good response on the Notebook launch. Our coverage list is here. Now the pressure is on us now to deliver a great product .
Our launch video at DEMO 07 is put up in DEMO website.
What surprised me most was the response to the video I created for Notebook. We have more than 15K views of the video in these 3 days.
Announcing Zoho Notebook
I have a good news and a bad news today. The good news is, we are announcing Zoho Notebook, our latest addition to Zoho Suite. The bad news is, you’ll not be able to play with it right away 
.
Zoho Notebook is an interesting application that is similar to your spiral bound notebook where you can write, draw or doodle, but this being a web application, you can add different types of pages to it. One page can be a photo page, another a word processor page, another a Spreadsheet page, another page can be an application…and the list goes on. To each page you can add different types of content such as text, images, audio or video (thanks to our partnership with Flixn) or even your business content. Notebook also comes with some drawing tools that can be used along with your content.
Zoho Notebook does three things well….
- It helps you create different types of content.
- It helps you aggregate content from multiple sources or applications.
- Fine grained collaboration
Please check out this demo video on YouTube which illustrates each of these functionalities better (You should excuse me for this amateur video. This is the first one I ever created.)
Here are couple of screenshots.
Please let us know your comments/suggestions.
Update: Our launch video @ DEMO 07 is available here showcasing couple of additional features.
