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Zoho offers more than just typical web-apps

OK - I admit it - I read ZdNet and that's where I first saw this. I was somewhat skeptical because there are so many "web-office" competitors out there - what makes this one so different?

But after looking at the entire site, I have to agree with Richard when he says that Zoho may be well-positioned to take a stronghold in this area.

Forget about Word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations for the time-being (oh yeah, those are FREE) - all of those are offered.

Zoho offers a Virtual office much like the Webex Office. But it also includes a Page Creator (like Google's), your own Planner, an online chat, but what really caught my eye was Zoho Challenge and ZohoCreator.

You need to test people? Challenges works great. Here's the way to do it. You add questions, identify the correct response and then assign the test to individual candidates. It lets you mark questions, show images and more.

Need to create a web app? I have tried DabbleDB and really liked it so I was surprised to see that Zoho has one but it hasn't really been talked about (at least that I've seen). But Zoho Creator has some features that Dabble just doesn't. If you've been tracking your data on a spreadsheet up until now, Zoho lets you import it. Need to build it from one of their existing templates? No problem. From scratch? Sure thing. A real programming language? Uh - pretty close. They aren't kidding when they say , "And we truly believe that Creator can be become the Visual Basic for the Web"

This tool needs a screen cast. And it uses a language called Deluge - which looks pretty easy to work with. Look for one soon.

As I mentioned previously about Dabble, , this is where the FoxPro web solutions may want to start looking to showcase their own great features.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Andrew, thanks for the kind words about Zoho. A few more things about the Deluge language in Zoho Creator - we have been working on it for 4 years now, based on some fairly radical ideas on language design. Our goal is to create an entire web based environment where sophisticated database driven applications can be created. Underneath, it is driven by a powerful relational data model.

The work is starting to mature now, and we will be releasing more and more. Please play with it, create applications, and tell us where we hit the goals, and where we fall short. We thrive on feedback!

Thanks,
Sridhar
June 23, 2006 at 11:07 AM
Anonymous said…
Recently, the idea of building custom business applications has become “trendy.” Virtually overnight two systems, ZoHo Creator and Coghead, have been getting a lot of attention from bloggers and the media. However, people are overlooking the most time-tested source of web-based platforms for custom-built business applications. There has been a system on the market for over 5 years successfully doing the same thing ZoHo Creator and Coghead aim to do. This system is Interneer Intellect.

Interneer Intellect holds patents protecting much of the instant application building capabilities. This fact, on top of the years of development it has already undergone, inhibits ZoHo Creator from having a hope to ever be able to compete (in my opinion).

If you are considering using ZoHo Creator or Coghead to build custom applications for your business I would suggest also looking into Interneer Intellect. All three systems offer their own unique strong points… but Interneer Intellect by far has the longest list of functions and capabilities. This in itself is reason enough to register at Interneer’s site and view the product demo and/or white papers.

http://www.interneer.com/landingpages/gaw/rpd.asp

http://www.interneer.com
October 12, 2006 at 8:01 PM
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