Archive for productivity
Digsby a Business Tool or a Distraction?
Posted by: | CommentsA couple of weeks ago, we began exploring using Digsby as a chat aggregator. This week, we’ll look at how/if using Digsby can help a small business owner, (in my case, a VA) be more productive.
A touted feature is the ability to monitor multiple email accounts right from Digsby. This could be helpful if I have responsibility for monitoring email for my clients. However, it could be a big distraction as well. I’m working along for one client when I see an email for another and then I get off task. What do you all think? Here are the features from the web site:
- Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from Digsby.
- Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts.
- The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click
- Perform actions such as “Mark as Read” or “Report Spam” right from the email InfoBox.
- Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.
How do some of you use IM with your businesses? What does it do to your productivity? If you use it for business, then Digsby seems like a great aggregator. If you have friends/clients with multiple IM accounts, it will combine them into one identity to reduce clutter. You can send SMS messages from Digsby (but you can from Yahoo as well). You can rename your contacts to their actual names so you don’t have to remember the cryptic names people sometime have. Scrolling your mouse down your list of buddies instantly shows everyone’s status. As mentioned in a previous post, you can also monitor your social networking sites and conduct chats from Digsby.
Your Digsby account follows you from computer to computer (although you’ll still have to download software to each computer). Just login and your previous customizations will be there for you. Speaking of customization, Digsby offers a huge assortment of skins, colors, etc. to make your ‘user experience’ rich. Take a look here at all the screen shots and customization options.
So if you are using IM/chat, I’d like to get your feedback of what you use and why. Is it helpful for multiple clients, or do you use it for personal use? Currently, I’m just using Yahoo Messenger and it works for me. There are quite a few features with Yahoo that Digsby doesn’t have…but that’s another blog topic!
OpenOffice.org vs. Google Apps
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I blogged way last summer about Microsoft Office type replacements (see May & June, 2007 posts). Back then we discussed ThinkFree and Google Apps. Now I have a reason to really look at OpenOffice.org. I just ordered the extremely small and sweet Asus EEE computer and it comes loaded with OpenOffice.org. I’m very happy to be ‘forced’ to use both Linux and OpenOffice software! Now Microsoft still has a place in my life – on my business laptop!
Version 2.4 was released just last week and offers many enhancements to make working in the OpenOffice.org environment more robust and well, more Microsoft-y! You can read the release notes here: Reading through them, it seems that if you are a pretty experienced Office user (as I am), then you may think to yourself, “well, that’s nice that they’ve added a page down feature from within the print preview menu, but I think I’d expect that”. I’m not trying to belittle the enhancements – I’m sure my perspective would be different without my Microsoft background.
Since OpenOffice.org has been around for about 20 years now, there is an extensive and comprehensive help section complete with forums and user manuals. If you’re a group, you can even talk to them about coming to train your people.
Thinking of some differences between Google and Openoffice:
- Google apps is on-line – Openoffice isn’t. Advantage OpenOffice! (footnote:Google just announced they will have a way for users to download and work on documents offline. Only for docs – not the other apps)
- There’s a lag time when opening docs on-line vs. on your hard drive. Advantage OpenOffice
- Google docs are great for uploading and sharing in real time with someone else – not OpenOffice. Advantage Google Apps
- Google docs are available to you anywhere you have an internet connection. Not so for OpenOffice (unless you have off-site storage)
Suite Features:
OpenOffice Google Apps
Writer Docs
Calc Spreadsheet
Impress Presenter
Draw (drawings, flowcharts, etc.)
Base (database program)
There are so many comparisons that could be made. It comes down to what it is YOU need. If you don’t collaborate, you probably don’t need Google Apps. If you have some old computers around and would like to be able to do some word processing or calculating, OpenOffice.org would be perfect for that. OpenOffice also has a couple more packages than Google. However, neither of them have calendaring/email built right in and all in the same place.
I’ll post more after I get my EEE computer!
