File and Data Sharing
OffiSync Supercharges Microsoft Office By Enabling Real-time Co-Authoring And Google Apps Integration
OffiSync Supercharges Microsoft Office, enabling users to significantly improve the way they create, collaborate and share their documents by integrating Microsoft Office with Google Docs, and Google Apps.
Installing OffiSync adds a new toolbar to any version of Microsoft Office, letting users easily import web content such as images and templates right from within MS Office, collaborate with others in real time, letting users see each other’s edits as they work with Office files and share their final documents with others inside or outside the firewall.
The OffiSync plug-in for Microsoft Office downloads seamlessly as a new toolbar in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel 2003, 2007 and 2010, making it very easy to use with no training required.
Opening and saving a document to Google Docs and Google Sites is as easy as using documents on your own computer.
OffiSync tracks, manages and syncs all changes made by collaborators to merge them correctly into one updated version of the document. With OffiSync you can work on a document while others do the same and see their changes appearing in real time.
Humyo Helps You Upload And Access Files From Anywhere
All computer users want remote access to their files; but remote access requires your computer to stay powered on and have internet access. If you do not want to leave your computer powered on all the time, then uploading your files on the web is the best solution. You could use file hosting websites but that would be impractical as you would have to save separate URLs for each file. There are a few web services out there that let you upload files and keep it organized but almost all do not provide storage capacity more than 1 GB. That is what sets Humyo apart from its competition.
Humyo is a web service that lets you upload your files and access from anywhere on the web. The site offers paid service but it has a great free package as well: opting for the free package will give you 5 GB upload limit for media files (videos and audio) and a 5 GB limit for non-media files, totaling the storage capacity to 10 GB.
Apart from its massive storage, Humyo also features a great user friendly interface. Although it does not offer a desktop application, you can open up its Java app in your web browser and simply drag the files there to be uploaded. The Java app is in the bottom left of your dashboard.
With your files uploaded, you can sign into Humyo from a web browser on any computer and get access to your uploaded files.
7 Coolest Web Apps You Might Not Know About But Should
There are many web apps out there, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing The 7 Coolest Web Apps You Might Not Know About But Should. Read each entry in the list and see which tool suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more web apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
icloud
icloud lets you do just that. icloud is a web service that provides its users with a virtual desktop. After creating an account and signing in to it, you virtual desktop loads up.
WobZIP
WobZIP is a free web service created to unzip ZIP archives. All you do is upload your archive on the site and get the list of files it contains. If the archive is password protected, simply provide the password.
FontFonter
FontFonter is a free and simple to use website that will let you view any website in Web FontFonts. The site’s usage is extremely simple: you enter a website’s URL, FontFonter analyzes the webpage, and displays the website with its default fonts replaced by Web FontFonts.
Pilot Handwriting
Professional font creators have mastered the tools of their trade and know exactly how to bring their font concepts to life. To dodge the traditional font creation tools, you can use a wonderful service named Pilot Handwriting. Pilot Handwriting lets you create a font in your handwriting.
Favitt
Everyone knows how important search is. You search Google, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, Last.fm, Amazon and plenty of other sites for different products, content, images, videos etc. Unfortunately, none of these sites lets you customize the search interface as good as Favitt does. Favitt lets you simplify the search experience by bringing all these search engines in a customized start page.
Historious
Normally when you work with separate computers, there are not many ways you can share your bookmarks. Having access to your bookmarks therefore, is quite a problem. And Historious is its solution. Historious stores your bookmarks by indexing them, much like a search engine does.
Backupify
Backupify is a web service that can be used to backup the data you store on email servers and online social networks. A number of websites are supported including Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, Facebook, FriendFeed, Blogger, Hotmail, Picasa Web Albums, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar.
Now Find Available Parking Or Bus Timings Online With Roadify
In many areas of NYC over half of all the traffic is caused by people looking for parking. With so many cars around parking spots are rare and hard to find. Another transportation problem are buses that are seldom exactly on time; their published times are not always accurate and leave the passengers waiting at the stop at times. These two problems can easily be solved through Roadify.
Roadify is a free to use website that helps you find parking spots and bus times. The site has intelligently formed a community of users who are rewarded when they let each other know of available parking or bus timings.
People use Roadify via text messages. For example, after you have created your account online and specified your cellphone number, you can provide information on a parking spot the following way:
1. Start your text with the word “GIVE”
2. Add the location of the spot.
3. Add the number of minutes until the spot will be open. If it’s open now, say “now”.
“Give 322 7th St in 5 minutes”
“Give 4th St between 5th-6th Ave now”
People can also notify each other of bus timings in real time. As you give all this information to the Roadify users and help them out, you get StreetCARma Points. Give your parking spot before you go to get 5 StreetCARma points, an open parking spot to get 3 StreetCARma point and give a bus location to get 1 StreetCARma point. With enough points earned you can get free stuff from Roadify’s business partners. This stuff can include coffee, pizza, or any other deal that is available. The offers depend on the team you join on the site.
This service is a great concept and will surely be beneficial to residents of NYC.
Now Résumé & Portfolio Management Made Simple With Jobrary
In today’s competitive environment, when applying for a job you have to ensure that your résumé leaves a good impression. If you are going to apply to different positions you might vary the template used to create your CV. The same goes for your portfolio. Handling all those changes and sending out your different CVs to companies can become a tedious task. With Jobrary you can easily manage your CVs and portfolios.
Jobrary is a free web service that lets you create and manage a complete CV online. Before you start out you will need to sign up for an account. This process will include specifying your domain name which will appear as http://DOMAINname.jobrary.com/. This is the URL that employers can visit to view your résumé.
Before you finalize your CV you can choose to keep the URL private and inaccessible to employers. Switching from PUBLIC to PRIVATE is a one click action. Simply click on the button located on the top right of the CV editing page.
When it comes to your CV, numerous fields are offered by Jobrary. Fields are distributed categorically amongst Objective, Education, Experience, Skills, Certification, Reference, and any other custom category you would like to add. All categories have fields that allow you to share the complete information. Here is how a field in the Education category looks like:
And here is how a field in the Experience category looks like:
The Portfolio section lets you add pictures, videos, and PDFs to your CV.
These can be viewed and downloaded by the visitor to your CV’s URL. To obtain a physical copy of your CV, you can download its PDF version and print it out.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a good CV manager Jobrary is an option worth exploring.
The 5 (Really) Cool Windows Tools You Might Need
There are so many software available out there that can make your windows PC performs better, getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing 5 great freeware tools for you to make your lives easier than ever. Read each entry in the list and see which tool suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more software that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Soluto
Soluto is a freeware program for Windows operating systems. Although no system requirements are specified on the website’s page, I tested the program on a Vista 32 bit machine and it ran flawlessly.
Smart Defrag
Smart Defrag is a tiny Windows compatible utility sized at only 1.8 MB. When you run the program, you can view all your hard drive partitions. Click on the partition you feel is responding slowly, and perform an analysis to see if any files require defragmentation.
USB Write Protect
A flash drive virus works by writing itself onto your flash drive. If you could somehow temporarily disable the writing permissions on your drive, your flash drive would be more secure. At the same time, you will be unable to accidentally delete or modify the flash drive’s contents. USB Write Protect is tiny Windows utility sized at only 11 KB. You download the archive, extract it, and run the executable in it.
FontFrenzy
To clean up these redundant fonts, you could employ any one of countless font managers available on the web. My primary choice, however, would be FontFrenzy – a font manager with some extra font cleaning features. FontFrenzy is a freeware sized at only 490 KB and compatible with Windows. When you load it up, the program shows all fonts installed on your computer.
Bvckup
Bvckup is a program currently in its beta that works with Windows operating systems. The program has a number of interface and functionality features which set it apart from applications that perform the same auto-syncing tasks.
Having Project Collaboration Issues? Pivotal Tracker Gives Peace Of Mind
If you are working on a software or coding project as a group with each member working from a remote location, then chances are you will fall into some collaboration problems. Particularly for the project leader or client it would be difficult to coordinate everything and manage it all. Pivotal Tracker provides a solution to this problem.
Pivotal Tracker is a great collaboration tool for people working on a software or web coding project. You start work on a project by first creating an account on the site. After logging in you can create and name a new project.
Your project will start with 4 empty columns: Done, Current, Backlog, and Icebox.
You will also get a “tips” box in the bottom right corner helping you get familiarized with how Pivotal Tracker works.
Before you begin adding tasks to your project, I suggest you head on over the button that says “View” and click on “Members.”
The resultant window is where you can add others to your project.
You can add members and categorize them as Owner, Member, or a Viewer.
Returning to the main project, each task is called a “story” in Pivotal Tracker. Click on the “Add Story” button and enter the details of the task that will appear under the Icebox column.
You can categorize each task as a feature of the program, a bug, a chore, or a release. Points can be set for the task that you can use to signify its priority or the program’s progress level. Remember to assign the task to the relevant group member. Once you click on the “Save” button, your task will be saved and you can drag it to the “Current” or “Backlog” column.
Then the relevant group member will take a look at the task and complete it. Finished stories can be reviewed by the project leader or client who has the power to accept or reject the task.
Accepted tasks are moved to the Done tab.
Pivotal Tracker has a smooth flow and will take little time getting used to. For coders working as group, the site can be of great use.
Get All Your Favorite Linux Apps In One Place With Portable Linux Apps
If you are a computer troubleshooter you already appreciate the usefulness of portable applications. You can carry them around in your flash drive and easily use them if the user’s computer does not have them installed. But most of these apps are Windows compatible. Chances are that there are very portable app packages for Linux computers.
Thankfully I have found a website for my Linux readers that will eliminate the need to have a Linux portable apps package which you can carry around in your flash. The site I am referring to is “Portable Linux Apps.”
Portable Linux Apps is a free web service. It is basically a collection of numerous useful Linux apps. These apps are highly useful Linux programs that span BitTorrent clients, media players, instant messaging clients, drawing tools, compression tools, note taking tools, graphics tools, audio editors, and more.
Each file is presented without an extension. All you do is download a file, make it an executable, and then run the file to use it. Almost all the files have quite small download sizes which makes obtaining them very easy. All apps have already been tested to work on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), OpenSUSE 11.2, and Fedora 12 thus you can easily run them on your Linux machine.
Due to the tiny apps offered by Portable Linux Apps, you will not need any app packages on your flash drive. All you need to get the required apps is a Linux computer with web access.
Check out “Portable Linux Apps”
Fun Way To Collaborate With Your Friends And Family Online Using Stixy
Some people like to keep things organized on their work desk while others prefer stacks of documents scrambled on their desk. Regardless of the group you belong to, you could highly use the services offered by Stixy.
Stixy is a free to use website that acts as your portable work desk. Basically it is a virtual desk that operates from within your browser. You create an account on Stixy then upload files to your account; you get thumbnail views of each file; these thumbnails can be dragged around or stacked on top of each other, whichever way suits you best. Thus whether it is organization you want or that scrambled documents look, Stixy can help you out.
When you sign up on Stixy, there is an easy-to-follow tutorial provided that clarifies the site’s usage. On the right center pane you place your thumbnail shortcuts to files.
Widgets provided on the site let you access different types of files: notes, images, documents, or videos. When you select a widget, you can upload a file corresponding to the widget’s type.
Customization is a key element in Stixy’s interface. The Notes feature, for example, lets you customize the font style, size, and color of your notes.
Another one of Stixy’s brilliant features is the ability to share your ‘Stixyboard’ with other people on the web.
Since multiple boards can be set up, you can share different Stixyboards with different people.
All these features along with many others the site has to offer make Stixy an amazingly useful website that makes your documents portable. Pay Stixy a visit @ http://www.stixy.com/ and use the comments section to let me know what you think about it.
An Easy Solution To Synchronize Folders In Windows With Bvckup
I use two computer machines – a desktop and a laptop. I run Windows on both. Whenever I create a new file on either machine, I back it up on the other. Many people use this system of manual backup which is quite time consuming. A much better alternative is automatically file synchronization and one of the best programs for this is Bvckup.
Bvckup is a program currently in its beta that works with Windows operating systems. The program has a number of interface and functionality features which set it apart from applications that perform the same auto-synching tasks.
After installing the program you can view it monitor your files from your System Tray.
When you open Bvckup, its window program readjusts to the compact view by default to occupy the minimum space on your desktop.
To enable the backing up a folder, you simple add a new backup job. This means selecting a name / description of the backup and selecting the source plus destination folders.
If there are files in the source folder which you want excluded from the synchronization process, Bvckup lets you specify these files.
You can also choose between scheduled backup or automatic backups whenever Bvckup picks up a change in the source folder. The program detects changes in the source folder by first inspecting changes in the local hard drive area. If no local changes are found, it saves time by not even reading that part of the hard disk thereby eliminating unnecessary spin-ups of idle hard drives. Moreover while backing up files, whenever possible only the modified portion of the file is copied instead of the entire file – this saves time.
A complete backup log is maintained which details all errors that occurred, if any.
In conclusion, Bvckup is a competent and user friendly file backup solution for Windows. You should hurry up in getting it because the program is only free as long as it in beta.
You can get Bvckup from www.bvckup.com
