Zoho Notebook

Last week Zoho released Zoho notebook. It’s currently in a private alpha testing phase, but it will be released to the public sometime in March.

Techcrunch reports, 

‘Notebook is a product that allows users to create, aggregate, and collaborate content in an online whitespace from other Zoho services as well as any web content. Embedded applications will work just fine as well.’

Will Richardson has just posted a nice little You Tube Video of Zoho notebook in action (somehow I had missed the video when it appeared on the Techcruch blog). I have to say this looks like an impressive bit of kit, which has lots of possibilities for teachers and students. In particular for collaborative project work, policy development and development planning. The whiteboard feature looks like it could be very useful for maths and similar subjects.

Zoho really seems to be leading the way at the moment with this kind of technology. I was pretty impressed with Zoho Wiki that they released just before Christmas, hopefully I’ll have a chance to give it a really robust test sometimes in the next few weeks.

I wonder if we will ever get to a stage where we don’t need to rely on Microsoft Office quite as much as we do at the moment in schools? I also wounder how long it will be before Zoho gets bought up by Google?

Comments

[Ewan McIntosh]

Schools needn't be so dependent on Microsoft Office when Open Office has been around for years and recently tweaked to work, in my opinion, just as well. There is a case for kids getting to know corporate type software but, in Europe, public service and many private firms already make huge use of Open Office, far more than in the USA or Canada.

Zoho's great and provides the same kind of tools that will be integrated into Glow. It's been interesting to see the product grow over the last year or so, from one product to a whole suite. It's about an innovation a month at the mo.

Let's hope for more!