The Download Blog

There are few, if any, horizontal platforms that offer users the capability to e-mail, create, and edit documents and pictures, and collaborate across all three major desktop computing platforms as well as almost every major smartphone platform. Glide 3.0 has just updated, introducing changes aimed at parental control and creating a child-friendly environment.

Glide's circular interface with pie-chart divisions makes navigating a more interesting task.

(Credit: Glide)

The new e-mail filter lets parents intercept all messages sent to a child's in-box. Parents can then approve or deny the e-mails so children can only see preapproved messages, filtering out pornographic spam, phishing attempts, and other junk. Parents need to create a secondary e-mail account in Glide that they can control access rights too, similar to how Glide allows rights controls for attachments if you're familiar with that system.

From there, parents will be able to access the child's e-mail from a drop-down menu on the upper right corner of the e-mail interface. When the parent enters the child's account, they can approve each e-mail individually or as a group by clicking on the e-mail and clicking Approve or Delete. Since all e-mails sent to the child default as unapproved until given a green light, parents don't have to worry about children seeing unauthorized e-mails.

Both children and adult can take advantage of the new drawing and coloring tool. It works a bit like MS Paint, except with Glide's collaborative tools built in, and a much more interesting interface. Colors appear as crayons in a box, and users can choose from preselected backgrounds, a blank canvas, or images in their own libraries to drawn on. Standard drawing tools are included, such as a freehand pen, line tools, typographic text, and shapes. Glide Draw also offers zooming and undo/redo. The tools can be accessed from the Draw text link at the bottom of Glide's main interface.

Existing features in Glide have also gotten a power boost. E-mail import and export capabilities have been overhauled. An Import button will copy the body text of an e-mail into a Glide Write document, while the new Export button creates a PDF, DOC, DOCX, or RTF out of the body text. Attachments can also be one-clicked to a destination folder, and Glide Writer and the Glide e-mail interfaces have seen a design redo.

Interestingly, the Glide Application suite has been integrated into Glide e-mail, so that the word processor, presentations application, photo editor, and collaborative tools are available to all e-mail recipients. Even if you're not a Glide user, the tools will be available to you. This includes automatic group discussions and online meetings. Utilizing Glide Desktop Applications (download for Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris) participants can synchronize the files that they're discussing.

Webkit-based browsers Safari and Chrome also earned full support in the Glide OS improvements.

Its stunning cross-platform usability and its equally impressive granular rights-granting for file-sharing and attachments aside, performance improvements appear to not have been part of the most recent Glide OS update. It's not the fastest loading Web application, but users looking for something that will function anywhere on almost any desktop or handheld should check it out.

TextFlow, a new way to collaboratively edit documents, is opening up to everyone Monday morning. Instead of going the real-time route like Zoho and Google Docs, the service opts to let a master editor corral multiple versions of the same Microsoft Word document inside of one file.

Each editor sends in a copy of the file (presumably via e-mail), and the master editor drags and drops all of them into a single bucket. The application then divides the edits into sections, letting the master editor pick whichever revisions make the most sense. When finished, he or she can convert it back to a single Word document.

The tool, developed by Nordic River Software, is just the beginning of a much broader plan to change the way all sorts of documents are edited by multiple parties. Creator and CEO of Nordic River Tomer Shalit envisions a much more encompassing, end-to-end solution where users will be able to send their work to a centralized drop box for the master editor to manage.

In the meantime, the current iteration manages to do all of this within an Adobe AIR application just 400 KB in size. Shalit says this system could eventually be ported over to the Web since it's been built entirely in Flash. "It could be online," Shalit says, "but in this first iteration of the product we chose to do AIR for its drag-and-drop capability." AIR also allows local client-side encryption, which Shalit says makes it a more secure editing platform when working with sensitive documents.

The service is completely free, but not without its limitations. It can handle only documents up to 10 pages in length, and from up to seven different editors--something Shalit says is not a technical limit, rather an issue of color blindness and horizontal screen real estate getting in the way of usability. It also cannot currently handle any kind of embedded charts or images, which is something that the team might add in a later version.

Going forward Shalit hopes to expand to accommodate other Office documents and popular file types, including PowerPoint presentations. There are also plans to launch a premium service that adds higher page limits, extended workflow handling, and higher quality encryption for heavy business users.

You can pick up TextFlow here. Also be sure to check out this quick demo of how it works with three different edits:

I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.

Once I got used to what the service isn't--it isn't a way to actually work on the files in a browser--I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.

The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.

I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser's cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.

Uncheck options in the Windows Live installer to avoid downloading programs you don't want or need.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You're prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.

Adjust your workspace by mousing over its name in the left pane and choosing an option from the popup menu.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Of course, there's not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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I fell in love with Zimbra's Ajax-style interface the first time I saw it.

Slick, powerful, and much more extensible than Microsoft Outlook ever dreamed of being. There was just one thing I hated about the Zimbra experience: the browser artifacts around the application that made me feel like I was stuck in a Web site, rather than living in an application that just happened to leverage the power of the Web.

No more. For the past few weeks I've been using Zimbra's new Prism-based Desktop. Verdict? It rocks. Take a look at the UI below:

Get to work, iPhone. As far as HyperOffice president Farzin Arsanjani is concerned, you've spent too much time avoiding real work.

If he has his way, your days loafing around in back pockets while the other mobile devices pull their weight are over. That's why HyperOffice (review) recently announced a plan to make its suite of online collaboration tools even better on the iPhone (trial beta).

While the productivity application for rapid-growth companies has already been accessible from mobile browsers, certain functions are limited within a constrained user interface. The iPhone, with its large screen and Safari browser, makes the full Web suite available to HyperOffice account holders, especially now that some back-end iPhone optimization work on HyperOffice's side is complete.

What's the biggie? A significant part of the company's value proposition rests on giving telecommuting employees, clients, and contractors access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange Server accounts through its software, and from any device with a browser. It's Arsanjani's hopes that HyperOffice is able to bridge the gap that keeps employees from using the popular iPhone as a business device, and what keeps small companies from choosing it.

Arsanjani goes on to lay out a road map for future iterations that might make HyperOffice a more valuable iPhone tool. The next version, expected to arrive a few months after Apple releases its iPhone SDK, will improve the Web application's interface and navigation. That's good since visiting a HyperOffice account from the iPhone requires some pretty intense zooming.

Native support for iCal is planned for the Web app's final version, Arsanjani says, and will sync with the Apple software to store data directly on the iPhone. Companies' account administrators will have sole discretion over whether storing data on the iPhone is allowed.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Whenever a big project is at hand, making sure that you follow through with important details takes planning. Whether it's as mundane as cleaning out the garage, confusing as organizing your daughter's soccer team, or complex as reworking the goals for a team at your company, an outline, a list, or a strategy can help you focus on the over-arching goal. It might be because it's easier to have visuals of bulleted lists or linear strategies to easily convey the steps necessary to complete a project. Think of it this way: Not having a plan of action is kind of like going to the grocery store without a list; sure, you'll remember a lot of stuff you need, but once you get home you're bound to smack yourself in the forehead saying, "Butter! How did I forget butter?"

I recently came across a great program for both Mac and PC that helps make the planning phases of a project much easier. MindManager helps you map out your thoughts and ideas using an intuitive graphical interface. You can start your own mind map with a central idea to work outwards from, or you can choose from several premade templates that focus on a specific task.... Read more

(Credit: CNET Networks)

CrossLoop (download it from CNET Download.com) provides a quick, easy, and completely free way to give a colleague, a friend, or a relative access to your computer. After you download and install the tiny client, your PC will be assigned a 12-digit access code each time you start the program. You can then give that number to another user to virtually share your desktop. Once connected, that user will have full access to your machine.

The odd nature of sharing a desktop cursor and the inability to add multiple users makes CrossLoop illogical for proper business presentations. However, the complete system access and 128-bit encrypted connection combine to create a great solution for low-budget, long-distance tech support.

Guests can open, edit, and save files, and use e-mail, IM, or any other program on your computer, as if they were sitting in front of the machine. No router configuration is required--a big plus. The key purpose here is collaboration; CrossLoop doesn't work without explicit permission from the host.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Since simplicity is a key attraction of CrossLoop, it lacks more advanced features. Currently, it doesn't support any file transfers, nor can more than two users share one desktop. Also, once the host machine starts a sharing session, the connection must be made in two minutes or it times out. While the interface and the features are simple, CrossLoop offers a secure and fast method for two users to collaborate on one PC.