The Office Web Apps is made available in Windows Live as well as other organizations which have the application installed and configured on their SharePoint site.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (7 and 8 version), Firefox 3.5 and Safari, are a few browsers that officially support the Office web Apps. It also provides you with 25GB of free online storage on the Windows Live Skydrive where you can store all your documents, photos as well as your website favorites. Below is a rundown about its compatibility, integration and usage.

Microsoft Office Compatibility

Until now, one common issue faced by most people using online tools is that of the appearance of the documents once they are uploaded on the web. Usually, when we use these applications on our desktop, they appear a whole lot different from what they appear on the web after being uploaded. It is here that the new Office Web Apps hits the jackpot. The application is extremely formatted and designed to perfection.

A well formatted Microsoft Word Document in Office Web Apps

The Office Web Apps helps you open data formats, newsletters uploaded as word documents, etc. However, based on the new features, the Office Web Apps has surely scored higher than Google Docs.

Integrate with your Office

Generally, we use the Microsoft Office for creating sheets, documents and presentations, thus collecting our thoughts and decisions. This data is stored into these office documents in our computer. Well, the new Office Web Apps offers you a new method for storing these documents and also viewing it live on the browsers.

You can now easily view these documents and also edit them from the browsers. Thus, you now have a free hand on easily storing, editing and viewing all your important data from any place you want. Well, here is how you can start using this excellent application.

i. Login to Office Web Apps using your Windows Live ID.

ii. On the homepage, you will see various options for creating the online document. You can create a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote document.

iii. After selecting the type of document you want to create, you will be asked to enter the name of the document. Enter the desired name and click on Save.

iv. You will now be taken to the Office Web App where you can easily edit your document. It provides you will lots of features to help you create your documents easily.

v. Once you are done working on the document, you can save the changes you have made to the document by clicking on File -> Save.

Browsing the documents

Once you have uploaded or saved your documents on Windows Live, they appear as general web pages which open through a browser. Well, if you wish to browse these documents, follow the given steps :

i. Open Windows Live or the SharePoint Library and sign in.

ii. Click on My Documents on the home page. This will display the entire list of documents you have uploaded on the Windows Live.

iii. Now Click on any document that you wish to open.

iv. You will be taken to the Web App page where you will be able view your document.

v. You can also share the documents with other users. For this, all you need to do is just send the link for the document to the person with whom you want to share the document.

The best part is that your friends don’t have to install the same version of Office nor do they have to download any viewer to view these documents.

Editing documents

Apart from simply viewing these documents, Office Web Apps also allows you to edit these documents on the web browser. You can hence rewrite the content in your documents, add more slides, or even add some extra notes. Here is how you can edit your own documents.

i. Click on My Documents on your home page. This will open the entire list of documents that are stored in your Windows Live system.

ii. Now click on the particular document which you wish to edit.

iii. Now click on Edit in Browser option. This will help you to open the document with the editing options.

Make the desired changes in your document. The system has an autosave feature which automatically saves your changes at certain intervals of time. Or else, you can simply Click on Save option provided in the Word Web App.

Co-author and OneNote Web Apps in Excel

Working with different authors on the same sheets and documents at the same time using the Excel Web App and also the OneNote Web app is very easy with Office Web Apps. However, this document is stored in the basic central location which can be easily accessed by all the authors, anytime they wish.

Well, this was a basic overview of the Microsoft Office Web Apps. By now you must be familiar with the basic usage of the Office Web Apps. If you haven’t yet checked out on these apps, open your Windows Live right away and start learning about its new attractive features.

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Wefollow

Wefollow is a user powered Twitter directory. It provides you with a simple interface, making it easy for you to find Twitter users with similar interests. Wefollow lists users based on the followers count. The way it works is, any Twitter user can tweet to @wefollow hashtags that represent what categories they would like to be listed under. WeFollow only allows for three #hashtags per user, to make sure the directory isn’t cluttered.

Wefollow

Twubs

Twubs is a web service which features Twitter groups built around content aggregated from #hashtags. You can make use of tools such as, live tweet feed which pulls external images, videos and links and events scheduler.

You can search for your favorite topics and many other useful Twub features to communicate and share information with people of similar interests. With the embeddable Twub widget you can add feature rich, real-time community engagement to any web site or blog.

Twubs

Listorious

Listorious is designed with focus on the Twitter’s recently implemented feature – lists. Listorious makes it easy for you to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic.

It’s a nice medium for list creator to promote their lists. You can find some of the best Twitter lists organized neatly in a wide range of categories on Listorious. One can also check out the top Twitter lists, new lists, worth-following lists and top tags.

Listorious

TwitDoc

TwitDoc is an easy way to share documents on Twitter. You can just upload a file, shorten the URL, and post a tweet in no time. One can use an existing Twitter account, without having to register. TwitDoc also provides you with an Adobe AIR desktop client which enables you to drag and drop your files into your tweets. Currently it supports documents up to 15 MB in size, which include office documents, graphics and videos.

TwitDoc

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter is a web site which provides you with statistics like followers and tweets count over a time span of a week, month and quarter. You can use it to chart your progress in gaining followers. Twitter Counter also offers a chicklet counter that can be added to your website or blog to highlight your follower count.

Twitter Counter

TwitScoop

TwitScoop is in-short a real-time monitor for the trends and updates on Twitter.

It’s a web based real-time visualization utility that enables you to check out the hot trending topics and happenings on Twitter. TwitScoop detects growing trends in real-time, identifies breaking news pertaining to a wide range of topics like politics, technology etc., And, it monitors keywords along with custom graphs that display the activity for any given keyword on Twitter.
TwitScoop

Twittercal

Twittercal is an easy-to-use web service which enables you to connect your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. With TwitterCal, you can quickly add events to your Google Calender from your Twitter account.
Twittercal

What’s your favorite Twitter scoop? Do tell us in comments.

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FoxLingo Translator

FoxLingo Translator enables you to translate web pages and text. This extension has dictionaries, encyclopedias, text-to-speech engines, language identification, and language search features. It currently supports 71 languages. FoxLingo automatically translates websites by recognizing their domain.

Key Features:

• Web Page Translation: enables you to translate full web pages (over 3,000 different language pairs)
• Text Translation: translate text entered in the search box or selected on any web page you are browsing.
• Language Resources: over 90 language services like encyclopedias, text-to-speech, dictionaries etc.
• Grammar Check: to proofread texts and check for grammar, spelling, punctuation and style.
• Translated Search: searches foreign language web pages using terms written in your language.

FoxLingo Translator

abcTajpu

With abcTajpu, you can type in symbols, accented letters and international characters in Firefox and Thunderbird. These special characters can be typed either by using a keyboard macro which can be defined on your own or by using the context menu.

abcTajpu

Dictionary Switcher

This Firefox extension enables you to toggle between the installed dictionaries manually or automatically. It also displays the currently opted dictionary in the browser status bar.

Dictionary Switcher

Google Translator for Firefox

With Google Translator, you can translate any text to another language with ease. To translate text on a web page you are browsing, just select a text chunk, right-click and click on ‘Translate this text with Google Translator”. This add-on provides you with options to set preferences for the language you wish to translate to and whether or not to see the status bar icon for translation.

Google Translator for Firefox

Quick Locale Switcher

This Firefox add-on allows you to easily switch between languages with regard to the user interface, spell checker dictionary and website content in your Mozilla Firefox browser.

Features:

• Handy tool for all users involved with multilingual usage of Mozilla applications.
• Remembers the dictionary and content locale for each site and automatically switches when you load that site.
• Select from a list of around 200 locales – to choose which locales should appear in the menu.
• Quickly switch back to the previously selected locale with a keyboard shortcut.

Quick Locale Switcher

You might also want to check out BabelFish Instant Translation and gTranslate.

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One-Click Installer for WP

This Firefox extension can be used to install plug-ins and themes on your self-hosted WordPress blog(s) with just a single click.

The way this extension works is, it adds a new entry to the pop-up context menu. If you have added multiple blogs, then you will get a submenu where you can choose which blog to install to. By clicking on the new menu item, you can install the corresponding plugin or theme file on your WordPress blog.

Whether the file you are installing, is a plugin or a theme, is detected automatically. In order to make use of this Firefox extension, you need to have the ‘One Click Plugin Updater’ installed.

One-Click Installer for WP

ScribeFire Blog Editor

ScribeFire is a fully-featured blog editor which, enables you to easily post to your blog from the comfort of your browser. It allows you to drag and drop formatted text from web pages you are browsing. You can also upload images, take notes and post to multiple blogs.

Apart from WordPress, ScribeFire also supports other blogging platforms like Movable Type, Drupal, Textpattern etc.,

ScribeFire Blog Editor

Deepest Sender

Deepest Sender is a blogging client for Firefox. This add-on makes blogging much easier. You need not open a separate client or a web page to blog – all you have to do is either click the button in your toolbar or hit Ctrl+\ and you can start posting on your blog.

Some of the key advantages of Deepest Sender are – you can maintain multiple blog accounts and switch between them with ease. Deepest Sender has an integrated HTML editor with source and preview modes. This feature enables you to edit HTML or preview the post before actually publishing it.

Apart from these, it also holds some intriguing functionalities like music detection, drag and drop content from web pages, spell checker, offline mode and crash recovery.

It’s easy to install and runs with Firefox, SeaMonkey and XULRunner.

Deepest Sender

WordPress Helper

This Firefox extension helps you working with WordPress a breeze by providing useful help and tools. It makes it easy for you to access development related web pages of the WordPress Codex. Other key features of this add-on include update notifications on new WordPress versions available, custom shortcuts and web site profiles.

WordPress Helper

Screen Grab for WordPress

This add-on can be used to quickly capture a selected portion of the screen or the entire web page and upload it to your WordPress blog. You can maintain multiple blog accounts and choose between JPG and PNG formats for uploading images to your blog.

Screen Grab for WordPress

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The most popular lists, ranked by how many people follow them and the top tags are showcased on the right-hand side of the page.

You can check out the Twitter lists you have made and the lists you are on. You can even add any list from Twitter to Listorious that you find useful.

Listorious is an intriguing way to discover and follow the best Twitter lists.

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Sweetcron launched today as announced before, Sweetcron is php script that allows you to host your own lifestream on your site. Sweetcron is developed by Yongfook using, and it is written using Codeignitor PHP framework.

Installing Sweetcron is easy although not like wordpress installation, but it is still 5 mins installation. Grab the code if you want to host your lifestream with Sweetcron. You need to rename “config-sample.php” and “database-sample.php” to “config.php” and “database.php”, these files are located in system/application/config/ folder.

Create a database to use with this script, now open database.php file and fill the database details (username, password and database name). Open config.php file and change the baseurl value to reflect your domain name (line 14).

Now upload the files to your web root and point your browser to your lifestream you should see a link to install script. Click on this link it will take you through the installation steps, there are not many steps like wordpress create an admin account and you are done.

Once you install sweetcron go to admin dashboard, here you have to add feeds first to get the items to your lifestream. Go to feeds tab and add feeds like your blog, twitter, digg etc, whatever services you use for social communication you add here. Now go to Items tab and click fetch new items now, you should see your items now, your frontpage will show all your updates now.

Sweetcron has 2 themes as of now, one is sandbox which is simple and plan and the other is boxy theme which is quite good.

So far sweetcron delivers what it promised, there are some minor quirks though. If you use full RSS feeds like me and import them they will be imported in full, thus may create duplicate content. Also blog posts are showing as Photos instead of Posts or entries, it may be a problem with the way sweetcron template is designed. I will look more in to it. All the posts show comments link, i thought there is commenting system but there is no comment system, only a recommended link to disqus commenting, actually this is good if you use disqus or other commenting system in your blog also.

You can also post messages using sweetcrong but it doesn’t have any WYSIWYG editor yet. By default it updates every 30 minutes using a pseudo cron, you can run your server cron to change the update time interval. Follow the documentation and wiki to hack it to your needs.

Overall Sweetcron looks great, don’t expect a ton of features like wordpress, this is a simple script to pull your lifestream. This is the first public release and i am sure the later releases will have more features.

[Download Sweetcron]

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Sweetcron? in Yongfook words

Lifestreaming is, I feel, the future of blogging (and ReadWriteWeb agrees…). Our digital lives are becoming increasingly more fragmented as we spread what precious little time we have spare across more and more web services – we need a way of pulling that all together automatically, displaying it intuitively and in a way that encourages interaction. That’s what a lifestream should do, and that’s what you’ll be able to do on your own site on 28.8.8.

Sweetcron automatically updates with your latest activities on the web, the lifestream is customizable to your needs by editing templates. Sweetcron will be released under open source, so you can host your own lifestream. We don’t have any idea how it works and how easy to customize but you can see a live version of it at Yongfook site, by the looks it appears to be a great piece of software. I am sure if it is easy to use and gives flexibility for authors to customize it it may became a popular software for lifestream.

Check out the below embedded video demo posted by Yongfook.

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The first public commits of Ma.gnolia new version called M2 will be available by September. M2 is a ground-up rewrite of the Ma.gnolia with support for open standards like OpenID and OAuth.

Once M2 is launched, open source code can be downloaded and can be run as a independent social bookmarking site or federated site interacting with other ma.gnolia sites and to ma.gnolia.com itself. This is a good news, a federated social bookmarking site is an awesome idea.

There are not many details yet on what features are added to the new version and how much of the code is available as open source.

If you are interested on the project check out ma.gnolia.org and keep an eye on ma.gnolia blog. Via Downloadsqaud

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Flickr slide show itself got some improvement. Flickr blog notes that slide show is now available from any page with a group of photos on Flickr, like photo streams, sets tags, group pools and search results. On Flickr pages look for the icons for slide show and share this from there you can launch slide show. While you are on a slide show you will find the “share” link, click on that to get your embed code which you can out on your blog or website. Via Readwriteweb

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Zoho share is a smart move that keeps users with in Zoho suite instead of going to other sites for easy sharing of their documents. Zoho is pitching the new app as “Sharepoint meets youtube” and the design itself gives a feel of Youtube, with highly visible upload button, recent uploads, featured content etc.

If you are a Zoho user, Zoho share allows you to view all your published documents under your profile, and all the public content published by other Zoho users can be seen in Zoho share. The documents are shown in a Flash embeddable widget, this can be installed on other sites or blogs via an iFrame. Although powerpoint presentations look good, PDF files shown in full width inside the widget that makes them unreadable, you have to scroll for reading.

Supported file formats for sharing include html, doc, sxw, odt, trf, sxc, ods, csv, pps, ppt, odp, sxi, xls. The maximum file size limit is 3mb/file. Users can choose a license type for their documents while publishing.

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