ZoHo

Return to Design Library (James Watson)
 * || ==**Zoho Creator**==

Description

 * An online tool that can be used to create custom applications for a variety of purposes.
 * Includes advanced high level scripting language called Deluge which allows easy automation of buttons, e-mail scripting, etc..
 * Application output can be embedded in webpages such as [|The SBCC Jazz Library].
 * Easy to develop online application creator that has database capabilities, rather than a strict database product.
 * Can assign varying levels of access to different accounts - read only, read & write, access to only some parts but not others. All data can be private and have strict access control, or you can make the whole thing public (as I did with the SBCC jazz library).

Activity

 * 1) Go to creator.zoho.com, and login using your zoho, google, or yahoo account.
 * 2) Click on "Create New Application"
 * 3) On the left side, click on "Import XLS"
 * 4) Open up excel, and load up a spreadsheet. Select all, and then copy and past into the data window.
 * 5) If you want to share this database, select the "Public" radio button on the lower right. Otherwise, leave it as "private"
 * 6) Click "create now"
 * 7) Done!

You can embed this in a webpage, sort, etc...

**Zoho Notebook**
(Jaime Serrano)

Description

 * An online tool for organizing information, it lets you combine text, images, audio, video, RSS feeds, documents and much more.
 * Content can easily be shared with others.
 * Easily collaborate with friends and team members.
 * Ability to leave and share comments for each page or the entire notebook.
 * Numerous plug-INS for Firefox that allow you instantly browse content on the internet and clip it directly to your Zoho notebook, including Skype plugin.

Instructions for Cadre

 * 1) Create a login or login using google account credential at [|notebook.zoho.com]
 * 2) Create new notebook
 * 3) Start adding content that you would like to save, share or collaborate.

Links to the demo I created for the Cadre and my Cadre gift post on my website:

 * [|Zoho Notebook - DL Articles (Demo)]
 * [|More cadre Gift details on my site!] ||

Cadre gift reflection(Jaime Serrano):
I have to start by saying that this was a great exercise. I especially enjoyed seeing everyone's presentation on Elluminate. The diversity of tools that the Cadre brought back was just amazing. I saw some tools that I had never heard of and some that I am familiar with, by the end of the night I had a new list of web tools to go out research and try for myself. It was also interesting to see how different people found completely different uses for the same tools. I want to thank each one of the Cadre members for researching and finding such great tools! For my Cadre gift I selected Zoho notebook and I have to say I found it to be very exciting for me because I had been looking for a tool like this one for a while. I hope that others find a this tool as useful I have. An additional advantage of the Zoho notebook that I found as I continued to use the notebook was the entire Zoho suite. In my opinion it is better than Google docs and Open Office because it has the entire suite of productivity programs. It has a word editor, spreadsheet, presentation, wiki, web page editing, and chatting software that are completely free. You can export them and open them in your favorite Microsoft, Google, or Open source application. Our assignment to bring back a Web 2.0 tool definitely has brought us all many gifts which will undoubtedly help us in our careers and in the classroom. I am eager to get a question of "Do you know of a program that..." and give them one of the many tools that I have learned about in our exercise. The Zoho notebook gift for me has definitely left a lasting and positive experience that I would have not had if it wasn't for the gift. Looking back on the excessive I wish I could have had more time to explore and create more notebooks on Zoho. I would also create a nicer looking notebook for everyone to see, its just amazing how quickly time flies when your having hard fun.

I posted this on the myomet blog space instead of the wiki, probably due to my confusion as to what went where:
 * Cadre gift reflection (from James):**

My Cadre Gift - plans vs. reality [|James Watson] [[|Cadre 11]] - 08/29/2008 During our all-too-brief time in VirtCamp, I was introduced to a host of new tools and ways of using them. The tough part was to choose which to present as a cadre gift - initially, I was aiming towards something I knew and had used previously, but I felt that it was not in the spirit of the program, so I kept on looking.

One of the tools that I was introduced to was the [|ZoHo suite] of applications - and at first I simply thought of it as a tool for everyday use and not a cadre gift. And I started using [|ZoHo Creator] at work to share our [|orchestra], [|jazz], and [|concert band] score libraries. But that was too simple - it took me about 10 minutes to export the data from our FileMaker Pro database, import into Zoho Creator, and embed in an extremely bare-bones webpage.

So I decided to do something else in the zoho suite called ZoHo Planner - and I really didn't like it. It was hard to setup, didn't quite have the features I was looking for, and got put on the back burner.

In fact, I also found another incredibly useful (to me) music streaming tool that I included as a bonus gift - [|SimplifyMedia] (see the wiki for more information). I knew at that point that there was something wrong with my plan for ZoHo Planner - it was duplicating work already done in the cadre, and I had no enthusiasm for it, and I wasn't using it in my daily life.

And I think that is the point of this reflection - once I made the decision to switch back to ZoHo creator as my gift, the enthusiasm came back. That to me seems to be the important part of making this technology work, and actually getting a good use out of it. Almost all of the presentations I saw on Wednesday night were by cadre members who had enthusiasm for their gift, and had fully embraced the usefulness of it.

Why didn't I go with Creator in the first place? I am my own worst enemy sometimes - I think part of me thought "this was too simple to be a good gift" - the actual process of creating the library databases took a good 45 seconds each of actual importing time. I did not have to create field names or modify the data - it just worked. Having used it quite a bit more since that time, I can see some limitations, but also some incredible potentials for its use in this program and in my personal life.

And I think that was my biggest problem with the gift process - I initially was trying make it an impersonal gift from one section of the web(zoho) to another (this cadre) rather than making it a personal gift from my daily use to this group of people & friends.

To pull back even farther, I think the bigger lesson here is that the web, now and in the future, is/will be more about the people using the tools rather than the feature set located therein. As this OMET program seems to be emphasizing, the community is the important part - tools will come and go. And we have an awesome set of tools right now, and an even more awesome community of people. I am excited to see where we can take this.