Points of inflection We’ve just spent the last two days in London talking, presenting and demonstrating Xero to 650 accountants and bookkeepers across two separate conferences; the annual conference of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers and the ICAEW’s Sole Practitioner’s Conference. As Xero’s responsible adult in the UK I was lucky to enjoy the additional privilege of being invited to the ICB’s annual awards dinner on Thursday night at the historic Banqueting House on Whitehall. I was impressed not only by the grand architecture but also by ICB’s Garry Carter’s vision for the bookkeeping profession and with the reverence and importance that was conferred upon bookkeepers by HRH Prince Michael of Kent (ICB’s patron) during his talk.
Paperless Remember when everyone talked about how we would be a paperless society? It seems like we use paper more than ever. Let’s face it – everyone still uses paper. We end up with piles of it – bills, receipts, financial and insurance statements. And yet, the trend toward government and business entities wanting digital documents is growing. Build Instant Web Applications with Caspio Instant app templates to use "as-is" or customize as you wish! Public and internal interfaces embed directly in your own website, CMS, blog, or intranet. Knowledge Base (New) Manage your organization's important information in a centralized repository. Securely share documents, FAQs, training materials, industry knowledge - literally any type of information. Feedback Management (New)
Zoho DB Launched - Beats Google, Microsoft to Online Database Web Office suite vendor Zoho is continuing its rapid pace of new product releases, with an online database and reports app called Zoho DB. Zoho is making a habit of one-upping their competition, because as of now none of Google, Microsoft Office Live, or ThinkFree offer a comparable online database product. The closest competitor to Zoho DB is the startup DabbleDB, which is an impressive "part spreadsheet, part database, part collaboration app" that I reviewed when it launched in June 2006 (see also my May '06 post). Some of the main features in Zoho DB are: Converts spreadsheets into online databases (with CSV and TSV imports) Create reports, charts and pivot tables with drag-n-drop functionality Pivot Table Support Allows you to run SQL (select) Queries on the data.
SimpleDB Amazon SimpleDB is a highly available NoSQL data store that offloads the work of database administration. Developers simply store and query data items via web services requests and Amazon SimpleDB does the rest. Unbound by the strict requirements of a relational database, Amazon SimpleDB is optimized to provide high availability and flexibility, with little or no administrative burden. Behind the scenes, Amazon SimpleDB creates and manages multiple geographically distributed replicas of your data automatically to enable high availability and data durability. The service charges you only for the resources actually consumed in storing your data and serving your requests.
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Content Management Needs More than Store and Retrieve Every day, industry leaders are solving document and workflow chaos faster and cheaper than ever before. With SpringCM Cloud Content Management, they have access to powerful cloud-based automation, collaboration, and document management tools that help them put their content to work five times faster and for half the cost of software. And now you can take advantage of this too. The leader in Cloud ECM innovation and customer success, as recognized by... Take 2 minutes to hear how easy it is to get started with cloud ECM.
OfficeDrop Now Lets You Scan Documents To Social Networks — And The Cloud Last April, OfficeDrop raised $1 million in angel funding for its online solution that allows people to take all the paper documents cluttering their offices, scan them, then manage, organize, and store them in the cloud. With its round of angel funding, OfficeDrop set out to work on the development of mobile apps, and has since launched both iPhone and iPad apps that turns your Apple and Android devices into a scanner. Among other things, these apps allow users to take a picture of a recept when on a trip and send it their expense folders in OfficeDrop’s cloud “filing cabinet.” These apps also allow users to search documents on their phone, pulling up a receipt you scanned four months ago. Today, OfficeDrop wants to bring its mobile functionality back to the desktop, as it is announcing updates to its ScanDrop Mac and ScanDrop Lite apps (ScanDrop Lite is free) that let any Mac user integrate scanned paper with digital screenshots to create multi-age, searchable PDFs.