Instacoll

This is a fresh attempt at a blog and I thought I would start with something to help out lazy people (like me) who do not like to move about for work! I am a hopeful entreprenure who collaborates with people from all over - India, US, UK etc. and far too many mails were flying around. Fortunately I came across this little programme (or program is you are in the US) called instacoll. It allows several people to edit a document at the same time. Unfortunately it supports only microsoft programmes i.e IE, MS Office etc. which I presume is due to the CEO Sabeer Bhatia's (the guy who co founded hotmail) earlier Microsoft linkages - they made him richer by $400,000,000!! He seems to have recovered from his earlier disasterous star-ups like arzoo.com. It remains to be seen if this (free) idea will take off.

The programme smartly interacts with skype contacts and with a resonable bandwidth (I have tested it on a 0.5 meg connection and on a 6 meg con.) it allows users to talk on skype and co-edit docs / spreadsheets/ presentations. Controls are well designed allowing the initiater to limit the damage the other party can do! sign-up is simple, works off existing mail ID's - on the whole a well designed piece of software.

However I have the local weather to thank for all the browsing time - snowfall in the Midlands (that is in England). Trains delayed, roads closed and believe me driving in the snow is not a plesant experience especially if one is from the tropics. Why the whole country grinds to a halt in inclement weather that too with adequte warning is another issue altogether.