scrybe

Just as I was contemplating bringing a major bout of procrastination to an end, Scrbye lets me in.

notes


calendar


sends me an email reminder


can it sync w google calendar?
google calendar offers an address for ical; so far, so good


looks like scrybe needs a file from my disk

I downloaded the ical for Japanese holidays from google calendar then uploaded it to scrybe; it worked (kanji didn't render; double byte, but that's another story); but for things other than a series of dates, it seems like a lot of effort compared to pen and paper

but, it's only a matter of time



all in all, it's very smooth; I've got it on two machines now; eventually it will be able to sync w google calendar (via a url) and then allow editing of calendar while not connected to internet, for re-syncing upon reconnection. More or less have that now with abiword and google docs.

I bought a domain via google the other day. Seems like combining individual scrybe accounts w each of the (200 x 2g) mailboxes in the set of google apps for a domain would allow a reasonable biz setup for $10 p.a. Is that $0.05 per user per year? There must be a catch.

test post from docs.google.com to beta.blogger.com

test post from docs.google.com to beta.blogger.com

Evidently docs.google.com where I am writing this will allow direct posting to beta.blogger.com as well as a docs.google.com page

probably trivial now, but a trajectory which suggests I may not be buying many Microsoft products in the future

testing from left to right across the (default?) toolbar

bold

italic

underline

a few fonts and bullets

• Arial Black
• Comic Sans
• Courier New

highlight
8pt 10pt 12pt 14pt 18pt 24pt 36pt
red

hyperlink

__________
follow up:
* it was not a complete wysiwyg transfer: some of the spacing is wrong, a couple of the font sizes are wrong; the title of the document did not automatically populate the title field in the blogger template; anyway, trivial stuff (says he who could not write a line of code to save his life)
* the real deal is the collaboration in the document production stage. I've done this with the wordprocessor (nee Writely) and spreadsheet as well as the wiki (Jotspot before the purchase) - it all works well
* in terms of a competitor to standalone Office, I think we have 90% of the stuff 90% of us (my sample may vary from yours) use 90% of the time
* in terms of collaboration, it seems to embed web-native design thinking
* it may mean I will never know how Google's "Office2.0" as it were will compare to the Microsoft Vista+Office2007 combination and/or Socialtext and so on, because I would be hard-pressed to justify spending the time fooling around on the free trials as it is next to inconceivable that I pay the money to purchase them when the trial-period ends
* as it is, the combination of abiword (for offline) and the Google online wordprocessor (excellent collaboration) are already there
* for spreadsheets, the existing offline (OpenOffice) and Google speadsheet is not there yet; maybe another year
* for powerpoint, we have a ways to go yet (two years?)
* because I live in Japan, and enjoy the best cost/performance (especially when adjusted by income) broadband in the world (plus I don't travel much; plus I have already substituted Gmail for Outlook) I am biased toward this approach
* if the scrybe (demo on youtube) and parakey (IEEE) approaches work out, it suggests that an even greater proportion of people (slower and/or less constant broadband access, roadwarriors) may be able to do without Office, and it may be time to short Microsoft shares