For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
If you're trying to run your business without spending money on Microsoft Office, you know the occasional hassles that go with being on the receiving end of Office documents.
Google hopes to minimize that hassle with the Chrome Office Viewer extension, which makes it possible to view Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slide decks right inside the Google Chrome browser. Just a click a link to any such file and presto, it opens.
The extension is compatible with both the Windows and Mac versions of Chrome. At least, it's supposed to be. On my Windows 7-based system, I couldn't install the extension, which is currently in beta. The Chrome Web Store issued me this message: "This application is not supported on this computer. Installation has been disabled."
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Many business users rely heavily on Evernote for managing documents and other information, but the service's Achilles' heel has long been its lack of markup capabilities.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Spring is upon us, the time of year when lots of local businesses start stuffing neighborhood mailboxes with flyers for services like lawn care, landscaping, power washing, and so on.
That's a time-consuming hassle, of course, and technically it's against the law. Only U.S. postal workers are allowed to put anything into a mailbox. (Newspaper boxes are fair game, assuming there are any left.)
The new service StreetBid offers a different solution. Using your iPad, you snap a photo of each house you want to market to, add the street address, then enter a custom-tailored price for your service.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Mailbox for iOS
About a month ago I offered up four productivity-boosting replacements for stock iOS apps. Among them was Mailbox, a much-anticipated email manager that was available only by joining a lengthy waiting list. (Like, seriously lengthy. Some users found themselves in line behind hundreds of thousands of others.)
Thankfully, as of yesterday, Mailbox has no more waiting list, so it's available to all comers. The question is, does it succeed as a business tool?
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
If you rely heavily on Google services, as so many small-business users do these days, you're probably familiar with the black toolbar that spans the top of various Google services. It provides quick and convenient access to apps like Search, Gmail, Calendar, and so on.
Ah, but what happens when you're viewing a non-Google site? No toolbar, that's what.
Black Menu for Chrome puts all Google services just a click away. Once installed, this extension adds a button to your browser that reveals an attractive drop-down menu for all Google's best stuff: Search, Google+, Translate, Maps, Gmail, Calendar, and the like.
