The Flex Office Suite is (almost) Complete
Today, I’ve discovered yet another great Flex app that completes my online Flex Office basic suite. It’s called BList and once again, the ease of use of Flex has made ot possible for its creators to be really creative about the way to create spreadsheets. And what I really love is that you are not lost with their new way, since you’re litterally taken by the hand and everything is explained.
So now we have:
- Buzzword for the word processor
- BList for spreadsheets
- Sliderocket for presentations
- Lovely Charts for charts and diagrams
What else do we need for it to be really complete:
- A mail application, like GMail or LaszloMail (that is now GoWebtop) but with a more creative approach of course
- A good calendar app, something with simple tools to synchronize meetings ala Doodle for example, possibly synchronized with the mail system for invitation
- And obviously there is a lot of creativity needed in the personal database area
Now imagine if Adobe bought all of the existing startups mentioned above (they have already bought Buzzword) and created the missing tools to build up a great Flex online Office suite, possibly with AIR spin-offs for each application…
What do you think? Do you know of any other Flex app out there that could be integrated in this online Office suite? Would you be interested in such an integrated toolset? Would you or your company be ready to pay a subscription for it?
My name is Sébastien Arbogast, I’m 26 and I’m an IT consultant for Axen in Brussels, Belgium. I’ve been working there since I graduated in Computer Science Engineering from the “Institut National des Sciences Appliquées” in Rennes, France. Sebastien is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 25 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website.
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Comments
Rainer Eschen replied on Sun, 2008/02/10 - 5:55pm
So, the Excel replacement is here. This was missing in my post about Flex applications two weeks ago.
I had a look at the Blist video, and although it was not possible to completely listen to it, it's interesting to hear that the CEO talks about "the database for end users". Reality shows that Excel is indeed (mis-)used this way ;-).
Most interesting to me, with all these new office applications, is the collaboration, that is Internet-like and in the center of the user experience. This is something new we don't have in such a quality in the current office packages.
But, there's still something important we have no real solution for: trust. Although, the technical aspects of such implementations allow to get a better user experience, more comfortable workflows, for short: a bit of the innovation we missed the last years, people talk about their documents and misuse.
To use such applications you have to give up the control of your physical files. Technically, this is an advantage to me, because I can expect a better backup concept or anti-hacking security than with my desktop computer. And notebooks can be stolen anyway. The possibility of a loss of documents is smaller. So, there are a lot of advantages.
"Misuse" means using my documents to create something for spamming me or steal know-how, and the like. I discussed this the first time around 2001 when I presented the ideas of an "Online StarOffice" at Sun Microsystems to bankers. Last week there was a similar discussion in our project after my blog post. This is the emotional side of the "new office". Although, what if a company would do this? How long could such a company survive with such a reputation in the Internet age?
I wonder if Internet giants, like Google, Adobe, etc., can provide enough confidence. If so, new workflows can be established, that are more flexible and location-independent.
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