Here’s a look at the home page, which can look very different from one organization to another:

Note the familiar “activity stream” on the left, which you’ll find in all of the other enterprise social networking solutions. Podio allows you to add apps from the app store to workspace areas  called “Spaces.”  You can create as many Spaces as you need for your private network, or to share with external users such as clients or partners. The App Store makes it easy to set up specific tools for each of your Spaces. Podio also includes useful core tools such as a calendar, contacts area and a task management system like that you would find in solutions like Basecamp. These are all good features to include for a social platform in the workplace. Finally, having the ability to add other tools from the App Store gives each company a great deal of options.

Podio on the Go

There’s a free iPhone app for your Podio network, but I wasn’t as impressed with the it as I was with the Podio website. Currently, the iPhone app only provides access to a few core features such as the main activity stream, messaging, contacts, tasks and profiles; you don’t have access to any of the apps added to your Spaces from the App Store. I think it would make sense to include a way to include apps that you want your workforce to use while on the road on their mobile device.

Comparisons

So how does Podio compare to the current crop of corporate social platforms? Well, some have begun to give more options to add more features and customization, but none of them offer Podio’s range of specialty apps; I think its closest competitor could be a newly launched service called Convofy, which Simon reviewed recently.

Podio offers a free version for up to 10 users and a premium edition for $99/month for up to 25 users, and $4/month per additional user.

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• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Social Media in the Enterprise
• How emerging technologies will influence collaboration

PDF Viewers

The free Adobe Reader has been the de facto standard for viewing PDF files ever since it was introduced in 1993, but it has become bloated and vulnerable to malware attacks over the years. There are some free alternatives for viewing PDF files that are more streamlined and faster.

• Foxit PDF Reader is a lightweight PDF viewer for that is popular. (Windows)
• CoolPDF Reader is freeware that claims to be the smallest PDF reader available, at only 650kb. It can also convert PDF files to many different formats such as TXT, GIF, JPG and more. (Windows)
• PDF-XChange Viewer reads and edits PDF files for free. (Windows)
• Skim is an open-source PDF reader. (Mac)

Tools for Creating, Editing & Converting PDF Files

The good news is that just about every popular office application — including Microsoft Office 2007/2010, OpenOffice, Google Docs — now include built-in ways to save documents as PDF files. This means that many people no longer needs that expensive Adobe Acrobat license if all they need to do is create basic PDF files from documents. That said, there are also some useful standalone free tools for creating and editing PDF files:

• CutePDF Writer is my favorite free tool for creating PDF files outside of using the built-in PDF features of tools like Office and Google Docs. It installs a PDF printer that you send documents to in order to create them as PDF files. (Windows)
• PDF Creator creates PDF files for free, as well as converting them to other usable formats. (Windows)
• PrimoPDF is another free PDF writer for personal and commercial use. (Windows)
• HelloPDF converts PDF files to Microsoft Word document format, for free. (Windows)
• PDFill PDF Editor is the most robust free solution in this bunch, so don’t let its rather unimpressive website give you the wrong impression. It is chock full of features normally only found in premium PDF editors, such as the ability to merge files, convert files to multiple image formats, e-book options and more. (Windows)
• Skim, the open-source PDF reader I listed above, also includes some editing tools. (Mac)

e-Book Creation Tools

If you want to distribute your PDFs as e-books, you can use one of the free eBook publishing platforms.

• Stanza has a powerful e-book publishing solution for Windows and Mac.
• Calibre provides a publishing platform for Windows, Mac and even Linux.

Online PDF Tools

There are some free online tools that do the same things as the desktop tools listed above. Some let you edit PDF files, some convert them and others merge them. Here are some of the most popular solutions.

• PDFescape lets you create PDF files online; you don’t even need to register without even registering. However, if you do register (for free) then you can do other things such as save the PDF files online in your own secure account. There’s also a free PDF reader. You can create PDF files with up to 50 pages and up to 2 MB in size for free. Commercial use is acceptable, and there is no watermarked logo on any of the PDF pages. You can also password protect your PDF files.
• PDF to Word Convert PDF files to Word format with Nitro PDF’s online tool. The only catch is that it might take a little while to get the converted file.
• Nitro PDFHammer allows you to edit PDF files online and convert them to other formats.
• PDF2Word Online is another tool for converting PDF files to Word documents.
• Free OCR is a useful online service for extracting the text from PDF and image files. The one caveat is that it will only scan one-page PDF files or the first page of a multi-page PDF for free (although, of course, you could convert multiple page PDF files to images first, before uploading them to Free OCR).

Let us know your favorite free PDF tools in the comments.

Photo credit: cohdra

Xobni — an app that aims to help people get more from their email — is coming to the BlackBerry with Xobni Mobile. The models supported will be the Curve, Storm and Tour lines. Just as the Xobni plugin does for Microsoft Outlook, Xobni Mobile offers the ability to gather more information about your email contacts. You’ll be able to see not only threaded email conversations but also the contact’s social networking details,  such as their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.

Here’s what it looks like when you enter the Xobni Mobile app. You’ll see what looks like a regular contact list:

However, click on any contact and you”ll see a additional options such as your correspondence history with that particular contact in phone calls as well as emails. It also shows all of their accounts from the most popular social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook:

The thing I like most about Xobni is the way that it finds just about every contact you’ve ever communicated with. It improves the feeble search capabilities of Microsoft Outlook and the BlackBerry email client by automatically aggregating all of your contacts from emails and call logs — a huge time-saver. I’ve gotten so spoiled by this feature that whenever I use a system without Xobni installed I miss it.

Xobni One is a premium subscription service that adds more features and capabilities if you want to use Xobni Mobile together with Xobni for Microsoft Outlook. The plans available are either $3.99/month or $39.99/year. One of its most useful features is the way it automatically ranks your contacts according to the ones you communicate with the most. It’s another time-saver.

Xobni Mobile for BlackBerry costs $9.99 if you buy it without a Xobni One plan. If you get Xobni Mobile and Xobni One together, then the app costs $6.99 if you choose the $3.99/month plan, or it’s free if you opt for the $39.99/year plan.

I’ve been using Xobni for a few years now so I’ve seen it evolve over time. Releasing a mobile version of the useful product makes a great deal of sense and is perhaps overdue. It’s also interesting to see that the company released an app for the BlackBerry before the iPhone — I am sure that one is coming soon, though.

Let us know what you think of Xobni Mobile below.

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Adobe PDF is the most well-known e-book format; it’s been around since 1993. Adobe provides a free PDF reader with Adobe Reader and offers a commercial product called Adobe Acrobat for creating PDF files. Other programs also provide the ability to create documents in PDF format such as Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice and many freeware tools.

The Amazon Kindle series of e-readers has its own .azw format (a variation of MobiPocket format). Amazon has released free Kindle readers for the PC, Mac, iPhone & BlackBerry, which will allow you to read Kindle books without a Kindle. Here’s the Kindle library of e-books, which also includes some free books.

Barnes & Noble Nook hit the streets in November 2009 and is a serious challenger to Amazon’s Kindle. The Nook is based on Android, and supports EPUB, PDF and PDB formats. Just like Amazon does with its free Kindle reader, Barnes & Noble also provides a free eReader for multiple platforms (PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry). You can also find a bevvy of free e-books on the online library.

Sony has several models of e-readers available. It has its own eBookStore where you can download e-books and free readers for the PC and Mac. You can use this player to read free books you can download from the eBookStore, as well as from Google’s book library, which contains over one million public domain books available.  Sony Readers support the following formats: BBeB Book (LRF/LRX), PDF, TXT, RTF and ePub.

Microsoft Reader introduced the LIT format in 2000. I can’t believe it’s been a decade since Microsoft unleashed what it hoped was going to be the PDF killer. Sadly, that revolution never transpired, but Microsoft Reader is alive and kicking and free for creating and reading e-books on laptops, desktops, tablets and Windows Mobile devices.

Apple announced support for the free open e-book standard EPUB (Electronic Publication) in its iPad when it introduced the iBooks e-reader app in January. Obviously, it’s much too early to tell how good this app will turn out to be. However, based on all of the pre-orders for the device, one can safely guess that this new format will become popular very quickly. Apple’s iBookStore will have content from publishers Penguin Books, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Publishers, and Hachette Book Group USA.

Which e-reader do you use, and why?

Photo by Flickr user Jurvetson, licensed under CC-BY-2.0

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Over the years, my addiction didn’t stop, it merely morphed into new platforms and technologies. When the World Wide Web took off, I found nirvana with web sites like Moochers.com (sadly no longer around) that hosted tons of freeware programs. I couldn’t believe it — sites dedicated to free stuff. It only confirmed that I was not the only one with this addiction.

Fast-forward to recent times and, thanks to the Web 2.0 era of the “freemium” services, I’ve  found myself signing up for services I didn’t even need. Yes, as a technology writer I sign up for many apps in order to review, but I have to admit that I still sign up for many of them that I have no intentions on writing about. I guess old habits are hard to break.

Here’s my list of places to find the best free stuff — from freeware software to free web apps and services — now.

My Favorite Places to Find Freeware

There’s a major difference between freeware and shareware/adware. For me, freeware is the good stuff that comes without the usage restrictions or crippled features that are hallmarks of shareware. Freeware is also devoid of the advertisements that riddle their adware brethren. Here are my favorite places to find new freeware treasures that are safe from annoying ads and potential spyware.

Tucows has been around forever and has amassed a large collection of good, clean freeware.

NoNags is probably the oldest resource in this bunch, having started in 1995! The site hasn’t changed much in appearance, but it continues to provide top-grade freeware.

Snapfiles has been around since 1997, and has an impressive freeware section, organized into categories.

FileHippo doesn’t have a freeware-only section like the other sites in this round-up but I’m including it because I love its Update Checker tool that auto-updates a ton of applications installed on your system.

Kids Freeware does exactly what it says, provides a vast collection of freeware programs, games and more for kids.

SourceForge is the best place to find open-source applications.

My Favorite Places to Find Web Apps

Go2Web20 is the ultimate directory of Web 2.0 apps and services. Its new interface actually makes it fun to find just about any kind of web app you’ll ever want or need. Most of the apps include free basic plans with options to upgrade to premium packages if/when you’re ready to do so.

KillerStartups is another impressive index of available web apps. It’s not as easy to use as Go2Web20, but it does provide helpful mini-reviews for countless web apps.

My Favorite Places to Find Free Mobile Apps

Appolicious maintains a massive list of mobile apps available for the major mobile platforms such as the iPhone, Android and more. However, its specialty is the iPhone. You can filter any of their categories to display only free applications which is quite handy indeed.

Yappler is another favorite of mine not only because it makes it extremely easy to find good free apps for the iPhone but also because it lets you create lists of your favorite apps and games that you can share with anyone via email or on social networks. You can also embed a visual list of your favorite apps on your blog or web site.

Those are my favorite places to find cool free apps. Where do you look?

Photo by stock xchng user Sarej

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So here’s a roundup of some of the more popular tracking tools.

Monitoring Dashboards

Twazzup 2.0 beta (which Dawn wrote about last year) is a dashboard that gathers all the mentions of your brand on Twitter and presents them in an appealing and useful way.

Trackur is another powerful social media monitoring tool. It used to be premium-only, but a free basic plan was recently announced that allows you to monitor one keyword, which is sufficient for most small organizations and personal brands. One of the things I like is the way that you can export any search result to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.

SocialMention (which Dawn also wrote about last year) is similar to Trackur in that it will search all over the web for any mention of your keyword/brand. I like how you can set up alerts that will be emailed to you with results summaries. It also lets you break down search results according to where your brand is mentioned: blog posts, images, videos, news items and more. You can even see every time someone has saved a link from your web site/blog to Delicious or shared it on StumbleUpon.

Addictomatic presents all mentions of your keyword or brand on one nicely designed page. You’ll see images from Flickr, videos from YouTube, posts shared on Digg and much more.

Twitter Clients

Some people find it sufficient to keep track of their brand or other keywords of interest via their day-to-day Twitter client, such as TweetDeck, Seesmic or HootSuite. They accomplish this by simply creating a new column in the client that displays any tweets mentioning that keyword. The nice thing about this method is that you can reply and respond to people mentioning your brand or product, which makes it a good customer service tool.

Larger organizations that need more than one person to monitor Twitter can use a Twitter clients geared for teams, such as CoTweet, which lets multiple people respond to tweets at the same time. The other useful thing about CoTweet is the way it lets you turn tweets into tasks or action items that can be assigned to different team members, much like helpdesk tickets.

There are also tools that do nothing but track multiple hashtags/keywords on Twitter, such as Twitterfall, TweetGrid and my personal favorite of this type, Monitter. While Monitter doesn’t provide nearly as many columns or choices as TweetGrid, it does sport a slick user interface and feels faster. I do like the fact that TweetGrid lets you share a URL with all of the search terms you’ve assembled.

What tools do you use for social media monitoring?

Photo by: VivaLibre574

YuuGuu is a little different than the options outlined above, because it allows you to share your screen via instant messenger (IM). It also supports all of the major IM platforms such as Yahoo, MSN, AIM, GTalk and more. It also doesn’t require anyone (you or the people you share your screen with) to download and install anything, which should save lots of time and could avoid many headaches.

When you launch YuuGuu, it looks just like any other universal IM client, with all your friends listed from different services. However, the nice thing about YuuGuu is that you can share your screen with anyone by just clicking their name and selecting the “Show” option.

They will see something like this on their end:

That’s all there is to it. They click the link to view whatever you’re sharing on your desktop. Nothing to download or install and no emails invitations, no special session code to enter and no accounts to create. Just click and share.

This is what you will see on your end. Notice the pause button which lets you freeze the screensharing if you need to step away, or change something on your desktop and don’t want others to see what you’re doing. There’s also a free dial-in phone number for all sessions, with a unique conference code.

You can add other viewers to the session by clicking the “Add” button. The free version allows you to host up to five viewers at a time. You also have unlimited usage with other YuuGuu members, and up to 100 minutes per month with non-YuuGuu members. Every session includes the free telephone conference room. There are a few premium plans to choose from which allow unlimited usage with people outside of YuuGuu as well as support for teams and corporate environments. The free version is a good way to get your feet wet and see how you like it.

There’s also a feature called “Web Share,” which works the same way but it allows you to invite others who are not in your IM contact list. It generates a unique URL for your screen sharing session that anyone can view as long as they have the special PIN code.

Besides being able to conduct telephone conference calls during your online presentations with the dial-in phone number, you can also take advantage of YuuGuu’s Skype integration. This allows you to avoid long distance charges (in most cases) or save a great deal of expense with Skype’s reduced long distance rates.

I like the concept of conducting screen sharing sessions and presentations via IM; it makes the process so much easier. I also like not forcing anyone to download and install software and that you can also invite those that are not on your IM contact list.

I would like to see the option to see your contacts from other platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. I’d also like to see the ability to create groups so that you can quickly launch sessions for a group of people with a single click.

What do you think of using your IM contact list to initiate online presentations? What other tools do you use for sharing your screen?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

What’s the Problem?

I think part of the problem with blogs is that they are too static and dull. We need to infuse new life into blogs and make them more dynamic. Just as Flash added a freshness to web sites when it first appeared on the scene, we need to do something that will change the game for blogging.

The other part of the problem involves the incredible shrinking attention span of readers/viewers. Hollywood learned long ago that motion pictures need to reach out and grab the audience right away within the first 10 minutes or else its opening weekend will be its last. That’s why most movies look and feel like music videos these days. Quick cut editing and special effects reign supreme. Even the publishing industry has taken its queue from the movie industry and insist that its authors write tighter and more exciting stories.

What’s the Answer?

I believe the answer could be the same one that’s being touted as the potential savior of newspapers and magazines: The Apple iPad and similar devices, plus the new digital newsstand that it will usher in. Yes, I am suggesting that we look at blogs the same way we look at newspapers and magazines. It’s not a coincidence that many blogs have experienced increased subscriptions after changing to a more magazine-styled theme. Imagine providing your content in a more dynamic and exciting manner, like Wired’s demo iPad app:

Kiss Your RSS Goodbye?

Some pundits predict that subscribing to RSS feeds will become obsolete, thanks to technology such as PuSH (PubSubhubbub) and the proliferation of mobile applications. This could be why many blogging professionals have already started making their blogs available as iPhone apps. Their reasoning is that they want their work to be accessible and available to as many people as possible, and if it means porting it to a new platform, then so be it. The good news is that these same iPhone apps will also work on the iPad. Another factor in the increase of “blogs as apps” is the continuing decline in the cost of having an application developed. Pretty soon, releasing your own app will become as common as launching a blog.

Content is Still King

I’m not suggesting that glitz and glamor are better than substance and message. On the contrary, I firmly believe content will always remain the most important aspect of any blog, newspaper or magazine. I’m just saying that we cannot ignore the obvious truth of today’s readers and viewers. We cannot stick our heads in the sand and hope that the quality of our content alone will win the day. We need to deliver our best work (be it blog post, article, movie, book, etc.) in the best packaging available if we want to give it a chance to be consumed/digested and, ultimately, appreciated.

The new generation of mobile devices such as the iPad and other tablet computers will become ubiquitous and will help us deliver our message in exciting new ways. We should not lament this changing of the guard; instead we should embrace it and adapt to it, and take our blogging to new heights.

What do you think? Could iPads and similar devices usher in a new age of blogging?

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All of the tools covered here centralize the data, and allow visitors to see the feedback that’s been shared already, thus avoiding the headaches involved with dealing with duplicate entries. They also gives everyone an at-a-glance overview of the things that others are thinking and feeling. They benefit your public relations and give your customers a platform to communicate with your firm: a win-win scenario.

Obviously, these tools also give your customers a way to vent and release frustrations. While some companies don’t like to see or hear anything negative about their organization, giving your users and consumers a way to talk to you  — and each another –  is a major plus in the long run. It shows everyone your level of confidence in what you do and signifies a level of commitment to customer satisfaction. Today, consumers are all web-savvy and expect to be able to communicate with an organization and its community.

Here are several services for establishing a customer care center in the cloud for your brand. They’re all easy to set up, and in most cases provide a free package so you can test drive them to see if they have the functionality you need.

GetSatisfaction. I’ll start with the two “gold standard” apps that compete in this space: GetSatisfaction and UserVoice. In a nutshell, GetSatisfaction excels at letting you communicate with your users/customers. You can give status updates on your service, answer questions and provide a useful Frequently Asked Questions list. It also provides your community with a forum-like service to help one another with problems they’re experiencing. GetSatisfaction has different premium plans that allow you to host this service on your own web site, while there’s also a GetSatisfaction-hosted basic free plan, which lets you see how it all works.

UserVoice also lets your users/customers report problems and ask questions, but it particularly excels at letting them submit ideas for new features. Each user gets a limited amount of votes so they have to pick and choose which ideas/suggestions they like the most.

UserVoice also provides a free basic plan for one forum, and recently removed usage limits on all accounts in favor of a “fair usage” limit. This means if your web site has less than 10M pageviews a month, then you’ll have unlimited usage.

Google Moderator is a free way to create a forum where your users can vote on the features they most want to see for your product or service. It works similarly to UserVoice but there’s no voting limits for users. For example, here’s one that was created to track ideas and suggestions for Google Buzz features: How to Fix Google Buzz.

Zoho Discussions is Zoho’s customer feedback solution that works very much Google Moderator. You can track ideas and suggestions on how to improve your business/product or service as well as provide answers to problems. It also have multiple plans, including a basic free plan that allows up to two forums.

makefive is the most unusual solution in this roundup, because its primary function is to create and share lists of anything you can imagine. The reason why I’m suggesting this service is because your users can vote on the items in these lists and, best of all, they can even add new items to the lists. So, for example, you could create a Most Wanted Google Buzz Features list, and let people vote on existing ideas and even add their own ideas.

So there’s my five free ways to get customer feedback in a hurry. What tools do you use to get customer feedback? Please give us your feedback in the comments.

Photo by martin schmid on Photoxpress

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If you don’t already have a Zoho account, then you can sign up with your Facebook ID.

If you already have a Zoho account, you can connect your Zoho apps to your Facebook account by linking them in your account preferences:

While this is good news for the 400 million-plus Facebook users out there, I’m left wondering at the continued lack of support for other popular sign-in options, such as Twitter and (more importantly) OpenID. I hope that they will be added soon.

Does Facebook Connect support make Zoho a more attractive option for you?

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