iPhone 3rd party Web software: iZoho worth it?

This service, iZoho, provides office (word processing, spreadsheeting, and presentation) software that can be used with the iPhone Safari browser. This company is assuming that it will work on the iPhone, since they won't get theirs until later today, like everyone else.

I've been testing it on their main site, Zoho, and I found the navigation lacking. Once you're in their writer software, it's not clear how you can switch to their other software. When I tried iZoho with the Firefox browser, I was able to open docs I had created in Zoho, but I didn't see how I could create docs in iZoho. [OK, now I see that there's a "Create New" link flush right.]

Right now, I can create and edit Microsoft Office docs, spreadsheets and presentations with the Treo via Documents to Go, and the then have the option of sending them as e-mail attachments. I don't see Zoho doing that--it doesn't solve the problem of managing MS Office files for the iPhone. Maybe someone with a new iPhone can give this a full evaluation, but from what I've seen Zoho is nothing remarkable, but I'm sure there will be many 3rd-party Web app companies competing for this new device.

Comments

[Sridhar Vembu]

Dr. Koslosky,
Thank you for trying out Zoho. Yes, we are working on unifying Zoho applications, so that moving from one to another would be a lot easier. As for iZoho, we have tested it on Safari 3, and as soon as iPhone comes out, we will do more testing and tuning.

As for MS Office files, while we support MS Office formats for import and export, we see ourselves as a web application. Most Zoho documents stay as web documents for much of their life-cycle - as an example, you will share a document with a colleague, rather than attach them in an email. This document-as-URL metaphor offers considerably more collaborative power. For instance
* Everyone is on the same version of the document when you share - we have a history feature so that no one can permanently overwrite a document
* You will know when the person you shared a document with logs in, so you can start a real time collaboration session.

Regards,
Sridhar Vembu