Last week my colleague called me and told me to open a free account with Zoho.  Not wanting to sign up for another social networking site, I initially refused.  However, as she assured me that this had nothing to do with finding me a date, I gave in. 

Zoho, according to their Google description, is a “suite of online web applications geared towards increasing your productivity and offering easy collaboration.”  In the case of my co-worker, she told me that she had uploaded a multiple user spreadsheet to Zoho Sheet that previously was flying around via e-mail to users in different offices and even different companies. 

So I took two minutes to run through the formalities and—ta-da—just as she had said, I was able to access the spreadsheet through the Zoho portal.  Now, you may be thinking that this tip is not so interesting; there are other products that offer the same “file hosting” or “virtual server” services.  While that may be true, what I find super cool about this site is that Zoho Sheet allows multiple user to access the file at the same time and make real-time edits.  You can see who is accessing the document and send messages to other users.  Messages to other users?  Oh no, it may be just another social networking site!   All joking aside, I find Zoho Sheet to be a great way to collaborate on spreadsheets and when I need to take a copy on the road with me, I just export a local Excel file to my machine.

Zoho has many other features besides Zoho Sheet, including Zoho Writer and Zoho Show which I presume are kin to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.  There are also Business Apps for more complex things such as invoicing and project management, though it appears you only get a free trial with some.  You can explore all things that Zoho has to offer at www.zoho.com.