Stories about: Zoho

Web-based office suites are coming into their own at last. For quite a while, Web-based suites -- which offered word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and other tools associated with desktop office suites -- were extolled not because they did these things well, but because they could do them at all. But the three major competitors, Google Docs, ThinkFree, and Zoho, have all made major improvements in recent months. They're becoming both broader, with more applications, and deeper, with more features and functionality in existing apps.

Mozilla unveiled the final beta of Firefox 3.0 Wednesday and will move on to the release candidate stage by freezing changes as early as next week.

If there's one thing the digital revolution has taught us, it's that we shouldn't get too attached to anything. Technology has a way of seizing long-held ideas and entrenched industries and turning them upside-down.

Two years ago, when Google took its first steps in the office productivity market, the move generated much buzz, mostly because it was seen as another competitive clash with Microsoft.

Mostly lost among the flock of announcements at Microsoft's Mix08 Web developer conference last week was the news that Redmond is starting to test a Web database service based on its popular SQL Server database management software.

Mozilla accelerated toward the final of Firefox 3 Monday by posting the fourth beta for download and immediately confirming that it would give developers just a week before it froze the code on the next.

Google's quest to keep browser-based applications running while offline is expanding to where it may be needed most: mobile devices.

Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for around US$44.6 billion in cash and shares, to better compete with Google in the market for online services.

Call it the second Internet bubble, a Web 2.0 revolution or just a resurgence in really useful tools for busy end users -- Web applications are catching on quickly.