Rent-a-Text

The Chronicle's Wired Campus reports that students are turning to textbook rentals to defray the cost of higher education. I wonder if that will catch on with law school texts. The texts are certainly expensive enough to make renting cheaper, and I wouldn't blame students for wanting to offload the depreciation hit you take when you drive a new law book off the lot.

But I have some questions. First, it seems odd to go into the business of renting textbooks when you could go into the business of publishing electronic textbooks or of coming up with a completely different model of providing background material. Next, I want my students to cut costs where they can, but I don't want to encourage them to do anything that impacts the actual education they get. Considering how many students ditch full briefing of cases for book briefing within a few weeks of their first year, would rental texts discourage even the book briefing? Or dare I hope that it would drive students back to full briefing? Finally, when I was in law school, one of the legal fraternities ran a textbook rental program. I wonder if that still happens.

Vocabulary Quiz

A group of academic researchers has developed a sytem for determining the reliability of Wikipedia authors. They explain it via a YouTube video and a wiki.

So I have to ask you: how old do you feel right now?

Collecting Student Info the Easy Way

A lot of us have surveys or forms we ask students to complete during the first week of class. This seems particularly true of professors who teach in the first-year curriculum in the fall semester. I have a survey that asks about prior writing experience, prior research experience, degrees earned, prior careers, and a few other things that give me an idea of where we're starting out as a writing group. I usually hand out a form and then put the responses in my course binder for that semester.

This year, though, I'm considering collecting some information via Google Docs' form capability. It lets you set up a spreadsheet with your categories of information, and then invites others to fill in the spreadsheet with their information. So the student fills in the form online (which alleviates The Handwriting Issue), and then all the information is automatically put into a spreadsheet for you. Students don't see anyone else's information unless you make the spreadsheet public.

Here's a tutorial on how Google Docs forms work(and an object lesson in ways you can use YouTube to teach!):

Pushback

A lot has been made of Millennial participation in this year's political primary season, but little of it has actually been written by the Millennials. That's about to change at a new blog called Pushback:

Young people today are becoming politically engaged at a faster rate than any other demographic. We are developing many of the online tools politicians use to spread their messages. We are starting non-profits and NGOs. We are organizing campaigns or running for office ourselves. As we look around the world we are about to inherit, our concerns are becoming more urgent–and harder to ignore.

Yet the media and right-wing politicians insist on treating us like some sort of bizarre alien tribe. They decry youth culture, present jaded views of what young people stand for, and, worst of all, speak for us instead of letting us speak for ourselves.
That’s why we’ve started Pushback, a blog written and edited by a diverse group of progressive young people from across the country.

Pushback’s goal is simple: Let young people speak for themselves, not just on stereotypically “youth-oriented” topics like music and celebrities, but on everything from healthcare to congressional races to American foreign policy.

We can’t stop those who continue to stereotype and attack us. But we can push back, and that’s why we’re here.

The Millennials are lately getting a little pushback from Xers. I certainly understand it. We spent the first half of our lives in the shadow of the Boomers, and we're apparently going to spend the other half in the shadow of the Millennials. But I have to admit . . . we just weren't doing this stuff in our 20's.

Students More Privacy-Savvy Than We Think

A new study from Educause indicates that students know more about Internet danger than we think. This confirms a recent Frontline episode (which you can watch online for free) on student Internet use.

Student View on Laptops

From The Daily Texan (the student newspaper at University of Texas):

VIEWPOINT: "Laptops: a necessary annoyance"
Posted: 6/12/08

Ever since college administrators across the nation made the push to blanket their
campuses with wireless internet access, the controversy surrounding laptops in the classroom has raged.In an article in Wednesday's Chronicle of Higher Education, several professors from across the country testified that a complete ban on laptops in classrooms stimulates discussion and limits distractions. But the professors overlook many of the positive aspects that come from having an endless pool of information at your fingertips in the classroom. How many times has a professor, mid-lecture, stumbled over an obscure historical date or a court case resolution and been kindly corrected by a laptop-wielding student?

Don't such occurrences actually improve the quality of the lecture and, in turn, the students' education?

The technology that students can bring to the classroom has other uses beyond enriching lectures and lessons. By bringing their laptops to class, students can swap and compare notes much more simply and efficiently, which also makes learning easier.Regardless of how annoying the social-networking addicts or iPhoto surfers are, we should not sacrifice all of the benefits of this technology because of a few irresponsible students who abuse it. There are ways to ease the tension between the technologically-inclined and those who prefer more traditional forms of note-taking. A professor could ask all of the students with laptops to sit in the back of the classroom, where their screens would not cause such a disturbance to those around them. Or, if professors are concerned about low levels of class participation, they could simply ask students to close their laptops once the note-taking segment of class is over and they want to facilitate a discussion.

Students will always find ways to occupy themselves in less-than-engaging classroom situations, be it with text messaging, doodling in their margins or the Sudoku puzzle in this very paper, and no professorial decree is going to change that.

Ostensibly, the students sitting in UT's classrooms are adults who will soon have to learn how to ignore the siren song of a Facebook notification and focus on tasks at hand, whether it is to pass a class or to become a productive asset to a future employer. While we do appreciate the paternal/maternal instinct of anti-laptop professors, the students at UT should be beyond the age of hand-holding and be able to hold their own in a college classroom without a teacher saying "let me see your eyes, boys and girls."

Fourth Annual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop

From my good friend and co-author Christine Hurt at The Conglomerate:

Fourth Annual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop --
Call for Papers
Posted by Christine Hurt

Back by popular demand: the Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop for
untenured law professors or candidates entering the law teaching market this
fall. The submission deadline for completed papers is June 30, 2008.

Conglomerate has now hosted this workshop for the past three summers, and
we have come to believe that the workshop provides a great service of matching
junior authors with more senior experts in their field and also with other
readers inside and outside of the academy.

The Fourth Annual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop will be live online
around July 28, 2008, with allowance for the schedules of our commentators. We
will host one or two papers each week, with the paper and solicited comments
posted the morning the paper is showcased. We anticipate hosting no more than
five papers to ensure reader participation and attention for the duration of the
workshop. Because of this desire to narrow the field somewhat, not every paper
will be selected for public posting on the workshop. Criteria for selection will
work to create a roster of papers that

* add to the existing literature on that topic
* are at a point of substantial completeness
* from junior academics
* at a wide array of academic institutions
* on topics that fit closely with the interests of the authors and readers of Conglomerate.

Although the umbrella of corporate law covers many topics, we will choose
topics that allow us to easily solicit expert commentary and that attract reader
comments. We are not deluded enough to believe that being chosen for the
workshop has value in and of itself; the value lies in attracting commentary and
reader suggestions as part of the workshop. Thus, we see no value in choosing an
otherwise excellent and intriguing paper if we cannot use our networks to line
up expert commentary. In addition, we feel that the greatest value of the
workshop lies in giving feedback and exposure to junior law professors.
Therefore, papers chosen will be authored by those junior academics in full-time
academic positions, whether visiting assistant professors, fellows, or
tenure-track professors. Papers from practitioners will only be chosen in the
rare circumstance in which the author is actively pursuing an academic
appointment in the upcoming hiring season.

Call for Papers:
If you are finishing up a scholarly article this summer on a topic that may be interesting to Conglomerate’s readers – such as corporate law, securities, contracts, business tax, finance, antitrust or law and economics – we would like to invite you to submit a completed draft to be considered for the workshop. During the workshop, we will link to your paper and provide a forum for you to receive feedback on your paper before you publish it or present it at a conference, workshop or job talk. We may also consider articles accepted for publication if the paper has not reached the final editing stage. We know that many new faculty members do not have the opportunity to present papers at national conferences and find it challenging to get others in their field to read their work. Hopefully, this workshop will facilitate that
process.

The mechanics of the workshop are the same as in past years; we will post SSRN links to each paper in the workshop prior to the beginning week. On the specified day, a post will go up for the paper of the day, with an abstract of your paper and some initial comments by invited guest commentator(s). Afterward, you can respond in the comments to the commentator, and readers will post additional comments, creating a cyber discussion of your paper. If you read the blog or know us personally, you know that we strive to be the "if you can’t say something nice" people, but the workshop will not be helpful unless commentators are honest critics. So, we will be supportive of your work, but give constructive criticism as necessary. We will also prohibit anonymous comments in an effort to make sure only serious commenters
participate. However, you are advised that your paper will be accessible to the public on SSRN and via links on our blog and that we anticipate having relatively high reader traffic during the workshop.

If any of this sounds good to you, please email me (achurt@illinois.edu) with your
information, an abstract of your article, and your completed draft by June 30, 2008. No submission will be accepted on the basis of an abstract without a draft. Likewise, contact me if you have any questions. And most importantly, please pass this invitation to others that may be interested.

Call for Commentators:
If you are a reader and would like to be a commentator for one of the papers presented, please let me know that as well. If you were a presenter in a previous year's workshop, then you may feel moved to repay the benefits you received by stepping into that role this year. And, just because you don't call me, that doesn't mean I won't be calling you!

Sample Facebook Course Page

Another way to communicate with students without having to become Facebook Friends with them is to create a Facebook Group for the class. Students can join the group and get updates on things posted to the page. The group can be either open to the general Facebook public, viewable by invitation only but listed as a Facebook group, or viewable by invitation only and unlisted.

I set up a mock class page just to give you an idea of what you can do with it. It certainly doesn't take the place of a more dynamic course web page, but it's a good method of communicating with students. It also gives you one more method of having online office hours via a live chat (TWEN also has a live discussion function, and there are tons of other chat options like Google Chat).

The mock class Facebook page is called McGaugh Sample Class I.

Anytime I make a change/addition to the page, anyone subscribed to that group will get a message on their Facebook "news feed" like this:

Tracy wrote on the wall for the group McGaugh
Sample Class I, section C (Fall 2008).7:06pm

The Green Aspect of Laptops

From a college/graduate(?) student blog, some arguments for allowing use of laptops that I hadn't heard before, especially from students. This is worth thinking about:

By typing out lectures notes, students can save money on school supplies as well as space. Since I have begun to use my laptop in class, I have not had to purchase as many pencils, pens, and notebooks, among other supplies, than I did before. Such supplies can be very costly for a college student. Also, I tend to save all my schoolwork and notes for every class throughout each semester; this collection becomes my personal library. As an English student, it is important that I am able to refer back to older work incase I need to refresh on a particular subject. As you can imagine, my school binder gets very bulky towards the middle of the semester. However, by having digital versions of my notes and school work, I can save a lot of wasted paper. Also, I have more space at home that would have been devoted to storing school papers and textbooks; my home study room is not crowded with papers and junk. Instead, it is a comfortable place to read, study, and think.

In the larger scheme of things, allowing students to use laptops can also help save the school a lot of waste and money. Many schools now implement the use of Blackboard, an application that allows professors to directly communicate with students from all of their classes and store class documents for student access. Having digital versions of class materials can save a lot of paper because professors would not always need to print out countless handouts and/or overheads. They can also avoid trashing a multitude of extra paperwork. Naturally, schools would save money on fixing and replacing office equipment, like photo-copiers and printers, ink, and also take advantage of the opportunity to save waste and recycle.

The debate rages on . . .

There's a piece in today's Chronicle about the laptop debate in law schools.

If you're looking for ways to drive yourself insane . . .

. . . I highly recommend trying to figure out the perfect permutation and combination of free online calendaring/reminder services. I thought I had really done something when I combined Jott with Sandy yesterday afternoon. But then Sandy didn't wake me up with a text message this morning like she promised she would. So the search was on again.

I had no idea at all there were so many online things you could use to keep yourself organized. Getting organized is a super tricky balance. You want enough organization so you show up when and where you're supposed to with all your i's dotted and t's crossed, but not so much organization that either you don't show up when you're supposed to because you're futzing with your organizational tools or haven't futzed with them properly (there were the three or four meetings last August that I missed because my computer didn't realize we had crossed time zones to New York) or you don't show up because you're too overwhelmed by your organizational tools to use them (I had a DayTimer in the early '90's. It was a great system, but when I tried to start using the software with the paper system, I ended up in a corner rocking backing forth and humming "Pressure.").

So here's what I looked at today:

Jott in combination with Google Calendar (which I already use quite a bit and love)
This had promise but lacked a to-do list within Google Calendar. I wanted to add things to my to-do list via Jott (which sends you e-mails via a voice mail) without having to actually look at Jott for the online version of the list. I was pretty sure that would send me to the corner to rock.

Cozi
I almost chunked the whole Jott/Google Calendar thing for Cozi. It's meant to be an online calendar for families and includes a shopping list feature that I thought would be incredibly handy. You and whomever else might participate in your household shopping could assemble the list together (but separately) and then you could print the master list for the store. Even better, when you left the printed master list at home, you could call a toll-free number and have the list text-messaged to you on your cell phone. Funny story: My husband was at the store one afternoon grocery shopping (or "food shopping" as it seems to be called in the northeast), and I called him to add a couple of things to the list. His phone rang right next to me at the dining room table. So I drove it to him at the store, found him strolling the the aisles, handed the phone to him, and then called him and said, "we also need pasta." I'm just saying, a smart shopping list catches my attention. Ultimately, the prospect of moving my calendar from Google to Cozi started to overwhelm me (". . . and you cannot deal with PRESSURE . . .").

Jott in combination with Sandy and Google Calendar
Do I even need to describe the tailspin that this combination started to put me in? ("Sandy, can't you see, I'm in misery . . .")

Jott in combination with Google Calendar and Remember the Milk
This was the one that carried the day. Remember the Milk is a to-do list, but it's a really, really smart to-do list. And you can add it to Google Calendar, so I had my calendar/to-do list combo. Then I added in Jott so I could call my calendar/to-do list combo and add things to either one via my cell phone.

One of the other things you can do with Jott is to blog with it. Sometime this week I'm going to Jott a blog entry just to see how it works. I added a lunch appointment to my calendar this morning with mixed results. Jott correctly added an appointment on the right day and time with the right person, but instead of "Lunch with John Smith," it said, "Watch John Smith." It was a little unnerving because I wasn't sure what had just happened. I had an image of someone in the Jott office in India saying to himself, "Oh dear, she's having lunch with John Smith. Better watch that guy."

So what did I learn about teaching today? Well, I learned a lot of things about different calendaring systems, so I can make some informed recommendations to my students. And I remembered that learning a new, complicated skill can push you to the brink. I think that's a good experience for law professors to have periodically. Scares a little empathy into you.

Integrating Facebook Into Your Course

I've been trying to think of different ways to integrate Facebook into my courses this fall. Obviously, as with any technology, I don't want to use it just for the sake of using it. Instead, I'm trying to think of ways I can use Facebook to serve existing purposes.

So here's something that came to me today. I've learned that students who use Facebook don't check e-mail as much. Instead, they rely on Facebook as their primary method of online communication. In the past, if I needed to get information to students between classes, I would either post a note on the TWEN discussion board or send the students a direct e-mail through TWEN. This fall, though, I think I'm going to do one of two things (haven't quite decided yet):

• Use the blog that I set up for podcasts through CALI for updates. Students can check the blog if they want for the updates. They can also add it to an RSS reader if they check on of those regularly. Or they can add the RSS feed application on Facebook, and have the updates post directly to their Facebook page.

OR

• Use The Wall on my Facebook profile page to post the messages/updates. Then students would get that information when they check their Facebook News Feed to see what their Facebook Friends have been up to. Of course, to do that, they would have to add me as a Facebook Friend, and I'm not sure I want to do mandate that. That has a very "creepy treehouse" feel to it.

It's about getting the information to them where they are instead of making them go someplace else to get the information. A few years ago, my student evaluations mentioned universally how much they appreciated getting e-mails and TWEN message board postings between classes. This past year, several evals mentioned that they didn't like having to check their e-mail for course info. It's possible that using Facebook would be a solution since it wouldn't require students to do something they're not already doing.

Sandy

If you think Jott is cool (and if you don't, you probably just want to stop reading now), combine Jott with Sandy, and now you've got a system!

I don't think there's necessarily a direct teaching application for Sandy & Jott together. However, I think this could be something worth recommending to a student who seems to have trouble keeping it together, especially if he or she is missing deadlines.

Sandy is an online personal assistant program. If you pair Sandy with Jott, then you can call Sandy with the things you need reminding of, and then Sandy will remind you of them through the method of your choice: e-mail or text message. Sandy takes a little while to figure out, but it looks like it could be worth it if you -- or your students -- struggle with a way to be reminded of the myriad of things going on in life (at any given time, I have 35-40 law students in a writing-intensive course, plus two elementary-aged children of my own, and then all of the general faculty and life stuff -- I'm drowning in deadlines and to-dos, so I'll take any help I can get!).

Do *not* send e-mails from the car . . . without Jott.

I noticed this past year that I was getting e-mails from students with the "sent from my Blackberry" imprint during times that I knew they were in traffic. I'll admit that I have been known to place or take a cell phone call in my car without using my hands-free earpiece. But I try to wait until I'm completely out of the car before I begin typing.

Interestingly, a couple of former Microsoft nerds in Seattle have come up with a free service so folks can send e-mails and text messages from their cell phones and not have to resort to typing in the car. Sending yourself or someone else a voice message that turns into a text message or e-mail is also faster (sometimes) than stopping what you're doing to send the e-mail or text from your cell phone. Of course, many of you have likely already come up with a way to send yourself messages during your commute. My favorite has always been just calling my office phone or home phone to remind myself of things. But if I had my druthers, I'd prefer to send myself an e-mail (those who know me know that I barely pick up voice mail anymore -- it's so 90's!).

So that's where Jott comes in. Technology Review explains:

You can "jott" by calling Jott's toll-free number from your cell phone,
specifying who should receive your message (for example, "myself" or "family"),
and dictating for up to 30 seconds. Within minutes, your message or reminder is
transcribed and e-mailed or text-messaged to the appropriate parties.

You can also link Jott to your Google Calendar and put things on your calendar through this service. That's great for me, because I'm constantly telling people that I'd love to have lunch next week, then writing it on the next piece of scrap paper I find, and then waking up at 3:00 a.m. wondering if I'm supposed to be having lunch with someone the next day.

You have to be wondering, as I did, how well Jott transcribes different accents. For example, I tried Naturally Speaking a few years back to transcribe voice comments to print comments on student papers while I had pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. Native Texans who don't leave Texas have a hell of a time training voice recognition programs. Today, I have the same Texas twang with just a dash of year-on-Long-Island. So I tried a message that I thought was sure to confound whatever trasncription technology Jott uses: "buy waffles" -- which sounds a little like "bah walfulls" when I say it. And the damndest things happened. I got an e-mail from Jott that said "buy waffles" -- success!!

I discovered after a little research that the transcription technology is actually people in India manually transcribing the notes and sending the e-mails. (Isn't it funny how, when we were kids, we thought technology was run by people inside the device actually doing tasks manually, and now that's how technology actually works?) For most law professors' purposes, that's fine. However, you obviously wouldn't want to use this for something you wouldn't want to hand over in discovery.

As for its teaching applications, it could be very handy to have it set up with student e-mail addresses if you needed to cancel class or change the location of class with very little notice. Any other ideas?

Adobe Buzzword: Now that's an online app!

Adobe (of Acrobat Reader [pdf] fame) has gotten into the online apps game. And, in my opinion, it debuts at number one. This thing is fantastic. Much richer functionality than any of the others, including Zoho (which almost made me fall in love with it, the cad!). If you want something that works more like a word processor than anything else, use Adobe Buzzword. Now the menus take about 45 seconds to get used to. They don't look exactly like what you're accustomed to, but you'll quickly get the hang of it and see the similarities. Buzzword claims compatability with Word, but I haven't checked that out yet to see if it's better or worse than Google Docs and Zoho (to be honest, though, it would be hard for it to be clunkier than the Google Docs compatability).

It has all the things you need for online collaboration, including strikethrough, highlighting, and a comment function. What I like so much more about Buzzword's commenting function than the other online apps is that you don't have to click a bubble to see the comment. The comment just stays in the margin in a bubble (much like Word 2003). You can hide the comments, too, if you want to read the doc without that distraction.

More importantly, the resulting on-screen document looks more like a word processing document than a web page. In other words, you see the page breaks, and they appear automatically without you having to insert them, as you do in Google Docs and Zoho.

To get started with Buzzword, just go to the link in the first paragraph and sign up for an account.

You won't be sorry.

Dipping a Toe into Online Apps

If you think you might like to try online apps for in- or out-of-class exercises, here are some tips for getting started:

1. Be clear on why you want to use an online app. Don't use an online app just because everyone else is. Think about whether the online app will make things that you already do more convenient and engaging for the students.
2. Get familiar with the app first. Google Docs has a great video tutorial that doesn't take too long to go through. Other apps have similar tutorials.
3. Prep your students. They're likely going to need an account to access whatever you're planning to use, so make sure they get that before you start the assignment or in-class exercise. If you use Google Docs or Zoho, a Google account will do. Encourage students to choose a username that uses their first and last name. Work they do will be identified by their username, and you don't want to have to track down the identity of "babycakes923." Encourage your students to view the application's tutorial (but be prepared to spend a little class time explaining how things work).
4. Be flexible. This likely isn't going to go flawlessly the first couple of times you use it. Build some time into class for some technical glitches. Reassure your students that you'll work out the kinks together.

If you're looking for ideas on how you might use online apps in class, take a look at Google Educator and consider signing up for the daily teaching tips e-mail. And don't just blow past the stuff that's being used in elementary and secondary schools. That's where all the educational innovation is taking place. In fact, that's where these applications are being used the most for collaborative writing (which means that your students will expect collaborative writing tools to be used in law school when they get here in the not-so-distant future!).

Collaborative Writing Tools for a New Generation

One of the things I've been fascinated with for the last year has been online word processing and spreadsheet applications. I used them this past semester in my first-year legal writing course with mixed results. I think it will go more smoothly next time, having learned a lot from the first go-round, so I'm planning on using online apps again this coming fall.

I was in Atlanta this past weekend to give a presentation about online collaborative writing tools for the conference Teaching Drafting & Transactional Skills: The Basics & Beyond. I started with online word processing apps and featured Google Docs (my first love) and Zoho (my potential new love).

Bootleg on the Web describes Google Docs this way:

Google Docs runs like Microsoft Office; complete with word processing, spreadsheets and PowerPoint-style presentation software. The difference with Google Docs is everything is housed online, meaning there is no need for software installation and all your work is saved automatically on Google’s secure servers. Also, Google’s partnership with YouTube means imbedding The Dramatic Hamster in your next presentation is as simple as a click-and-drag. Google Docs lacks some functionality of Office, but when you compare prices ($$$ for MS Office vs. Free for Google Docs) and consider the extreme portability of Google Docs, the shortfalls don’t seem so great.

I was glad to see that I'm not the only one touting Zoho. This list at ebPublishing also includes Zoho as long as two others that should make Mac and Linux users happy.

Four Alternatives to Microsoft Office
Michael Singer : 6/3/08

Microsoft, it's the company that people love to hate but somehow just can't do without. Its software programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook are widely used and great for getting work done.

But Microsoft doesn't always have the edge when it comes to productivity tools. There are alternatives. In fact, there are several options that people at work and home can use for jotting down notes, crunching numbers, making a presentation, or just sending e-mail. Companies like Google offer similar programs that are not only easy to use and available from any Web-connected computer, they're also free. So if you are thinking about trying something new, here are my four top picks.

1) Google Docs and Spreadsheets: Google wasn't the first company to come up with the idea of offering a word processor or e-mail online, but they are one of the fastest
growing competitors. Normally known as a search engine, the company has been building its portfolio of collaboration software. What started with Gmail has now given way to Docs and Spreadsheets. Similar to Microsoft, you can click the toolbar buttons to bold, underline, indent, change font or number format, change cell background color, and so on. It's also good at recognizing Microsoft's file formats. Google does have a version of their office software that works even if you are not connected to the Internet, but it's only been publically available for a few weeks, so some of the bugs are not completely out of this yet.

2) Apple's iWork: If you own a Mac, you know about this software. While Microsoft does make a version its Office software available for Apple's computers, the good times are coming to an end soon. However, Apple's tools are just as effective even though the names are slightly different. Word becomes Pages and Excel translates to
Numbers in Mac-speak. My favorite is Keynote. The first time I saw a Steve Jobs use this software during a presentation, I was floored. When the graphics started flying around the screen, I knew that Apple had done it right. The software is $79 for a single computer and $99 for a family pack. There are some compatibility issues still with PC users, but Apple hopes to have them smoothed out soon.

3) Zoho: This is the local favorite. Based in Pleasanton, the company makes software similar to Google's Docs and Spreadsheets, but allows you to access through your Google or Yahoo account. Zoho has 16 different products including Writer, Sheet, Show, and E-mail with other business applications such as Project, CRM, and Invoice also available. The online service is free for subscribers, although the company offers paid versions of its software for larger organizations or small businesses. The company has taken lengths to be as compatible with Microsoft Office products and is currently working out entry-level versions for the Apple iPhone.

4) OpenOffice.org. It's not just for Linux users. This is free software is currently in version 2.0 and is expected to update to version 3.0 by next year. No matter, using
OpenOffice is very intuitive. Just like the other three Microsoft alternatives, OpenOffice.org allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations -- so named Writer, Calc, and Impress. The added benefit is that the software can be modified freely by any company or individual with the technical know-how. Version 3 is expected to be more compatible with the latest Microsoft and Apple operating systems as well as improving on its drawing capabilities.