Review of Web 2.0 apps

Useful vs. Flashy = Zoho vs. Adobe

Rafe Needleman recently took at look at two Web-based productivity apps, Zoho’s new database, Zoho DB, and Adobe’s new word processor, BuzzWord. The apps showcase different schools of thought in Web 2.0 product development. On the one hand, we have Zoho, which continues to push out Web-based productivity apps that are functional, but not flashy. They’re apps for people who know what they want. And then there’s Adobe’s BuzzWord, a Web-based word processor that will seduce you with its gorgeous user interface but abandon you when you need to get real work done–like putting the text you create on a Web page.These two apps highlight how very early we are in the Web 2.0 development cycle. Apps should be gorgeous and functional. Certainly it’s technically feasible. We need to wait for the developers to catch up, though.

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