The Geeks meet with Jonathan Crow, director of marketing for ThinkFree, Inc. [ThinkFree Online|http://online.thinkfree.com/] is an Internet-based office productivity suite that blends Microsoft Office with the Internet. It is comprised of three applications—ThinkFree Write for word processing, ThinkFree Calc for spreadsheet management and ThinkFree Show for creating presentations—and is targeted at families, students and business professionals. Join the Geeks as they discuss a new way of opening, editing, and creating Office documents with ThinkFree Online.
!ThinkFree Online
[ThinkFree Online|http://online.thinkfree.com/] has been in beta since the summer of 2005 and upwards of 50,000 users have already tried it out. The official debut happens this Monday, April 24, and the Geeks are fortunate to have a representative of ThinkFree on the show to discuss their new service.
[thinkfree_screenshot_small.jpg|ThinkFree Online allows you to open, edit, and create Office documents in a web browser from any computer with an Internet connection. ThinkFree Online has been tested on most computers and browsers, including Internet Explorer 6.0, FireFox 1.5 and Safari 2.0. Operating systems supported include Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS X 10.4, Linux Fedora Core 3 and Haansoft Linux Workstation 2005.]
!Here are a few key features:
*Create Microsoft Office-compatible documents from the Web
*Open and edit your Office documents anywhere and anytime
*Post documents directly to your blog without any conversion
*Create powerful Web presentations using a familiar interface
*Convert your existing documents to PDF formatCollaborative capabilities
*Organization and categorization features
*Consistent user interface regardless of computing platform
!The Guest
Jonathan Crow, director of marketing for ThinkFree, Inc., brings more than a decade of experience in marketing and sales to ThinkFree. He serves as the companyís director of marketing, offering valuable insight and knowledge regarding leadership and marketing challenges faced by growing companies and brands.
Prior to joining ThinkFree, Jonathan was a marketing manager for SchoolMessenger, which is an education-telephony service company. While at the firm, he created, implemented and managed internal and external marketing programs. In addition, Jonathan managed the company’s internal PR program, resulting in a high level of successful outreach to the media.
Before SchoolMessenger, Jonathan worked as a product marketing manager at Hewlett-Packard, where he directed communications projects, developed cross-media content and managed tradeshow presentations.
Jonathan holds a B.A. in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
!About ThinkFree
ThinkFree Inc., headquartered in San Jose, California, is a leading developer of platform-independent office productivity solutions. A division of Haansoft Inc., a publicly held company on the Korean KOSDAQ stock market, ThinkFree’s mission is to offer market-leading software solutions that leverage the power of the Internet and provide users with a consistent, unified, and productive experience regardless of computing platform. For more information, please contact ThinkFree at +1 408 432 5074, or go to [ThinkFree|www.thinkfree.com].
! Geek News
!! Opera 9 Beta Released
An alternative web browser, [Opera|http://www.opera.com/], has released a beta of their newest browser with features including Widgets, BitTorrent, content blocking, and more. Download it for free and give it a try.
!! HD DVD Gets An Edge on Blu-ray?
[C-net News|http://news.com.com/HD+DVD+debut+ups+ante+in+high-stakes+game/2100-1041_3-6062089.html] is discussing the rivalry between the two competing formats for the next generation of movie format to replace DVD. HD DVD appears poised to be released before Blu-ray, getting a leg up in the marketplace. Don’t count Sony out as the next Playstation will be using Blu-ray.
Check out the Wikipedia for more information on [Blu-ray|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc] and [HD DVD|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD].
!! Star Control Lives!
The [Star Control series of games may be getting a sequel|http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24521940] if game author Alex Ness gets his way. For those of you unfamiliar with this series, especially Star Control 2, ranked by GameSpot as [one of the best games ever made|http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/greatestgames/p-7.html], it was released in the early ’90s and garnered a devoted following (including a Geek or two).
The [3DO|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DO] version of Star Control 2 was released with an open source license in 2002 under the name “The Ur-Quan Masters.” You can find the new updates at [http://sc2.sourceforge.net/] for Windows, OS X, and Linux versions. Work is also underway to network-enable the venerable games to played over the internet.
!! Commercials You Can’t Fast Forward Through
Philips has created what they call anti-commerical skip tuner technology, which according to Daily Tech has [caused quite a bit of uproar|http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1847]. You can also read [Philip’s response|http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1889].
! Relevant Show Links
