But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting  their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird.  As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

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Google Docs is the best office suite, that gives you the power of collaboration. Google Docs consists of 3 Core Office applications -

• Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Presentations

Google Document -

It’s similar to MS-WORD, it provides you with all the features that MS-Word gives you, from writing text, editing, managing, changing styles, inserting images, etc. The plus point that MS-Word doesn’t give you is – Direct conversion of that document to HTML / PDF / DOC / RTF / TXT / ODT within seconds. Even MS-WORD Converts the Document to HTML but the HTML converted isn’t clean & recommended for direct use with Web. As far as PDF is concerned you need to have additional Software..!!

Google Spreadsheets -

I haven’t worked with the spreadsheets that long & deep, but still experience with it is good enough. Though looking around you’ll find all the formulas that Excel Gives – Column Sorting, Auto-fill, Charts, & some of them like integration with Google finance that even Excel can’t provide .

Google Presentations -

Now this is something which would bring MS to it’s knees. Presentations is one big thing that Google has recently launched on it’s 9th Anniversary. It’s still in BETA Stage – you won’t be able to add Animations to it, still You can create slides, use themes, etc.

The common features to all these 3 Superb products are -

• No Installations – No need to install, except your Browser & Internet Connection.
• Anytime Anywhere access.
• Off-Line & On-Line – Edit Off-line ( Word / Excel / Powerpoint ), upload and Access online.
• Support for large base of Export Formats.
• Simultaneous Editing of the same document.
• Share your Documents with Group of People or Publish it on the WWW.
• Simple yet Secure.
• Restore previous versions of the Documents.
• Invite Users to help you EDIT or Just View the document.
• Lucrative Template / CSS Support

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