If you run a business then the odds are your going to need to use a word processor, spreadsheet or slide show software in your business. So like most businesses you go out and drop $200+ on Microsoft office and your business is ready to go.

Did you buy Microsoft Office?

Today you don’t have to use Office anymore. There are online applications that are not only superior to Office but are Free. Two of these applications are Zoho and Google Apps.

Have you tried these applications?

If you have not tried them then I suggest you do. One of the neat features of these products is that you can access your documents or spreadsheets anywhere. Instead of keeping multiple copies on various machines an online version makes it easier to access the information and share it.

Do you see these applications taking over Office?

I see in the future that these types of applications will over take Office and computers will similar to the gPC computers with just an Internet browser.

If we were to integrate Zoho into our cPanel would that have value?

A cartoon created by artist Rob Cottingham.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

First off, I’d like to wish a happy belated turkey day to any of our neighbors to the south. I hope you got your fill of pumpkin pie and saying thanks before heading into the chaos that is Black Friday. Maybe some of you are already back from the massacre at midnight, having scored yourself a deal on an HDTV or a cool new computer. Whatever the case, welcome back to the real world. Go ahead and kick those shoes off. It’s time to relax and enjoy some great posts from the blogosphere.

Kevan Gilbert works at Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. For some time now, he’s been plagued with the mystery of a building close to UGM, not knowing what happened inside. Looking at the front door, you find nothing but the address. Windows are few and far between and the “heavy coats of triple-thick concrete-milkshake paint” tell you nothing. After an afternoon stroll and some clever detective work, Kevan has solved the mystery of 645 East Hastings. No, the building has nothing to do with drugs, sex, cults, or the mob. It’s something much more interesting than that.

Darren Barefoot is always keen on making little observations and his latest has to do with the demise of spellchecking documents. For years, people actually proofread their work manually. Then spellcheckers came along and everyone relied on the software to find their errors. Now that just about every application has real-time spellchecking, there’s no need to hit F7 in Word anymore (for example). I still think you need to proofread, because the auto-checkers won’t recognize “wit” as an error when you meant to say “with”.

Matt stays on top of pretty well anything that has to do with blogging or the Internet lifestyle. When Adsense video units were launched some time back, people outside of the United States were upset that they were left out in the cold. Welcome to the warmth, because Adsense video units are now available in Canada and other countries. Google has started to roll out this feature to publishers now and “in the next few days you’ll see Video Unit in your AdSense account under AdSense Setup.”

Gary Ng of The Daily Kimchi recently celebrated a birthday, eating at Tropika restaurant at Aberdeen Mall in Richmond, BC. If your lunch break is coming up, I have to warn you that the pictures found within that post just might make your stomach growl. From drinking a young coconut to scarfing down some signature deep fried K.L. Crab, Gary stuffed himself with plenty of delicious food.

Ed Lau can’t help but be awesome, but he’s still bound to the same reality as we are. He ordered a set of Work Emotion CR Kai wheels for his Mazda 3 several months ago. A severe backorder led to endless waiting, but Ed’s patience has finally paid off because his new wheels are finally here. He’s got a couple of dim pictures in his post, showcasing the beautiful Japanese forged wheels in all their glory.

We have about 38 days left until the end of the year and have already reached our revenue goal for the year. We are about 200 customers shy of hitting 2000 hosting customer sign-ups for 2007. So being the leader in community evolved hosting provider were asking you for ideas on how to push 200 hosting sign-ups in before the end of the year with a budget of $200. The best idea as voted by us will be sent a 22″ monitor.

Rules to the Contest

• Submit into the comment section of this post your idea for how you would get 200 customers in 31 days with a $200 budget.
• You can submit more then one idea, remember that the winner is based on the best idea and not on volume.
• The contest is over on November 30th at midnight. If there are no ideas that are considered viable there will be no winners
• The monitor will be shipped anywhere in the world so anyone can enter.

Hints

• We are looking for a unique idea for how you would get 200 customers. If your idea involves Google AdWords your probably not going to win.
• Remember were not really concerned with revenue with this contest so focus more on how you would get 200 customers.
• Customers are people that pay money even if it is a penny. An example might be get your first month for a penny you get X package, and then where you would promote that to get your 200 customers.

Good Luck to everyone that enters and we look forward to seeing your idea’s.

Update: We will announce a winner on Monday

And I’m not talking from a blogger’s point of view.

Part of PayPerPost’s appeal with advertisers is the ability to request rather specific linkbacks to your site. For example, if Gary decided to purchase a few paid posts in the PPP marketplace for BlueFur, he could say that he wanted linkbacks to the main BlueFur site using the anchor text “Canada web hosting” or perhaps a link to the business page using “business hosting packages“. Whatever he wants, he can put in the request.

Of course, it’s still up to the individual publishers whether they want to snatch up the paid post opportunity or not, so if they believe that the content or linkback requirements are too stringent, they’ll pass. That has been part of the attractiveness of PayPerPost both for bloggers and for advertisers. With Google’s recent attack on PayPerPost, these linkbacks may not be nearly as valuable. You may have heard that just about every blog that has ever taken a PPP opportunity is now rocking a Google PageRank of zero. My blog is one such target.

I don’t take advantage of PPP opportunities on my blog anymore, but because I have a few in my archives, Google has decided to drop my blog to a PR0. From an advertiser’s point of view, the paid links are no longer on a PR5 site and as such, they don’t hold as much value in terms of improving their search engine ranking for the chosen keyword or keyword phrase. In this way, blog contests that involve linking back with a specific anchor text may not work anymore either.

So, what does this mean for advertisers? If they want to hit the first page of results for a chosen keyword phrase, they’ll either need to get it through “legitimate” and unsponsored links from other websites or — and this is why I suspect Google has decided to attack PPP — they could opt to buy a sponsored link from Google. You’ll notice that every SERP (search engine results page) has sponsored links and Google obviously wants more money (as we all do).

Will the PayPerPost marketplace suffer from these recent changes? I have every reason to believe so.

You may have noticed that we’ve starting running a few polls here on the BlueFur blog. It started with a meta-poll of sorts, asking you where should polls be placed. Votes were split pretty evenly between having the polls placed in the sidebar and within individual posts, so Gary has decided to do both. Some people have wondered how these polls are integrated into the blog in the first place and the answer is remarkably simple: Democracy.

The Democracy WordPress plug-in is very easy to use and it allows you to integrate polls into your blog, just like how Gary has done with this blog. Polls can be an excellent tool for gathering information from your readers. For a company blog like this, you can ask about everything from screen resolution to the definition of reliable hosting.

For personal blogs, you can ask for feedback from your readers regarding all sorts of things. I’ve been toying with the idea of a new header on my blog, for example, so it might be useful to have a poll to see which concept is the most appealing. Blogging isn’t a one-way street, after all; it’s a discussion and you’ve got to open up the lines of communication with your readers and visitors. Polls provide a quick and easy way to do that.

The Democracy WordPress plug-in is AJAX-based and has options for a lot of customization. You can even opt for IP logging!