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Yesterday I was eating lunch in an office in Copenhagen. Bizarrely, one of the project team I was working with, was attending a training course in the UK and was simultaneously sitting down to eat at my normal place of work at TVP in Reading.

I was worried that Googles integrated suite of Web 2.0 office applications would pose a threat to Zoho but another, more immediate competitor has just launched this week.

ThinkFree provides a similar service to Zoho offering free, Web-based Word, Excel and PowerPoint software. I found ThinkFree's charts matches the features in Excel (and is better than ZohoSheet and NumSum).

In fact, ThinkFree's compatibility with Microsoft Office is so awesome, at times, it is easy to forget you are not actually using Word/Excel/Powerpoint. I am surprised the use of the small toolbar icons does not constitute not a breach of copyright.

ExtremeTech produced an excellent, comprehensive review of ThinkFree which describes the features in more depth.

The city of Copenhagen (near Denmark) has a lot to commend it.

Unfortunately, the view from my hotel window is not one of them.

Probably the worst view in the world.

People often ask me 'Norman - when will you be updating your award-winning Sport bars of Europe meme ?'

No. 2 - The Irish Rover - Stroget, Copenhagen

Satellite feed - RTE. Thankfully, we were spared Tyler's orgasmic 'ON - REEE !'

Food feed - Irish Rover Burger (inevitably). Just like a standard burger in a English pub.

Smoke feed - Intense. Peaked around the time of the missed penalty.

Beer feed - Carls Special and Tuborg substituted at half-time for Leffe.

Game feed - A team in yellow outplayed and outclassed a team in red. The team in yellow had a goal disallowed and missed a penalty. The team in red appeared to win overall.

Just wrote a quick letter using ZohoWriter. An interesting product. Think of Microsoft Word on the Web. ZohoWriter supports the standard WYSIWG editor, document versioning, collaboration, blog publishing and export to Word/PDF formats. My document is saved safely on a server in the event of any media based disaster striking my PC.

The only comments I have was that it wasn't obvious how to suppress the header and footer when printing the final hard copy, I couldn't see a speel checker and WordPress.com wasn't listed in the list of supported blogging platforms. But don't quote me as I never took the time to RTFM so all of this may be possible.

Otherwise a decent product although I suspect Google will be unleashing a revamped version of Writely soon which could be interesting competition (nail in coffin) for ZohoWriter.

Web 2.0 aficionados, across the globe, held their collective breath today as Mr. Norman Brightside, a little known and largely unsung blogger, from Newcastle (near Norway) delivered his much awaited, quarterly update to his renowned State of the Blogosphere address.

Fresh from the successful launch of a book club, Brightside told an adoring and expectant audience:

The blogosphere is in a right old state. There are a few more blogs appearing and the rate of growth is directly proportional to a fascinating new factor. Blogging growth = Technorati apology growth

For example, last month you might see the apology appear once a day. Now you see the apology twice a day. You can immediately conclude that the blogosphere has doubled in size during the period.

And, err, that's it.

In the first 13 minutes of 20 April 2006, there was a single hit on this blog (no names, no pack-drill). Curiously, the recently added WordPress feed statistics reported a surprising and rather unlikely number of 53 estimated number of people who used certain tools to read your feed' in the same period.

Now this is simply not true. Most of these 53 'people' were RSS spiders and automatons dumbly and repeatedly polling for any activity. The associated human being is probably down the pub or asleep.

While the RSS feed may have been subscribed to at some point (by me in all probability) in the past, they are all now sitting unloved and unread in a still born Web 2.0 beta account.

Michael Brundage writes an popular article about what it is really like to work at Microsoft. Flexible working environment, minimal paperwork, hard work, gripes about managers, free drinks. So nothing too earth shattering or surprising there.

But what struck me about this blog is that it isn't a blog. It is simply a good old fashioned Web page.

No categories. No comments. No statistics. No trackbacks. No fancy themes. No calendar. No widgets. No plugins.

Just words that fill most of the screen on a HTML page. And undoubtedly the most interesting content I have stumbled across this week.

Sometimes, less is more.

I was seriously considering selling all my stock options and purchasing a 1GB USB memory stick for an amazing £30.

Then I thought I would get an account at box.net and upload all the precious files, that my wife sadly lost when my hard disk died a couple of years ago, there instead. This has the advantages that if I ever need to take my memory stick to Seattle to show Auntie Rita, this will be possible, I won’t be able to leave the memory stick in a client’s PC in Eastern Europe and, finally, it will cost me £30 less.

I haven’t used the box.net service much but there is a nice drag’n’drop interface for uploading folders and multiple files and it seems intuitive and quick. There is a free 1GB service available and you pay for additional storage which seems fair enough.

If you are interested in trying out the box.net service, then please, please click HERE! (so I can upgrade to the Deluxe, Premium, Gold 512GB service free of charge) as all the worst Web sites (used to) say.

I have started a book club. I am the only member. I realise that this is a little unusual but I prefer to choose the books myself rather than someone else (or even worse, the Daily Mail).

I held my first meeting last night which was very well attended by all members. Norman gave a fascinating review of 'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer. This book was written by a journalist and experienced climber who took part in a commercial, guided expedition to climb Mount Everest in May 1996. After reaching the summit, bad weather struck resulting in the death of eight climbers from three different expeditions.

Interestingly, although the author achieved his goal and succeeded in reaching the summit (shortly before the storm struck), there is hardly any euphoria or pleasure only the grim realisation that he is half way there, the descent is dangerous and his physical condition is deteriorating fast with the demands of the high altitude and the lack of oxygen.

Even though I am not a climber - in fact, I don't really like heights (I once had to be assisted from the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver by two ten year olds) - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written and compulsive reading. The story of the expedition unfolding, the ascent, the mix of characters and the personal and honest account of the ultimate series of tragic events is very sad and truly mesmerising.