GrandCentral
Think of GrandCentral as a more intuitive and Web-enabled alternative to fixed mobile convergence -- allowing you to use one unified phone number for work, home and cell phone. Granted, it's not an enterprise application with an application programming interface that you can tie in to corporate networks, and there are no security features for corporate compliance. But for sales agents or other mobile workers who want more control of their voice communications, GrandCentral works perfectly.
Once you understand the benefits of unified messaging -- that people trying to contact you call one number, but all of your phones ring at the same time -- you can go well beyond this core functionality to personalized greetings by phone, call recording, call screening and blocking, and a unique feature called RingShare that plays something different than the traditional "ring ring" sound for callers while they wait for you to pick up. You can even program it so different groups of people hear different sounds.
Xdrive
Some laptop users have learned the harsh reality of magnetic-media storage: your local disk can fail -- and if you don't have a recent backup for Outlook, your business documents and even seemingly trivial settings such as Internet Explorer bookmarks -- there's no way to retrieve lost data. Some external storage drives, such as the Western Digital MyBook, provide an Internet storage option, but they're hard to configure and use.
Xdrive.com has a new beta service called Web Backup that offers more control over online backups. Just register at xdrive.com (AOL users, just log in with your AOL account) and click on the Beta button and then click Web Backup. You can configure Xdrive to archive documents, photos and even IE favorites with just a few clicks. Unlike competitors such as Mozy.com, it runs entirely on the Web, so you can use it on any computer to archive the contents of that PC.
Xdrive is entirely free and comes with 5GB of storage. You can also upload a large file and then share the link with a co-worker so he can download it. An ancillary service called Xdrive Shows is an online presentation system for photos of business slides.
Web apps or Web 2.0?
You might wonder: what's the difference between a Web application and Web 2.0? Some would say "not much." But Web 2.0 is a broad term that implies usefulness and social engineering. Twitter.com is a good example of a Web 2.0 site because it doesn't look like a desktop application running on the Web, yet it's useful and has a distinct social aspect.
Meanwhile, a Web application is less about connecting with friends or even connecting to other Web services and more about being productive. Some people believe that sites such as Twitter.com could be part of a short-lived fad, and that they don't appeal as much to the business user.
John Brandon is a freelance writer and book author who worked as an IT manager for 10 years.