If you do a lot of public speaking or presentations in front of people, Zoho Showtime could make your life (and job) easier. Showtime makes it easy to take questions from your audience, let them save slides or go back to see previous ones, and you can control the presentation from your phone.

Dear Lifehacker, I heard the news that Google Apps for Business is no longer offering free plans to new sign-ups. That sucks because I just bought my own domain! What can I use for email, calendar and other tools that won't cost me a stack of money? Thanks, Free Reign On My Domain

Popular web app suite Zoho has added a web-based calendar app to its currently mail- and documents-based arsenal, complete with all the features you've come to expect from a calendar in the cloud, like sharing, subscriptions and embedding.

OpenOffice.org is free and open source, but it isn't light, simple or constantly backed up. Luckily, Ubuntu 10.04 can create and open office files with the Zoho suite — and you don't even need a Zoho account to save your work.

If you use Zoho for its customer relationship platform, Zoho Mail, or as a secondary document space, but keep some files in Google Docs, the web suite has made it very easy to upload and attach documents from Google's service.

Not one to stop tweaking and improving, Zoho's integrated notebook tool recently added universal search, HTML import and export, and tools to move your notes around between notebooks and pages.

Online office suite Zoho enters the project management realm with a few attention-getting features. One is import support for Microsoft Project files, and another is a consolidate, real-time view of what's going on with, and between, project members.

Online office suite Zoho one-ups its Google counterpart by offering a half-dozen quick-access gadgets for its Docs, Mail, Calendar, and other webapps, embeddable in Gmail, Facebook, iGoogle start pages, and nearly anywhere.

Zoho, the ever-improving online editing suite, is rolling out Zoho Writer 2.0, comprising of a serious overhaul of the menu and writing interface and features pulled from user requests. Along with the new drop-down menus pictured above, the ubiquitous Zoho sidebar now sports a search feature, multiple document selections by holding Control and clicking, and a few other improvements. The documents themselves get auto-insertion of header and footer fields, word and character counts in the status bar. All in all, Zoho Writer now has a striking resemblance to your average word processor, and a lot of the buttons and options explain themselves a bit better.

Zoho Mail, a web-based email client long in private beta in the Zoho office suite, is now publicly available. Those with Zoho accounts and Google Gears installed will notice that you can hit an "Offline" button to download a pre-set number of sent mail and inbox messages, and reply to them for sending when you're back online. Zoho Mail features both traditional folders and label sorting, or use of both, and POP import/export, with IMAP access promised in the near future. Zoho Mail is a free service, requires a sign-up with Zoho.

Zoho Mail

Robust online office suite Zoho has added a long-overdue file management and landing page for users, making it easier to view and edit word documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows without having to flip between browser tabs. Zoho Docs lets you preview documents in tabs within the page, manage the sharing and edit rights of any file with individuals or groups, and even chat with other people editing your Zoho stuff online. The drag-and-drop-interface, collapsible folders, and even blue and white interface might seem a little familiar to users of a certain other online suite, but it's one of the few areas in which Zoho truly needed to play catch-up. Embedded below is a video demonstrating some of Zoho Docs' offerings.

Online office suite Zoho continues to push the envelope with advanced features you never thought you'd find in a webapp—this time it's macro recording and playback in Zoho Sheet, their online spreadsheet product. Instead of composing Visual Basic code by hand, Zoho Sheet can record a set of actions and play them back over other sets of data. Hit the play button to see this huge time-saving trick in action. Zoho Sheet—-Macros - Zoho Writer

Next time you need to give a presentation from afar, fire up Zoho Show, invite a few attendees, and give the presentation in real-time with Zoho Show's Remote feature. You invite participants, and as soon as everyone shows up and you start the remote presentation, what they see matches exactly what you're doing. You advance a slide, their browser advances a slide. Even if you don't plan on using Zoho Show to deliver the final product, it could still come in handy to review and collaborate remotely on PowerPoint presentations (which Zoho Show imports seamlessly). Zoho Show

Since most of you said you've stuck to Google Docs over Zoho Suite because you already have a Google account, Zoho Suite added the ability to log on with your existing Google or Yahoo account. You can even import your contacts from Google or Yahoo into Zoho.

Today web-based office suite maker Zoho adds pivot tables and VB macros to their online spreadsheet product. You may not use Zoho's online office suite because you're lazy and already have a Google Account, but Zoho keeps kicking Google Doc arse in the features department.

Zoho adds an invoicing application to their growing suite of webapps aiming squarely for small business users. See how Zoho's offerings stack up against Google Apps.

Business-focused online apps suite Zoho adds yet another product to the mix: Zoho People launches today with the aim to help your company's HR department keep track of the org chart, recruit candidates, and quickly fill out expense and vacation forms. Here are some screenshots.

Google's offline-enabling project Gears released a version for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices last night, and mobile web apps like online document editor Zoho Writer and money manager Buxfer have already thrown their hats into the not-always-mobile ring. It looks like documents are read-only in Zoho at this point, but, like its desktop brother, Zoho Writer Mobile will likely upgrade to full online/offline sync soon. Similarly, Buxfer lets you check account balances and see transactions, but not make any account changes. It's a nice start, however, and more mobile apps, and functionality, are likely to follow. Visit gears.google.com from your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device to install Gears. Shifting Google Gears to mobile

Zoho Writer, part of one of Lifehacker's favorite (and underhyped) webapps, has added a bunch of new features, and many of them add to the online office app's appeal to even grizzled Microsoft Office veterans. Most significantly, Zoho now exports to the Office 2007 .docx format, and its creators promise import is coming soon. Also, when exporting to Word formats, headnotes, footnotes, headers and footers will be retained with proper formatting. FInally, a 10-language thesaurus is available for right-click use, and users can create groups of users to share documents with, rather than entering individual email addresses each time. Pretty nifty stuff, and another good reason to check out Google Docs' main competitor. Zoho Writer Update: DocX Support, Thesaurus, Group Sharing & More