Web Worker Daily

enitupsar says: October 1st, 2007 3:44pm

I use Google Docs for more than a year now. It’s useful to me and to several of my co-workers because it lets us COLLABORATE seamlessly and effortlessly on several docs. It’s bye bye to the friggin NIGHTMARE of mail attachments and endless versioning chaos and disorder. And it really is a pleasure to collaborate in real-time on the same doc. If you don’t believe me, please, try it out. You’ll be amazed!

Secondly; no, it does not replace fully our desktop office apps. It complements them, but we still need (sometimes, not always) to export in ODF or DOC format and open it with the desktop app for better formatting. Summarising: It complements, it does not, yet, replace desktop apps.

VitaminCM says: October 1st, 2007 4:22pm

I have tried Google Documents and Zoho. It’s nice to have the little touch of integration that Google has with some of their other products. Still, I think Zoho is a little more of a fleshed out Office suite. I don’t think any of them are putting Microsoft in any real danger for quite a while.
I wrote an article on my blog about MS Office vs. Online Competiors.

John B says: October 1st, 2007 8:30pm

I actually don’t use online office apps that much. When I do use them is when I need something to be edited by someone else. Then I’ll drop it into Google Apps and send a link to the person I want to edit the document. It work really well.

Jeff O'Hara says: October 1st, 2007 9:53pm

I am using google docs almost exclusively these days. I can’t wait for the day that I don’t need any installed apps.

Productivity Zen - Today’s Top Blog Posts on Productivity - Powered by SocialRank says: October 1st, 2007 11:55pm

[...] Open Thread: How Do You Use Online Office Apps? [Web Worker Daily] [...]

Khürt Williams says: October 2nd, 2007 4:13am

I use online applications to synchronized my digital life. On my mac, Address Book synchronizes to Plaxo which syncs to LinkedIn. Using iSync and iTunes, the Address Book is synced to my Motorola KRZR and 3G iPod nano.

iCal syncs to Google Calendar into which I feed a number of calendars for local events as well as my wife’s Google Calendar. My iPod nano and KRZR have become my PDA.

Jesse Middleton says: October 2nd, 2007 6:52am

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets quite a bit while sharing information with my business partner. It’s great for making modifications and immediately seeing the changes so that the other party can modify it even more. The biggest issue I have is not having the ability to take it offline. I’ve used OpenOffice a bit for this but it still doesn’t compare to Office 2003. On my PC, Office 2003 just works.

I don’t see myself ditching the desktop apps anytime soon but online apps are a huge step in the right direction for community projects and projects that need to be shared between multiple people.

kalivd says: October 2nd, 2007 7:33am

Well personally speaking i prefer eDeskOnline over Google Docs cos there are many applications which eDeskOnline offers applications like online portfolio tracking, and doing fun things like uploading your favourite music tracks or be it videos or even snaps everything can be done through eDeskonline, i can even sync it to my phone, my contacts in phone are automatically loaded to eDeskOnline and they are safe there…

http://www.edeskonline.com/index_online_office.asp

Productivity Zen says: October 3rd, 2007 3:12am

[...] 12. Open Thread: How Do You Use Online Office Apps? [Web Worker Daily] [...]

Marc Orchant says: October 3rd, 2007 6:12am

I’ve been using the beta of ThinkFree Premium Edition for a couple of months now and it’s shown me the future of my work with office documents. I get a choice of a lightweight, fast-to-load AJAX client online or a more feature-rich Java client in the browser for power editing. On any of my PCs (two Macs and two PCs, I have the Java clients installed locally along with a file manager that syncs all of my files in real time across all of these machines.

ThinkFree excels at both round-tripping files in and out of MS Office (the only key feature missing is Track Changes) and has a wide variety of file translation capabilities including ODF, Flash, HTML, and PDF.

Collaboration is easy – TFP uses any of my e-mail sources to extend link-based invites to collaborate and maintains change history and versions on shared files. I can also post directly to my blog, get photos via Flickr, and share documents on the ThinkFree Docs public exchange.

I think these guys have the online/offline model nailed.

princesc98 says: October 3rd, 2007 7:48pm

Although this is an interesting announcement, it sounds like file storage with just minor collaboration capabilities. I’ll check it out, but I’ve been using eXpresso for real time collaboration of Excel spreadsheets online. It has a lot of cool features including the ability to compare two spreadsheets side by side and a very detailed audit trail. Check it out at http://www.expressocorp.com.

Chris says: October 5th, 2007 1:58pm

Around the office we have been posting meeting agendas in Google Docs, inviting all the attendees as collaborators. Then when the meeting arrives, we spit the window into a 2 column page, with the original agenda in the left column, and the notes being taken *live* in the right column. That way everyone sees what is being recorded and can chip in if the note taker is invlved in the conversation.

We also use it a lot for shared review. Why send a Word .doc around for everyone’s 2 cents?

I’ve also been flirting wit the idea of using Google docs as a makeshift web publishing system. I was looking around under the publishing tab the other day and saw that i could copy/paste the embed code for the page to insert it in another web page. Why not set the page up, invite people who know nothing about web publishing to the doc, and embed the page in a REAL web page. How slick would that be for someone? “1.Click the link I sent you in the email. 2.Type. 3. Save. Done.”

The new presentation tool also opens a lot of doors for shared presentations across a room. Bring those typically back channel chats to the front in the presentation mode.

I back up just about every document I have in Docs. Why not? The formatting is not a spot-on, but the text is there is a tornado takes out our local server.

I’ve used it as a bit of a wiki for tracking info in a State wide team I am on. I sent the address for a blank spreadsheet page to a list serve and said – add your info. Done. No one had to play Mother Goose and copy paste into a single document.

Seems I am finding something new to do with them every few weeks!

Shelley Rodrigo says: October 8th, 2007 12:13pm

I’ve been having my students use google office to share and comment upon drafts of papers (I teaching writing). I also share assignment prompts, syllabi, etc. It’s nice to create a syllabus with deadlines, but no dates and then use a shared calendar to give dates.

Shama Hyder says: November 19th, 2007 9:16am

I use http://www.WinWeb.com for all my online office needs. They offer free accounting software AND 24/7 tech support.

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