Week 8, Task 18: Take a look at some online productivity tools.

I love the idea of having access to word processing and other office applications over the Internet! For instance I don't have Microsoft Office on my home computer. It's nice to know that I can use an Excel style spreadsheet on the Internet for free! Plus, if I'm collaborating with someone on a project we can both access the material on the web and make changes without having to do a bunch of time consuming (and frustrating) emails. Now if they would only include a Microsoft Publisher type application I would be in Heaven!

I'm using the Google Docs instead of the Zoho just because I already have a Google account and my nogin is already swarming with usernames and passwords (I actually have a list from all of our 23 things projects). I really like the Google word processing. I just surfed around and you can do some pretty neat stuff. You have an Insert Tab that allows you to, well.......insert stuff. Example - a picture of some water lilies:

You can also insert Links: Worcester County Library's Homepage

and Tables: I edited this blog after sending it here from the Google Docs. It didn't like that!! Therefore my table is now messed up! Sorry! It was a brillant red color and had text in it (which I think you can still see). Oh well. :o(

I told the table selector	to match the table width
& height to my content.	You can also choose what
snazzy color you would	like your table to be! :o)

You also have a Revisions Tab. You can go back and check out all your revisions. Your work is saved approximately every minute. If you are unhappy about how your document in shaping up, or you accidentally deleted something you can't retrieve another way, you can go back to a previous revision and choose to reinstate that version. Also, you can select several versions of your document to compare to each other.

I'm pretty impressed. I really think it is a great way to do collaborative work with your co-workers! The only drawback that I can see is since it is on the web it might be more vulnerable to hackers, etc. But honestly, who would be interested in hacking into my stuff?!

New drawback - you can't edit content through your blog, once you publish the word processing doc. to your blog, without negatively affecting Html code for tables. Just a heads up.