Week 8: Office 2.0

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past few years and for good reasons!
These powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop applications.
Some experts speculate that this emerging trend may mean the end to Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office.
But no matter which side of the office suite platform you side with, on this both sides seem to agree; web-based apps have their place.
One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easy accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf).
And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs* (formerly known as Writely) to author and publish posts to your blog.
It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called Google Docs, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog.

Watch thi online presentation of Google Docs.
(a You tube video created by Common Craft)

Discovery Resources:
A short list of web-based productivity applications – (Note: write list and publish to web)
A longer list of web-based applications.

Discovery Exercise:
1. Create a free account for yourself in Google Docs.
2. Explore the site and create a few test documents or two, share a test document with your colleague.
3. Try out Google Doc's features and create a blog post about your discoveries, including comments about how this could be useful to working in the library or in your life.