Thing 18: Web based applications

I opted out of the zoho option and chose to use the Google documents instead. I use gmail and have played with google documents a little bit before. If you have a gmail account, and open an attachment, you can choose to open it or save it to google documents. This is quite handy.

I have also coached patrons in establishing google accounts (note: this is not a gmail account). I have them create the accounts and save their documents to it when they do not have a disk to save their work on. Everyone has seemed very pleased with this, and they like the idea of being able to access their documents from anywhere they have an Internet connection.

Google documents is also quite handy in collaborate settings. Whether in school, or at work, there are times when several people are working on drafts of documents. The nice thing about google documents is that you can invite others to view, edit, change, or invite others to see the documents. You can see who changed what, and when. Looking at the history of a document is very similar to looking at the history of a wiki- you can select current and compare two versions.

I'm using google documents right now to collaborate on a letter for an upcoming oral history project. Hopefully the others like it as much as I do!