Thing 19: GoogleDocs

I haven't tried collaborating on GoogleDocs yet, but it strikes me as a good way to work on group projects.

I didn't find GoogleDocs to have the same functionality as
MS Office. It seems like a more rustic version of Office. You can't split tables or merge cells in tables, for instance. I do like the ability to convert a document to a Word document.

The gadgets on GoogleDocs hold some real promise. I created a survey on GoogleDocs forms. It's saved on my hard drive but I haven't yet figured out how to save it in the "cloud" so that it can be used. I want to spend more time on GoogleDocs and test more of its capabilities.

In the meantime, GoogleDocs looks like a good way to accomplish library group projects, such as the creation of a new bibliographic instruction, for instance. I liked the video that explained the ease. No need to email documents around anymore, not with GoogleDocs.

Still, security seems to be an unresolved issue with collaborative cloud computing. The July 20 New York Times carries an interesting opinion piece on the dangers of storing documents outside of your own hard drive.

Illustration by jay freshuk from flickr's Creative Commons