#16 Online Applications & Tools

What’s It All About?

The availability and use of free web-based applications or apps for short (word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, presentations, project management, and web conferencing) has exploded over the past few years. And with good reason, these powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need to install applications on their computers. Oh, and by the way–they’re FREE.

Some experts speculate that that this emerging trend may mean the death of Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think that web-based applications have their place, but not in the office. No matter which side of the fence you stand on, both sides seem to agree that web-based applications have their place.

One large benefit to web-based applications is that they eliminate the need to worry about different applications or software versions people have on their local computers. Another bonus of web-apps is that they also easily accomodate collaborative work by multiple users because everyone can:

• edit the same file using the “share” feature
• the ability to roll back to a previous version
• and easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including .doc, .pdf, and .html).

And you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other Web 2.0 tools that also make web-based applications so appealing.

Try It Out!

Google Docs

1. Take their quick tour to learn more about Google docs.
2. At the end of the tour, click on ‘try it out.’
3. Login with the Google account you’ve used for previous Sno-Isle 20 for 2.0 exercises(or if you’re already logged in, skip to the next step).
4. Create a document of your choice (word processing or spreadsheet).
5. Add some quick text and save your document ( there’s a big ’save’ buttoin in the top right corner of the screen).
6. Take a look at the collaborate options (notice the ‘RSS feed of document changes’ link?) and whatever else interests you.
7. Take a deep breath and move on to Zoho .

Zoho

1. Head over to Zoho and take note of the wider range of software they offer.
2. Try the same type of software you used in Google Docs – click on the ‘Try Now’ link.
3. Sign in with your Google account, or if necessary create an account.
4. Add some quick text and save your document (there’s a ’save’ button similar to what you see in Microsoft Word).
5. Take a look at some of the options (share, history, etc) located just above your text.

What did you think?

Write a post in your blog about these online applications and tools.

Next Week: #17 Avatars and Second Life