Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools

I used to have a "briefcase" associated with my Yahoo account, in which I could save documents, and then open them from any computer with the correct software and internet access. I used it to keep track of documents associated with my work on the board of the skating club that Siobhan belonged to. It was nice to not have to carry around floppy disks, and nice to not have to store those documents on my personal computer. About a year ago, Yahoo closed that service.

Since then, I have moved the documents that I want to have portable access to, over to Google Docs. I create my documents either using Word 2004, Word 2007, or Pages (a Mac office application). They are easily opened in Google Docs, although occasionally some of the formatting gets a little messed up. Once I fix things the way I like, I then save the document into Google. It's like a back-up, but if I change the original, I would have to remember to change it on Google Docs as well, as that is not automatic.

I can imagine that it's very handy to have Google Docs for any document where more than one person needs to have access to make changes, from a variety of computers. The interface is very simple for anyone who has ever used an Office application of any sort. Since I've never created documents with really elaborate formatting, nothing that I've ever done has been difficult to translate.

In my next post, I will share a document, which is a booklist of all the World War II fiction that I have read since I was a teenager. It is a list that I started then, as a file in a recipe box, and have since maintained on floppy disk, on the SCLD server, and on my various computers at home. Now, I have it on Google Docs, and a version on my WorldCat account. Nice to know that even if my computer crashes, my documents can still be found and updated!