Online Applications and Tools

This week's assignment was to explore the available application webtools such as spreadsheets, documents, presentations, calendar, chat, and so forth. The advantage to them is that a) they're free, b) they're online so a person can access their documents, spreadsheets, etc from any web-accessible computer and c) they're shareable so they're ideal for group projects. Recently I did several school visits where I attempted to use a Powerpoint presentation. Unfortunately my version was incompatible with the computers in the schools, so I had to punt. Having my presentation available online would mean that I had both a backup and didn't have to worry about compatibility issues. I can see, however, that whatever computer I used for my presentation would have to access the web.

I explored Google Docs and Zoho.com. Both offer the standard suite of applications: documents, spreadsheets, and "slide" presentations. Since I had a recently created presentation, I wondered if I could transfer it to either of these. Google docs was disappointing in that I couldn't upload my presentation directly. I also couldn't copy slides and paste them into my Google presentation. It didn't recognize my .tif files when I tried to insert a picture, but it did recognise the .jpg file. It also didn't like the fact that one picture I tried to insert was big. What Google did offer was basic presentation tools, which it did well.

Zoho.com offers a wider array of applications in addition to the standard suite, such as document management services, invoice tools (5 invoices for free), chat, wiki, webconferencing, and a database creation tool ($25 for 5 users). Obviously, they charge for some of these additional cool tools whereas Google docs was all free. When I tried out the presentation application, I was able to upload my file, but only after I changed the file format out of Windows Vista. It also had problems with pictures.

Both of these applications are wonderful ideas in the library setting where many of our patrons don't have access to their own computers. They will be able to save their stuff without having to buy or deal with disks or thumb drives. The downside is that they may not know about them, or have problems uploading pre-existing documents to the sites.