Week 5 — Office productivity, online

Surprisingly, I found this week the most challenging. There were a lot of options, a lot to consider, including features and how I might want to use such things. Here is a run-down of what I did and some of my considerations.

The Contenders:
Google Docs (including documents, spreadsheets and presentations)
Zoho — a whole line of products, including wiki, writer, spreadsheets, invoicing, online notebook, etc, etc
Microsoft Office Live
Webex WebOffice

I will admit that I was not even considering Microsoft Office Live after the reviews assigned for reading. It seemed to be more trouble than it is worth. I am actually trying to move away from Microsoft as much as possible at work. I’m hoping that the functionality lent via Office Live can be happily handled elsewhere should my institution find need for such things in the future. I know, too, just because they are not looking now, doesn’t mean the need won’t present itself in some fashion next week. So, the introduction was good.

I also tried Google Doc. I wasn’t wholly un-aware of this to begin with. I’ve tried it off and on for about a year or more. So, it wasn’t new. I think the last time I really invested any time with it was the end of 2006, at least the document app. I was really surprised to see how little it has developed since that time.

Following the week’s assignment with Google Docs was not difficult. It seems to work well with easy stuff, for docs or spreadsheets or presentations that aren’t very specialized. That was my general take. When I wanted to add headers and footers to spreadsheets, I could not find that functionality. I found the Help also troublesome. I wish the search feature of this was more natural. I wasn’t getting returns that were helpful using keywords. I abandoned the search, and the instructors and class participants did not offer any help when I asked at the course blog.

Also, I noticed, and I don’t think I was the only one, that Google Docs does something funny with images. I read the quota limitations, and I don’t think I am near that, yet my document would not display my images (except in presentations but definitely not documents), only the placeholder for them. That was truly annoying, especially given the limited help features; finding a resolution or an answer of any kind seemed too hard, really.

When it came to the optional assignment, using Google Docs to write to my WordPress blog(s), well, nothing happened, not even an error message. I wasn’t able to successfully troubleshoot this either. Google said they were successfully sent, yet nothing ever appeared at my blogs for posting. I don’t know if anyone, except Blogger members, got that feature to work. And, why does Google change the navigation for documents? While both the spreadsheets and presentations had the big “Publish” button, in documents, it was buried within the “Share” button. I think consistent navigation would be useful for users.

So, given these experiences, I’m surely not won over to the Google Docs. Certainly not. I was far more impressed with Zoho, which was my favorite app(s) from the week. From its really nice interface to its awesome functionality, it won me over. I especially loved the Notebook and wiki apps– and the Firefox plugin for the notebook. So, I will be spending more time with all of those products– it even has business invoicing!!! Thank you for the introduction.

I only did a cursory look at Microsoft Office Live and Webex WebOffice. They both just seemed so far off from the real movement of this concept. It might be just me, but these seemed a little pathetic in comparison. I think it has to do with how their entities just seem so anti-open source. They are both corporations that seem to be trying to keep some of their consumers. The sounds filling my ears these days are demands for interoperability, for open source (in order to customize often times), for platform independent media and data, for welcoming applications and programs that free people in some way. Neither of these seemed to fulfill any of those requests. Of course, I really don’t make any platform decisions at my institution, so for me, it’s just day-dreaming to think we could leave Microsoft behind and look at Ubuntu or even Macs, whose very commercial offering seems to interrupt less. Even that platform is more user-friendly than Windows has evolved into… anyway, I’m getting off track. I did not really consider Office Live or WebOffice because they seemed really, really limited and well, locked down, somehow.

Zoho looks very good. I will go with that one.