CCLS 23 Things #17: Web-based Apps

I've been using Google docs for about a year now. I used to use my Yahoo online "briefcase" for documents that I wanted to share (or to work on from different computers), but when Yahoo decided to eliminate sharing of briefcase folders on free accounts, I defected to Google. (Don't ask me how anyone is supposed to make money providing online services if I'm never willing to pay for anything...)

Google docs has given me a lot of grief with documents that were originally created in MSWord. And putting a google doc back into Word (e.g. to format it for printing a presentable hard copy) is similarly problematic. The text gets transferred OK, but the formatting often gets scrambled. The internal links in my library circulation manual got lost entirely when I uploaded the file. It took me hours to reformat that document. I gather from the user forums that I'm not the only who has experienced these problems.

That said, online applications are great for documents that are basically just going to stay online. When my younger daughter went away to college with a new laptop last fall, I suggested that she take all her class notes in Google docs. Knowing her, I was sure she would never back up her files (she thinks her external hard drive is solely for storing Dr. Who episodes), and I had heard horror stories of students' laptops crashing (or being stolen) just before the final exam. But with Google docs, she can access her notes from any computer. No worries.