The Buzz about Google DOCS

By now you have numerous friends who have raved about how great Google DOCS is. At first glance, the praise for this product seems out of place. After all, why are we getting excited about a web based version of MS Office that is stripped of many essential features? For example, its ability to create tables and font options is very limited and printing with in Google DOCS is a bit tedious. Having said that, I will share with you why Google DOCS matters;

1. Simple Mechanism for Collaborating- All too often our work environment requires us to work on lesson plan, grant proposal, school plan, or some other kind of document in a collaborative fashion. User 1 would e-mail a document to User 2 and so on. Unfortunately, this arrangement would often lead to mass confusion as the team would lose track of which version represented the latest version of the document. With Google DOCS, this problem is a thing of the past as the “sharing” feature will assure that everyone is working with the latest version of document.
2. Revision History- In the old days, (the 1990’s) we were all marveled with Microsoft’s ability to “undo” a mistake we made in a document. However, once you saved the document, the ability to use the ‘undo” command was no more. Google DOCS allows you to roll back your document to any point in time via the “See Revision History”. This feature is especially useful when working on collaborative projects as one will no longer have to worry that their work partner accidentally deleted an important part of the document.
3. Google Forms- Google Forms allows one to easily create a survey whose results will be recorded in a spreadsheet and will also chart the results in a user friendly format. Additionally, this form can be embedded in an e-mail, web page, or document of your choice.
4. Google Templates- Google provides a wide variety of templates (e.g. calendar) making complicated tasks easy.
5. Streamlined Interface- Google DOCS limited features allow the program to respond quickly to the user’s commands even when using an older computer.
6. Never Lose Data Again- Sooner or later your computer will crash while you are working on an important document. We then attempt to launch Microsoft Word and make a feeble attempt to recover the document. However, this effort produces mixed results as the document is often corrupted by the previous computer crash. With Google DOCS, your document does not get corrupted via a local computer crash. Additionally, Google DOCS saves your work constantly meaning you will truly save all of your data.

Hopefully, the above reasons have convinced you to give Google DOCS a try and collaborating on some innovative projects via Google DOCS. Here's to the reign of cloud computing.