Thing 9 - Collaboration Tools

I don't think I'd laughed out loud doing any of the previous Things, but reading through the revised Declaration of Independence was a gut-busting laugh fest. Wow! Of course, the point of collaboration tools is not comedy, but some of my colleagues definitely ran with this one. I especially enjoyed the Lovecraftian overtones and the multiple nods to Yog-Sothoth. Good stuff.

Regardless, I can see the appeal of these tools, and can also see a lot of applicability. In general, these types of tools are great because they're free, easy-to-use, and compatible with basic features of the Microsoft Office suite, i.e. text, paragraph, and image formatting. They're also handy in that a person can access their documents anywhere in the world as long as they have an Interwebs connection.

That said, my one reservation about these types of tools is privacy. Once you start putting documents and spreadsheets and the like on the Interwebs, then your control and ownership of said files is greatly diminished. A few days ago, a pal forwarded me a link to an interesting article on this very topic. That article is mainly geared toward people concerned about the amount of personal data Google is accumulating--especially in the cases of those who use multiple Google products like Gmail, Blogger, Calendar, Picasa, and Docs! These are real concerns of mine, and if there were to be any reason to choose Zoho Writer over Google Docs, it'd be out of concern for such issues.

However, if I didn't really care about all that, then I'd probably choose Google Docs--especially given my fondness for Gmail. I mean, really, how complicated do things really need to be?

All in all, this was an ideal Thing, and it was probably the first I was actually able to wrap up in a single hour.