Friday, April 1, 2011

Week 8: Internal Collaboration

One of the technologies that I found the most promising was GoogleDocs.  One big reason I feel this way is because the technology belongs to Google, whose apps are already in wide use by many people.  Even if an organization does not use Google apps for other purposes, many, many people will still be familiar with the Google brand.

GoogleDocs also has the benefit of simplicity.  True, this means that it has fewer of the special features that many other collaboration programs possess.  But it also means that its learning curve is relatively small.  I have some personal experience working with GoogleDocs, and have found it very easy to learn and use.  It makes collaborative work on a document simple.  The doc can also be shared with anyone via a link, and editing permissions can be changed depending on who you want messing with the document.

One thing I feel could be improved upon in GoogleDocs is the final product.  GoogleDocs is great at making a space for collaborative work, but it's not so good at creating a final product. The content of the doc is usually transferred to another word processor for final formatting and editing for appearance.  Formatting applied in GoogleDocs doesn't transfer well to a program like Microsoft Word, so the text usually requires a little tweaking to come out right.

All in all though, GoogleDocs is a simple, easy-to-use collaborative tool for creating documents.  And since documents are the bulk of what most organizations produce, I feel that it is a promising tool for internal collaboration within those organizations.

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