I know that Google Docs is a data storage service, available for quite some time now, but until now, I didn't have the need or the will to explore it. I know there are a lot of people like me, so I decided it is time to explore it a little and write about it. What I found was a great application that is quite easy to use is very useful when it comes to storing documents, sharing them with other people and collaborating. It is free and all you need is a a computer with Internet access and a Google e-mail account.
In Google Docs you can create documents, presentations, spreadsheats and folders, in which you organize your documents. Then you can invite people, who can edit the document or just see view it. The documents are edited in the same place, so all the collaborators immediately see the changes made. There's an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when. You can also publish your work as a web page or post documents to your blog, if you have it.
But there is a limit on how much a user can store on their account. Individual documents may not exceed 1GB as of January 13, 2010, embedded images must not exceed 2MB each, and spreadsheets are limited to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, and 99 sheets . A user can have a total of 5,000 documents and presentations, 5,000 images, 1,000 spreadsheets, and 100 PDFs at one time (http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37603&topic=15119). Some people would see this limit as a deficiancy, but for the need of a general use the storage space is quite large, so this doesn't present a deficiency of the application.
I was very surprised by the easy use of this application and its usefullness. You can use it for personal matters and also for professional/scholarly matters. I really recommend it to all who share their documents with other people and I am sorry that I didn't explore it sooner. It has a lot of advantages, described above, and the only weekness that I can now come up with, is the need for a Google e-mail account. But nevertheless, many people today have it, and if they don't - it's free and easy to open it. As for the rest of the eventual weaknesses, I will have to use it a little longer.
If you want more information on Google Documents, visit http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html. I bet you will start using it for some reason or another.
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Good presentation of Google docs, Ines! I really like the way you described all those advantages, but also appreciate this note about Google docs weakness.
OdgovoriIzbrišiI already have three mail accounts (all for different purposes) and would have to open fourth in order to use Google docs. That's really disturbing because of all those user names and passwords...