Collaborate: join the debate

In organising the recent joint Assessment and Metadata & Digital Repository SIG Meeting, it was necessary to share details of those attending, to spread the work involved in e-mailing, badge-making, etc.

I found it easy to use the Google Spreadsheets feature; a beta service, it lets you create/upload a spreadsheet and share with other users. Different options allow others to view or edit the file, and it shows who’s looking at the same time – allowing real-time chat while you’re working on it. There’s also the chance to work with a collaborative word processor, which can be used to save documents in formats such as Word, PDF and OpenOffice. Formerly known as Writely, the word processor is now part of Google’s ‘document suite’.

It’s interesting to see the continuation of free rival software to expensive office suites but doubly so when you consider this is purely a web application. Still in beta stage, there is enough functionality available to create usable and shareable documents – and the online storage means you never have to worry about which copy is the latest one.

Pop over to http://docs.google.com/ and have a look. You’ll need a Google account, which you may have already (Google Calendar, Mail, etc).