Thing 13: Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

Thing 13 of cpd23 is about methods of online collaboration and file sharing. First of all Google Docs and Dropbox, which to some extent do the same thing. You can:

• Upload documents.
• Share documents, either with other users or via a link like so http://goo.gl/VqHke - this is Max, one of our house rabbits who is clearly more interested in the pint glass than the dot.com article he's sat on.
• Organise documents into folders.
• Search for documents by file name.

That's where the similarities end. Dropbox is primarily a storage solution, allowing you to access uploaded documents from any computer. It's easy to use and seems secure. Google Docs is more about collaboration and therefore has much more functionality.

Why I didn't want to like Google Docs

  

digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mainly because I don't trust Google with my documents and wouldn't feel safe uploading files containing personal information such as my CV. A couple of things added to my paranoia. When I first logged in I was surprised to see that documents I had been sent links to were already stored there, although to my knowledge I'd not used Google Docs before. Poking around my Google account I also realised that Google saves my browsing history, naive I know but I didn't realise. Although being able to see the searches I have carried out on my work pc at home could come in handy, it makes me feel a little uneasy about the amount of data Google collates and has access to.

Why then do I like Google Docs?

A few things impressed me:

• The functionality of the documents you can create in Google is pretty good. Whilst you can't work on them offline (as far as I can tell), you can do all the basics including adding tables and columns to word documents etc.
• Being able to create documents from scratch makes it easy to collaborate with others - it doesn't matter if one of you doesn't have Microsoft Word on your pc.
• Changes are saved automatically.
• You can see how documents have been revised and by whom.
• You can search for keywords within your files.
• You can tag your documents using the description feature.

How will I use Dropbox and Google Docs and why do I need both?

At the moment the only people I need to share documents with are in work. We have a shared drive, with an established folder structure and it's all secure. It's also extremely rare we need to work on things at the same time. I'll therefore only be using Dropbox and Google Docs to share documents with myself. They will provide a great storage space for anything relating to my Chartership and allow me to access files in work and at home without emailing them to myself. I'll probably use Google Docs for all the general stuff as it's easier to organise and Dropbox for things like my CV and PPDP which I will want to work on off-line.

I haven't been able to try out the collaboration side of Google Docs or Dropbox, but at least I now know how they work.

Wikis

Things seem to be changing rapidly in work and in time I think we will be pushing more information out to our users. Initially I thought a wiki could be our solution, however I'm now thinking IT may already have an in-house system that we will need to utilise. Whilst keen to explore wikis I don't have a reason to at the moment and will leave it until I have more time.

I have however recently contributed to the Library Day in a Life wiki which was surprisingly easy to do.