Thing 17 Office 2.0

What is Office 2.0?
Office 2.0 refers to online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets). These applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need for installed desktop applications.

Some speculate that this emerging trend may mean the death of Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office.

One benefit of such web-based applications is the elimination of different software versions and file types when emailing documents or moving from PC to PC.

Collaboration is also facilitated by allowing multiple users to edit the same file and providing users with the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer, Writeboard and Google Docs to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based applications so appealing.


Discovery Resources:
A short list of web-based productivity applications – (authored by Helen Blowers in Google Docs).

Read through the Google Docs tour or watch Google Docs in Plain English. With Zoho, Google Docs and other web-based applications, the possibilities are endless.

Discovery Exercise:
1. Create a free account for yourself in Google Docs or Zoho Writer.

2. Explore the site, try out some of the features and create a test document or two, email it to a friend. Create a blog post about your discoveries.

Optional: If you're up for the challenge, try the publishing options to post to your blog.