Online Office Suites – Writing Online In The Cloud

June 6, 2009 in Tools, Writing
Tags: Websites

As a writer who spends a lot of time online, and writing for online media, I have recently stumbled upon several websites which offer a few great facilities which can make life really smooth and amazing for someone like me. In this blog post, I am going to attempt to review some of these sites which I have checked out.

My first encounter with such kind of online office suites was when I stumbled onto the Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Basically what it does is allows you to store your MS Office documents online and then you can share them with the people you want, and give them rights like downloading and editing. To do so, one would have to have MS Office 2007 installed, and also download and install a plugin which gives this additional functionality. This facility is free for all those who have MS Office 2007 installed on their computers.

The second encounter I had with a similar kind of online office suite was with Google Docs. Again, you have the functionality of creating and editing documents and spreadsheets online, storing them, accessing them from anywhere across the internet, and allowing others to access, edit and download your online documents.

The third such online office suite I encountered was when I got my Mac. I had iWork on it, and it comes with all the bells and whistles already installed to make iWork.Com a functional and useful add-on to your workspace. Again, it is only accessible via the iWork suite. You can add your native iWork documents on to this online workspace, and allow other users to access, edit and download the documents and spreadsheets in formats like doc, xls and pdf.

Now, the fourth online office suite that I encountered was Zoho.Com. Packed with a variety of features, this is by far the best online office suite that I have seen. You can have documents, spreadsheets, planners, wikis, notebooks, chat, crm, web conferencing, reports, project management and even polls. I think you have to pay for some of the features, while most come free. And you can login with your Google Id.

With more and more online services getting into the ‘Cloud’ writers – or even such business people who have made the Internet their office space, can have a much easier interface to work with and collaborate with their clients online. These services are a beautiful add-on to the already existing functionality of the computer – as they are veritably online – and thus more easily accessible for those of us who are always on the go. This way you are not limited to your laptop or desktop – you can access your workspace from wherever in the world you are, as long as you have an internet connection.

And guess what? The next wave of online-in-cloud computing for people who have internet based workspaces is yet to come! So hang on folks! This one is about to take off and fly!