Thing Thirteen - Online Collaboration: Google Docs and Dropbox

I've never used a collaborative document too before - even though, during my masters last years, we did do a lot of collaborative group work. It was easier at the time to meet up physically to do the work, as we were all full-time students. I also don't currently need to use these kinds of tools for my work. I'll be interested to read about the kind of projects for which people have used these tools.

I first tried Google Documents, and -as ever with Google products- I found it smooth and easy to use. Though I didn't actually invite anyone to collaborate with me on a document, I went through the process needed for this, and it seemed very simple. Also, the issue of collaboration aside, I think that Google Docs could be a useful place to save documents to, in some situations, enabelling access to them from any computer with internet. Obviously, this can usually be done just with a USB or similar, but after losing my USB a couple of weeks ago I like to look out for other possiblities.

I found Dropbox less easy to use, partly due to the fact that it is a desktop application. I baulk at having to download software, and register new accounts. For my current work context as well, desktop applications are not particularly useful, as I often have to hotdesk without a roaming profile; this would mean that I'd have to download the software on several different computers. I generally found Dropbox to be a more laborious software to use as well.

Basically, I think that if in the future I need to use a collaborative document tool I will use Google Docs.