We are progressing more and more to an era of storing documents and data online, keeping info online and keeping fewer and fewer things directly on our hard drive.
Here are a couple of ways to store, edit and write your documents entirely online. With these resources you can use any computer that can access the internet and do all your work
online. You can share your documents with others. And with at least one of these resources you can create a URL of your document to be able to publish it on web pages without ever having the web page access your local hard drive.
First in the list of powerful online document processing is the soon to be infamous Google Docs. Here’s how to get started with Google Docs.
First, go to your internet browser address bar and type in http://docs.google.com or you can simply use Google to search “google docs.” (Google is not case sensitive, by the way).
Have a Google email account? You should. Sign up for gmail free and easy right now at that link. Then just follow the links to get all set up. But if you aren’t interested in gmail, then at least sign up for a Google account. This is done by following roughly the same links. You’ll need this account to use Google docs; it’s free, so give it a go.
Once you have your account set up, you can log in to Google docs with very little effort. Now that you have an account you can keep all your documents online and edit them, share them, etc. just by logging in to this account.
Once you are running Google docs you should notice some of the formats that it offers. You can start a simple Microsoft Word document and save it as you see fit. Then, when you are done with it, you can either just keep it saved on Google or you can export it to a hard drive/your computer. Want it in pdf format? Easy with Google docs: just export it as a pdf document.
You can also use a variety of other Microsoft Office style documentation tools, including Excel spreadsheets.
Google docs even has non-Microsoft Office applications. Like OpenOffice? You can choose to save files in this format as well. All the Linux users out there will be glad to hear that! Type up your document then save it as an .odt file just like in OpenOffice, export it as you want, etc.
Something even more interesting is that, because Google accounts are free, you can have multiple Google docs accounts as well. Say, for example, you started a website or a blog site and you want to keep everything organized. Create a gmail account using your websites moniker, and then you can open up a Google docs account for your website under that name, access it with that name and still keep everything organized. You can have multiple accounts for all of your online document keeping needs!
But what about posting articles on the internet? You can use Google docs for this by inviting others to share and, if you want, edit your documents online. But there is another tool I like to use for getting a URL for your document.
Say, for example, you’ve created a blog account but want it to access a document you have somewhere else. This is easy if you have control over that web page, but if you have a blog you are using someone else’s server, therefore they need to have a URL to access this document of yours.
In this case, I like to use Zoho viewer. Once your document is created, simply go to this link http://viewer.zoho.com/ to create a URL for your document. Using this tool you simply browse where you saved the document, upload it, then you have a URL automatically created for you that you can use on web pages or to send people via the internet.
Zoho viewer’s URL creation technology is also a great idea for things like resumes. Say you want people to be able to view your resume from anywhere. Well, with a Zoho created URL, they simply need to click on that URL (which you’ve sent to them via email or some other way) and they can access your resume or other document. You don’t need an account for Zoho viewer.
Like the idea of Zoho? Well, Zoho has an entire documents creation area just like Google docs. Just follow this link to Zoho’s online documentation center, http://zoho.com/ . You can use Zoho’s entire line of documentation tools to keep all your data online.
Using either or both Zoho and Google docs is a great way to transition to life on the web, keeping, creating and storing your documents online and saving space on your hard drive. For more ideas about life on the web, check out my blog at www.web4everyone.blogspot.com .
About the author:
Web4Everyone
Google Docs
Zoho
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