Posts tagged Docs
How Does Office Web Apps Compare to Google Docs?
Jun 11th
Microsoft rolled out its free Office Web Apps earlier this week, introducing a free, basic Office suite for the web. How does it compare to Google’s own Docs offering? Here’s a rundown of each webapp’s strengths and weaknesses.
Where Office Web Apps Excels
Yeah, yeah, that’s a pretty bad pun. But it’s actually the first descriptor that came to mind.
Microsoft Office Compatibility
As you’d probably expect, when it comes to uploading a complex Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document to the web, and having it look the same there as it does on your desktop, Web Apps takes the cake. Until our little test, though, we didn’t realize by just how much.
We uploaded a few different Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files to both suites, and relied on our past experience with Docs. To show you the difference, here’s a heavily formatted corporate-style newsletter-pictures, sub-headings, margins, you name it. We opened it in TextEdit on a Mac, and placed it next to both Google Docs and Office Web Apps.
First, here’s how it looks in Google Docs, compared to the original in TextEdit. (Click the image for a larger view):
Source of image (LifeHacker)
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Cloud Computing In Plain English – CloudTweaks.com
Nov 12th
Cloud Computing In Plain English
Almost three years ago, Lee and Sachi LeFever created their first video to explain RSS.
They called the video RSS in Plain English. They used paper cut outs to explain the XML format. It became an instant hit. Tens of thousands of people watched it. Today their company, Common Craft, make all sorts of custom videos. They’ve built a business around explaining concepts.
Their latest video explains cloud computing.
“Cloud Computing in Plain English,”ells the story of a florist whose business grows. She learns about cloud computing and realizes that perhaps maybe she should not have to worry about fixing broken servers.
video
Cloud computing is one of those topics that confuses and confounds people. Larry Ellison loves to poke at it. It’s the hot topic so it is refreshing to see Lee once again explain the topic in simple terms that pretty much anyone can understand. It makes everyone’s job a bit simpler.
Which takes us to the last point of the day. We get so many pitches from companies. The services are explained in terms that often need deciphering. What if more companies in the enterprise space spent more time explaining what they do? What if companies did something like what Common Craft did for Twitter or with Google to help explain Google Docs?
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Secret ‘data centers’ – A trip into the secret, online ‘cloud’
Nov 5th
San Jose, California (CNN) — One day, while uploading yet another text file to the Google Docs Web site, I started to wonder: When I save this file online, where does it actually go?
I store tons of information on the Internet instead of just on my laptop or work computer. Often, I do this specifically so I can access information from both places, or from my mobile phone if I need it on-the-go.
Without realizing it, I’d started cloud computing, that nebulous term that refers to the idea that computing power is moving off home PCs and laptops and onto the Web.
I keep thousands of photos on Flickr. I’ve also got them on Facebook and tucked away in five years of Gmail messages. My videos are on 12seconds and YouTube (including a really embarrassing one of me landing on my face during a college diving meet). I’ve blogged from Madagascar on Blogger; my tech writing is on WordPress; and I post random snippets of info on Tumblr and Twitter.
This is not just data. It’s my life. And I would be sick if I lost it. Previous generations stored their family photos and important documents in safety deposit boxes or under the mattress. Here it is 2009, and I have no idea where my data lives.
I was curious and I wanted to find the scattered bits of my online life before dumping everything on my laptop onto the Web.
So I decided to go on a scavenger hunt into the cloud.
Read more at CNN
