Forecast: Cloudy

Sun, 04/05/2009 - 2:36pm by Liberry Shortstack

Really need to work on that paper? Revise your resume? Write a book report? But you forgot your USB drive? Rats! Well, hey! There are ways to get around using cumbersome data storage devices. Meet the cloud! Cloud computing, that is. There are a slowly growing number of web-based word processing and office tools, which means that you can access and edit your documents (or calendar or spreadsheets or presentations) from anywhere that you access the internet, not just your home computer.
No need to carry your flash drive with you or worry about losing it! Google Docs has a range of features, including the ability to share documents between multiple users, which is great for version control. Best of all, Google Docs saves your work automatically, so you won't lose changes if you forget to save before logging out. Zoho is a newer web tool that provides many of the same services as Google Docs, but with some added functionality. In a recent review of the service, Zoho appears to be a bit better than Google Docs in many areas. With both of these services, you can easily download your work in Word format, if you'd prefer to tweak the appearance of your document.