Thing 9: Collaboration Part A

I'm sure Thomas Jefferson would love it if he had hundreds of editors taking a look at the Declaration of Independence before it went out. We'd probably all still be drinking tea and bowing to the queen if that were the case. At least we'd have nice accents. Anyway, it was a fun idea taking a look at the document in Google Docs and Zoho Writer. Although I received the invitation to edit at both spots, I didn't seem to ever be properly signed in to Zoho, even though I created an account, etc... So I have to give my vote to Google Docs for being the easiest to work with in the end. It seemed to be more intuitive than Zoho as well.

As the author of hundreds, if not thousands, of documents, most of which had to have multiple people looking at them, I have to say that this is a great way to get feedback. In the past I'd receive five or more different attachments from people that I'd be forced to wade through to find changes and edit suggestions. This also brought back memories of ancient comp and fiction writing classes where we actually had to go to Kinko's, make 20 or more copies of our essay/story/whatever, staple them and hand them to our class members. Had the wheel even been invented yet back then? Online collaboration tools would be great in this circumstance as well.

I'm excited about this. I hope I never receive - nor send - another Word attachment again.