Online document services
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Technology is analogous to a coin, it has two faces to it. Every little technology has a major story to tell us about its advantages and disadvantages. Especially in this era of innovation, witnessing advancements in technology have become as common as witnessing the sun rise everyday morning. What was popular yesterday is obsolete today and what is popular today will be obsolete tomorrow.
What is online document service
Online document service (ODS) offers the user with the ability to store, read, write and share their word documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. These documents are available anywhere and anytime to the user where he/she can access Internet. These services are operating system independent and there's no software to download and install, no upgrading hassles when new features are added or bugs eliminated, and no upfront or ongoing expenses required to use these services. The ability to share these documents with several other users without a server of their own is equally tempting, as is the price tag for many of these services: absolutely free.
Online document services act as collaborative tools, much like the way Wiki's do. But it is important to understand that both of them deserve a separate categorization, beyond their both being services in convergence of communications. Some of the points of distinction are:
- The main principle behind ODS is not authorship.
- An ODS involves editing contents of a document as opposed to editing the contents of a website.
- The primary purpose of an ODS is not to act as a knowledge repository or an encyclopaedia.
- An ODS has moderated collaboration.
Online Document Service Providers
History
Oct, 2003 A small company in Cupertino, created ThinkFree, an office suite that is tightly linked with an online file storage service called CyberdrivePlus.
Jun, 2005 Adobe made its name on the Web by created a Web-based word processor application that called Buzzword.
Aug, 2005 Upstartle, a software company launched Writely, a web-based word processor.
Sep, 2005 AdventNet, a company focusing on building affordable software for businesses, launched Zoho.
Mar, 2006 Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle.
Jun, 2006 Google launched Spreadsheets.
Feb, 2007 Google Docs was made available to Google Apps users.
Mar, 2008 Zoho announced that Zoho Writer supports both online and offline access from Internet Explorer Mobile (IE Mobile).
Features
- Users can create, import and export documents.
- Users can publish their work as a webpage.
- Users can share and edit documents by inviting collaborators.
- The web-application keeps a record of recent changes made to a document by collaborators.
- The changes made to the document are visible in real-time.
- Owner can exercise access control by assigning permissions to collaborators.
Comparison of Features [1]
| Features | Zoho | Google Docs | ThinkFree Online | Adobe Buzzword |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1GB of storage | Unlimited Storage | 1GB of storage | Unlimited Storage | |
| 10MB | 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image | 4MB | 10MB | |
| Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs | |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 19 | 11 | 134 | 7 | |
| Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Yes, only Roman alphabets | Yes, only Roman alphabets | Yes, Roman, Chinese, Japanese and Korean alphabets | No | |
| Ajax | Ajax | Java, Ajax | Flash | |
| Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| No | No | Yes | Yes |
Version control
Most of the times when you are editing a document, it goes through various revisions over a period of time. What if after numerous edits and saves, one day your mind reverts and you want to go back to the older version. Version control saves you the hassle of going back to square one and having to rewrite it all over again.
Version Control is an integral part of ODS. Changes to each document are usually identified by incrementing an associated number, called the revision number. Either simply increment numbers for each edit (v1,v2,v3, etc.) or denote major/minor revision number ((v1_0, v1_1, v1_2, v1_3, v2_0, etc.) or include dates ((v2008-07-01, v2008-07-14, etc. )
There are various version control methods : SCCS( source code control system), RCS(revision control system), CVS(concurrent versions system) , SVN(subversion), Perforce etc.
Each ODS has its own version control method. For example, Perforce is the version control system in use at Google.
Disadvantages
- Most of the ODS providers restrict the the file size and storage space.
- Some providers have some bugs in their import and export file functions.
- Due to network security concern, users will not edit their secret or proprietary files with ODS.
Future Development
- ODS can support for international characters such as Chinese, Japanese and so on.
- ODS will have mobile platform versions.
- ODS can support more document types, such as Visio and so on.
- ODS will implement speech recognition.