Where did all the paper go? I am not very old, but, I can still remember when paper dominated my life, it seems like it was everywhere. Years and years of paper work, school work, personal writings, and daily reminders; then there were piles of devices designed to hold all the paper – binders, notebooks, and I’m sad to say even Trapper Keepers littered the house and office. My parents had it even worse; they need garages to hold all their paper work – literally. In the 26 years that I have been on this planet I have accumulated a wealth of writing, a fraction of my folks, but still enough to make a presence.
In the last few years paper has been removed from my life almost completely, with the exception of receipts and medical records, I do not use paper for much of anything anymore. Even better, I do not have a hundred and fifty binders scattered around my house. This has been made possible for me by the use of Google Docs, documents you create that can be shared and edited by whomever you want; Google Docs are saved and secured on Google’s servers, what I like to call the Google File Cabinet. Unlimited storage for whatever you write. Google Documents has revolutionized the workplace, created a much more efficient clutter free environment.
Millions of people now use Google Docs and there is greater demand for improved performance. Google is now promising faster service and real-time collaboration tools for Google Docs. “The main improvement was to create a common infrastructure across the Google Docs products, all of which came into Google from separate acquisitions”, said Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager for Google Apps. Many of the real-time abilities that Google Wave has will be incorporated into Google Docs; that way people who have access to the document you are working on can see the changes you make as they are happening.
If you are not using Google Docs, I encourage you to do so; GDocs can really save you a lot of time in your day to day work. It’s free and it is user friendly. According to CNET, “Microsoft is also intent on delivering online office-productivity services to its customers, with plans to release online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to users with Office 2010. That will be introduced in May for business users and June for consumers”. This means Google will have to get on the horse to compete!
