My New Favorite Online App. — Google Docs
After a four a half month hiatus, I’ve decided to begin blogging again over at this site. My main blog, “Faith Untamed” is still going to feature some productivity articles but I think I’ll shorten them a bit in favor of longer writing on such subjects here. As I come back from hiatus, I wanted to give you a link to a great article on becoming a power user with “Google Docs” The “LifeDev” blog recently featured some hints on how to use this online application more effectively. You can check it out by clicking here.
As you can see by the layout, Google gives you a simple interface to work with. From this site, you can create text, spreadsheet, and presentation files all designed with MS Office person in mind. For a while now, I’ve used OpenOffice exclusively for my day to day work. The only MS Office need I have is in writing college papers. As I’ve used Google docs more, I’ve gradually begun using Open Office only for specific tasks and have pretty much moved all of my day to day work to Google docs. Why? Well, for one, Gdocs (as we’ll call it from here on out) has a sharing feature which allows me to share a non-editable version of my work with anyone who wishes to view it. It also features a collaborative mode which allows me and my worship leader to work together on certain projects without have to email attachments back and forth. The document is always current so we can both be working on it and making changes. Late last year, I switched my sermon calendar, sermon text, and order of worship files to Gdocs and my worship leader now has his “Stage Matrix” (for laying out the stage musicians for my tech guy) and worship song list on file. As we diversify our ministries, we will require all leaders to manage their documents on line so they can be accessed anywhere, at anytime, by ANY machine. That last part is a bonus because I have a LINUX laptop in use and soon, I’m sure someone we have on staff will have an APPLE. Gdocs makes it easy for us to have files that all machines can see, edit, and use within seconds.
I will try to write more about how we are using Gdocs for our work here in the church plant I pastor but read this article for yourself and see if you don’t agree that Gdocs is a great addition to your productivity software. The best part? It’s FREE. All you need is a gmail account and you’re ready to start using Gdocs today!
