Thing 9 - Online Collaborative Tools

It was interesting (and frustrating) to use both of the collaborative tools - Google Docs and Zoho. I found Google Docs easy to use, with familiar-to-me options and toolbars. I could see where others had had success editing the document. This was some very entertaining editing!

I was able to use Google Docs right away. Zoho was another story - yikes! The only way I could figure out to edit the Zoho document was to sign up for a Zoho account, and then import in the URL that had been mailed to me. I have no idea if that is what I was supposed to do, or if my editing would be accessible to anyone else.

The Zoho edit screen is cluttered and much too busy. To be sure, there seem to be more options available for editing (I added an emoticon - an "Undecided" smiley face - to my version of the document), but I don't know how many of those options would be important in a shared context.

To my mind, ease of use is much more important. Perhaps once I gained more familiarity with the product, I would feel more certain that I could access the correct document, and share it with my collaborators after editing. There seems to be a large learning curve with use of Zoho.

My vote is for Google Docs!