Using web documents daily

I use web-based documents every day. For general, random needs, I use 37signals’ Writeboard. For more sophisticated, organizational word processing needs, I use Writely. I’ve been using Writely long before Google bought it, but never daily until now. It really is a great way to collaborate and log ideas. I even use Writely for school. I would much rather have a Writely document than a 5 lb. notebook that get’s piled into the crate on my closet floor. I never thought I would be one of those who takes notes on a laptop, though. It’s also a good tool for project collaboration… much better than sorting through the multiple revisions of a document floating around in my email. Of course there are downfalls (like diagrams), but I can usually work around those issues. To me, the benefits exceed the drawbacks.

Being in the SE program, both creativity and design are a large part of our assignments. I think webdoc’s work out extremely well for preliminary design, because I can keep my thoughts and ideas logged as they come to me, at any time and any place. Although I am a bit of a web-junky, and maybe I reason it out to be useful, but I’m really beginning to break away from the standard desktop approach to files, specifically documents. To me, it’s just easier.