Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome again to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as he often
Speaker 1: does on these occasions when I have to speak into
Speaker 1: this microphone is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. How do y'all nice?
Speaker 1: And um? We are going to talk today about being productive,
Speaker 1: something we know a lot about here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. We produce lots of things blogs, podcasts, articles, bs,
Speaker 1: you name it, we produce it, But we don't tend
Speaker 1: to use online productivity software, which is really what we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about today. In fact, we have to
Speaker 1: thank our guest producer, Tyler. We call him guest producer
Speaker 1: because you never know who going to produce our shows. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's the one who actually came up with the title
Speaker 1: for this one about online productivity software? How can I
Speaker 1: be productive online? Well, there are a lot of companies
Speaker 1: out there that have provided tools to do that, and
Speaker 1: it's really marking a a shift in computing back in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the traditional route would be to have this
Speaker 1: kind of software natively on your machine and you would
Speaker 1: use it there and save all your work there. We're
Speaker 1: starting to see all that shift over to the cloud,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's one of those applications cloud computing applications.
Speaker 1: It's really easy to point to and say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is what we mean when we talk about cloud computing. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with the term cloud computing, you
Speaker 1: probably haven't been listening to our podcasts very often, because
Speaker 1: we talk about it quite frequently. Um. Cloud computing is
Speaker 1: uh sort of a relatively new thing that's really gone
Speaker 1: on over the past few years, or at least not
Speaker 1: new outright, I would say adopted more often uh than
Speaker 1: it had been in the past, because it's been made
Speaker 1: popular by high speed internet connections. Rather than using your
Speaker 1: computer's hard drive to store applications and files, um, this
Speaker 1: can all be done now on a server in some location,
Speaker 1: in fact, often frequently backed up. So there are many
Speaker 1: many copies of the applications and files that you would
Speaker 1: normally keep on your hard drive out there in what
Speaker 1: they call the cloud, and you probably make use of
Speaker 1: some of these sort of applications already, things like email.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of web based email applications out there.
Speaker 1: We're talking about things like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail. In a way,
Speaker 1: you can think of those as cloud computing because those
Speaker 1: messages are uh they live, if you will, on a
Speaker 1: server that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away
Speaker 1: from you. Uh, but you're able to access them through
Speaker 1: a browser. So the browsers acting as your user interface,
Speaker 1: but you're really tapping into messages that are quite a
Speaker 1: quite a ways away. Yes. Um, and that's the funny
Speaker 1: thing about the productivity soft where that we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about in just a moment here. Um. Unlike email
Speaker 1: and services like dropbox, box, dot net, um, those that
Speaker 1: that serve as a cloud storage device. Um. This is
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that that you're going
Speaker 1: to notice a lot more easily because, um, rather than
Speaker 1: opening up an icon on your desktop, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: and do everything really through your web browser. UM. So
Speaker 1: where you uh, whereas you might do your word you know,
Speaker 1: we're processing in a separate program from the program that
Speaker 1: you would use for your spreadsheets. Now you're just doing
Speaker 1: everything in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
Speaker 1: Um in some cases safari. Yeah, if you're the poor,
Speaker 1: unfortunate Sari Safari hater. Um. So, uh so let's get started.
Speaker 1: How did how did all of this really take off?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's not something that just happened
Speaker 1: with the dawn of the new decade. No. No, Let's well,
Speaker 1: first of all, you gotta look at traditional productivity software.
Speaker 1: When we're talking productivity software, we're talking about a specific
Speaker 1: kind of UM suite of applications that people, usually within
Speaker 1: office environments, rely upon on a daily basis. So things
Speaker 1: like document word processing programs, spreadsheet programs, presentation programs, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes some other like file management systems, things like that.
Speaker 1: That's really what we're looking at here. And uh and
Speaker 1: as we said before, most of the time, back in
Speaker 1: the you know, the late eighties, early nineties, these were
Speaker 1: programs that existed on your computer. Everything existed there. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to send someone something from your computer, you
Speaker 1: essentially created a copy of it and send it to them.
Speaker 1: So uh, then that you would have two copies of
Speaker 1: the same document out That's going to be important later
Speaker 1: on when we get into collaboration. UM. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of the model that that everyone was used to. Cloud
Speaker 1: computing moves all of these over into the cloud. These
Speaker 1: these applications, like Chris said, are hosted on on other machines,
Speaker 1: and you can access these applications through your browser. In
Speaker 1: some cases, you may also have to download and install
Speaker 1: a tool on your desktop to um to be able
Speaker 1: to access and interface with these these applications. Not all
Speaker 1: of them are solely cloud computing applications. Some of them
Speaker 1: are kind of hybrids. Uh, But in general, everything you
Speaker 1: access and save and uh and and rely upon is
Speaker 1: going to be on other machines that you can tap
Speaker 1: into at any time. How it came about is well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a gradual evolution. Really, one of the earliest,
Speaker 1: I would say, Uh. You can argue that there were
Speaker 1: tons of different ones that they came out before this,
Speaker 1: but one of the ones that was that really kind
Speaker 1: of made a big splash as far as online productivity
Speaker 1: software goes. It was Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which eventually
Speaker 1: just became Google Docs. Now, part of that is just
Speaker 1: because it had the name Google behind it. Anything that
Speaker 1: has the name Google behind it has a certain amount
Speaker 1: of momentum already because I mean, it's an enormous company,
Speaker 1: right right. Another part is that Google did what it
Speaker 1: does really well, and that they look out for other
Speaker 1: other applications, other companies out there to do something really
Speaker 1: well that they want to do, and then they go
Speaker 1: out and buy them. Yes. So I know there are
Speaker 1: a lot of other companies that that did the whole
Speaker 1: cloud online productivity software stuff before Google did, but most
Speaker 1: of those got bought by Google or or ended up
Speaker 1: dying out because of Google, and and in some cases
Speaker 1: were bought out by competitors. UM. The one that that
Speaker 1: really I think kicked it off for Google was rightly UM,
Speaker 1: which was an acclaimed word processor online only word processor
Speaker 1: UM and at the time, which was I would say
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, probably around ninety Uh well, now
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, mid two thousand's, early two thousand's UM. When
Speaker 1: it first came out, I apologized for that. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: people were talking about this because it was it was
Speaker 1: sort of a new concept. People were really entrenched with, uh,
Speaker 1: the Microsoft Office Suite, and this was this did online
Speaker 1: cloud word processing very very well. It was an awesome tool.
Speaker 1: And then Google acquired it and people were talking about
Speaker 1: what Google was going to do with it. Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't long after that that they added the spreadsheet application
Speaker 1: to make it. Uh you know, they started calling it
Speaker 1: as the media will a Microsoft Office killer, right, which
Speaker 1: uh you may have noticed that Microsoft Office has not
Speaker 1: been killed yet, despite um, despite some legal setbacks which
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk about in the minute too,
Speaker 1: because we may see more of a focus put toward
Speaker 1: online productivity software simply because of some some legal issues
Speaker 1: that Microsoft is currently facing with the whole words situation.
Speaker 1: But I can get into that a little bit later. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. And it also was what changed
Speaker 1: Google Docs to Google Docs and spreadsheets that people started
Speaker 1: calling it Google docs and spreadsheets. I do have a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet that includes many small dogs. Some of them are
Speaker 1: dogsins they are long dogs, so they are small get along,
Speaker 1: little doggie, that's right there, Yes, so anyway, yes, the
Speaker 1: weener dogs. But uh, and eventually Google dropped the spreadsheets
Speaker 1: bits announced just Google Docs, even though it does contain
Speaker 1: applications for both not just both, I'm sorry, applications for
Speaker 1: word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. Well, they acquired other companies
Speaker 1: to to uh, to fill out the portfolio, and it's
Speaker 1: right including uh you know, Zenter and Tonic Systems UM.
Speaker 1: And really, when you think about it, when you look
Speaker 1: back up and look at the whole Google Docs picture,
Speaker 1: they really have everything you will need to to uh
Speaker 1: you know, the business tools that you need because they've
Speaker 1: got Gmail for email, You've got your calendar, you've got
Speaker 1: word processing presentation software. Uh, you've got um your spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: You've also got other tools to like Google Wave. So
Speaker 1: it really does all these different pieces, some of which
Speaker 1: were acquired, some of which were built in house. You know,
Speaker 1: they're very helpful to work with people collaboratively, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the unique things that Google brings to the
Speaker 1: table is the collaboration aspect. Right, well, it used to
Speaker 1: be unique. I would argue that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other online productivity software suites out there now that
Speaker 1: are building their entire marketing strategy behind the collaborative, collaborative
Speaker 1: nature of online computing. UM. So, when we're talking about collaborative,
Speaker 1: like I said before, when you were working on a
Speaker 1: document that was on a native word processing application on
Speaker 1: your computer and you wanted someone else to look at it,
Speaker 1: you know, you might send them in an email or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they would get a copy of your document. The
Speaker 1: original would still sit on your computer. Now, what if
Speaker 1: that person were to look at that document, make changes,
Speaker 1: and then send it back to you. Well, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways you could incorporate those changes
Speaker 1: within your own document. You could just accept the new
Speaker 1: document as the new master and you get rid of
Speaker 1: the old one. You could compare the two and then
Speaker 1: make changes on a change by change basis. But it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a clunky way of handling it,
Speaker 1: especially if you were doing a collaborative effort with multiple people.
Speaker 1: Now you're not. Now you're looking at four or five
Speaker 1: different versions of the same document circulating out there, and
Speaker 1: then maybe coming back totally changed from what you started with.
Speaker 1: And then then it gets really kind of complex. Well,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about Google Docs and some other online
Speaker 1: productivity software out there, Uh I mean Office Live? Does this? Um?
Speaker 1: Microsoft Office Live? Yes, Microsoft Office Live. So Microsoft is
Speaker 1: in this game too, folks. Zoho does this? Think Free
Speaker 1: does this? There are a lot of different online productivity
Speaker 1: software suites that allow line collaboration. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: everyone's working from the same master document. It exists on
Speaker 1: the in in a certain account, and and the person
Speaker 1: who owns that account, who created that document, can designate
Speaker 1: who and who cannot um who can and who cannot
Speaker 1: access that document, And in some cases you might have
Speaker 1: multiple levels of access. It might be these people can
Speaker 1: read the document, but they can't make any changes, or
Speaker 1: these people can make changes, but they can't invite anyone else,
Speaker 1: And then you might ultimately get to Okay, well, this
Speaker 1: person can make changes, can approve changes, and can also
Speaker 1: invite new people to participate within the collaboration. So when
Speaker 1: you do this, when people make the changes, it goes
Speaker 1: to the master document. Everyone can see the changes, and
Speaker 1: um most of them have a way of being able
Speaker 1: to review over time what changes have been made. Google
Speaker 1: docs in particular makes this pretty easy where you can, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you get to if you if you
Speaker 1: created a document and then five other people have been
Speaker 1: working on it and you haven't looked at it in
Speaker 1: a couple of days, it can get really confusing when
Speaker 1: you're looking at like, okay, well who made what change?
Speaker 1: When did it happen? Um? Do I really that one
Speaker 1: paragraph I liked is gone? Now? Do I want to
Speaker 1: try and bring it back? If I do? You know
Speaker 1: when did it go away? You can actually review the
Speaker 1: series of changes and see where that happened and UH
Speaker 1: and decide whether or not it makes sense to reincorporate
Speaker 1: that text. And one of the neat things UH that
Speaker 1: Google added to its Google Docs that made a few
Speaker 1: headlines when when they did was the ability to work
Speaker 1: on from more than one person to work on the
Speaker 1: same document at the same time, and Google Docs would
Speaker 1: be able to keep track of what was going on
Speaker 1: UH in both instances, so rather than having to lock
Speaker 1: someone else out, say okay, well Bob needs to work
Speaker 1: on this, Bob's checked it out. No one else can
Speaker 1: touch it until Bob checks it back into the to
Speaker 1: the system UM, which is a nice way of handling it.
Speaker 1: But this is even more elegant because it can it
Speaker 1: can identify what each person does to the document, and
Speaker 1: therefore no one's losing anything. And you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: that you just spent half an hour on doesn't get
Speaker 1: over written simply because the system can't handle multiple people
Speaker 1: making changes to it at the same time, which is
Speaker 1: very very nice. Another issue you may think about when
Speaker 1: when we're talking about online productivity software is what happens
Speaker 1: if you don't have an Internet connection, So they're gonna
Speaker 1: be times where that happens where you're not gonna have access.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're on a flight that doesn't have WiFi yet,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're just in an area of you know,
Speaker 1: town where you have no access, or maybe the truck
Speaker 1: down the street hit the fiber optic connection and there
Speaker 1: it goes. Maybe your neighbors finally got wise and actually
Speaker 1: put a password on their WiFi. I'm just saying it happens.
Speaker 1: So what do you do then? Do you just say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I have to wait till I get back
Speaker 1: in the office before I can work on this. Well,
Speaker 1: most of these these solutions have incorporated some form of
Speaker 1: synchronous nation software where you can work on a document
Speaker 1: offline and you can make changes to it, you can
Speaker 1: save it, and then when you reconnect to the internet,
Speaker 1: it will automatically incorporate those changes within the document online. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, this could also cause some issues because what
Speaker 1: if you have multiple people working offline and then they
Speaker 1: all reconnect and um, I think ultimately you have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of document management hierarchy in place, where
Speaker 1: perhaps the person who created the document ultimately makes the
Speaker 1: decision of which changes go in and which ones don't
Speaker 1: because then it gets a little complex if you were
Speaker 1: to have maybe four or five people working on something now,
Speaker 1: and that I don't think that necessarily happens that often.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have a group of consultants working on a project,
Speaker 1: or maybe you've got several reporters all working on say
Speaker 1: a school paper, working on it within Google Docs. Perhaps
Speaker 1: then I could see where that might cause problems, But
Speaker 1: in most cases, you're that's gonna be kept to a minimum.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it's Google Docs did this with
Speaker 1: Google Gears. That was their their Google Labs thing where
Speaker 1: you could actually access a lot of functionality on Google
Speaker 1: um within their productivity suite, just even if you weren't connected.
Speaker 1: But other ones do it to Office Live has their version, uh,
Speaker 1: you know in Zoho. And so everyone's kind of come
Speaker 1: up with their own solution to this problem so that
Speaker 1: you know, you don't feel like, well, if I lose Internet,
Speaker 1: does that mean I lose my ability to work on
Speaker 1: whatever I was working on? Yeah, it's true enough. So, um,
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of things you can do.
Speaker 1: I mean the uh, I think I can think of
Speaker 1: four or five in particular, whole suites of applications, most
Speaker 1: of them managed by big companies like of course there's
Speaker 1: Google Docs, there's Microsoft Office Live. UM. That Another one
Speaker 1: we talked about just now we haven't really gotten into
Speaker 1: in depth was Zoho, which is independent and they have
Speaker 1: an amazing array of online productivity software. Yes, yes, it's
Speaker 1: all kinds of tools, notebook, contact Manager, UM, all kinds
Speaker 1: of business group application which actually groups the most common
Speaker 1: applications together into a single user interface. UH. And they
Speaker 1: have plans on eventually allowing third party applications to UM.
Speaker 1: Third parties to submit applications to their to their business
Speaker 1: groups application, so that let's say that, you know, you
Speaker 1: could really use a special kind of of newsreader that
Speaker 1: isn't in this and it's almost like replacing your desktop. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, they haven't implemented any
Speaker 1: third party apps yet, but it's something that's in the
Speaker 1: plans UM. And it's the nice thing about Zoho. And actually,
Speaker 1: for most of these online productivity software solutions, it's free
Speaker 1: for people to use if they're using it on an
Speaker 1: individual basis. It's only when you get into organizations like
Speaker 1: companies or you know, nonprofit organizations or whatever that you
Speaker 1: have to start looking at a subscription policy. And then
Speaker 1: that's when Zoho was like, all right, well, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna use it as an enterprise thing, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: need to to pay a certain fee per year to
Speaker 1: access all of this and uh and then you know,
Speaker 1: you might get some extra little perks that that the
Speaker 1: free users don't necessarily have access to. Yeah, yeah, I think, um,
Speaker 1: sort of digressing for a second. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is this kind of software they have, the product basic
Speaker 1: productivity software is this is just something that people expect
Speaker 1: to see now as part of their uh, their computer suite.
Speaker 1: You know, you have your operating system, you have email,
Speaker 1: you have the web browser, and you have something that
Speaker 1: will let you write a letter to somebody and you
Speaker 1: know do some basic, uh basic productivity type work. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why these these programs are coming down.
Speaker 1: You know, it's possible. You know, Microsoft is also offering
Speaker 1: less expensive like a home version of Office now where
Speaker 1: it hadn't before, which you had to to fork over
Speaker 1: quite a bit of cash before if you wanted a
Speaker 1: whole office suite, right, And we we should point out
Speaker 1: also that in general, these online applications tend to be
Speaker 1: a little. They don't have all the features and bells
Speaker 1: and whistles that you'll find in a desktop application. Not
Speaker 1: not really, not all of them. I mean you'll like, like,
Speaker 1: if you were to go back to your desk and
Speaker 1: open up Microsoft Word on your desk, you would have
Speaker 1: access to way more functions that you're gonna get than
Speaker 1: if you access the online version. Now that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean these are vital functions. They may be functions that
Speaker 1: you never use. Uh, maybe that all the the ones
Speaker 1: that you have come to depend upon are fully covered
Speaker 1: within the online version. But if you're a power user,
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's using like those really obscure functions
Speaker 1: that no one else in the world ever uses, then
Speaker 1: moving to an online software uh kind of uh environment
Speaker 1: may not be the best choice. Um, But I mean
Speaker 1: that whole the whole thing is improving anyway on online.
Speaker 1: I mean you're you're seeing like these suites get more
Speaker 1: and more functionality as time goes on, and we would
Speaker 1: expect to see that so uh. And again, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies are really starting to put
Speaker 1: their weight behind on their online presence and kind of
Speaker 1: take the focus away from the hardware stuff because look
Speaker 1: at what's selling. You've got netbooks, they're selling really well,
Speaker 1: and now you've got smart books coming out. These are
Speaker 1: devices that are not necessarily capable of running these um
Speaker 1: these uh, these applications natively like, especially things for presentations
Speaker 1: that can take up a lot of memory depending on
Speaker 1: how complex it is. But by putting it on the web,
Speaker 1: suddenly you don't need a powerful machine to build these
Speaker 1: these presentations because it's doing all the work for you,
Speaker 1: and you don't need to hard drive space in order
Speaker 1: to host the applications either. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: Google Docs, for an example, gives you a gigabyte of
Speaker 1: free storage. In fact, they've opened it up now where
Speaker 1: you can if you have a Google Docs account, you
Speaker 1: have a gigabyte of free storage that you can put
Speaker 1: anything in. It doesn't have to be a Google doc
Speaker 1: to or you know, spreadsheet or presentation or whatever for
Speaker 1: it to go into their now. Granted, uh it can't.
Speaker 1: Each individual file has to be two or fifty megabytes
Speaker 1: or smaller. But you can put up to a gigabyte
Speaker 1: for free in there, and if you want more, then
Speaker 1: you can purchase more gigabytes for about a quarter a
Speaker 1: gigabyte per year. It was. We took a look and
Speaker 1: it was five dollars for twenty gigabytes for a full year.
Speaker 1: Five bucks, five dollars. You've got twenty gigabytes of online storage.
Speaker 1: Office Live they give you five gigabytes a storage with
Speaker 1: an Office Live account, so which you know, it's just
Speaker 1: like having any other kind of live account. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's free to sign that up to. So there's online
Speaker 1: storage has gotten to the point where you're you're essentially
Speaker 1: the message they're sending is storage is cheap. It is cheap.
Speaker 1: Now you have to worry about how secure it is
Speaker 1: and how accessible it is because if something happens with
Speaker 1: either of those services, like if you're a Microsoft customer
Speaker 1: and they have a problem with their servers, you may
Speaker 1: not be able to access your files, just like if
Speaker 1: you were a Google customer. That's happened a couple of
Speaker 1: times in the past year where Google services kind of
Speaker 1: took a little dive briefly and people freaked out because
Speaker 1: they couldn't access their Gmail or Google docs. Um well,
Speaker 1: there are machines, and machines break and they are vulnerable
Speaker 1: to hacking attacks. Now, in general, these companies put a
Speaker 1: lot of money into keeping their their applications secure and
Speaker 1: the data secure. But at the same time they're also
Speaker 1: huge targets, so they may be more secure than your
Speaker 1: native company. Let's say that your native company has got
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a hundred fifty employees total, and so
Speaker 1: that's a much smaller company than something like Microsoft or
Speaker 1: Google orders a magnitude smaller UH. And so let's say
Speaker 1: that your company's security isn't anywhere near Google's security or
Speaker 1: Microsoft security. But at the same time, you're under the radar.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not going to be a huge target
Speaker 1: for ackers like Microsoft or Google. So that's something that
Speaker 1: companies and individuals have to take into consideration. Um we
Speaker 1: recently saw an issue where in another country people had
Speaker 1: their information compromised because hackers attacked Google. And in this case,
Speaker 1: it was just account information. It wasn't specific things like
Speaker 1: documents or or emails. But I mean that's something to
Speaker 1: keep in mind whenever you're moving to an online model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m I was gonna mention to some of the other
Speaker 1: UH productivity software out there. One that's really neat and
Speaker 1: another UH that came from an acquisition um is and
Speaker 1: it's kind of under the radar. Two is Adobe's suite, which,
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell, started with the acquisition
Speaker 1: of Buzzword, which was a flash based UM word processing
Speaker 1: programming absolutely beautiful. UM here again, this is an example
Speaker 1: of a program that's sort of limited in features. When
Speaker 1: they first acquired Adobe didn't have a whole lot of features.
Speaker 1: You you were limited to what you could do with it.
Speaker 1: But it was absolutely fantastic to look at, and I
Speaker 1: went back to look for the do you know, for
Speaker 1: the purposes of research and um they've added at tables
Speaker 1: program and a presentations program and uh the ability to
Speaker 1: create PDFs without having to own a copy of Acrobrat Pro,
Speaker 1: which is very nice. But there are other bits and
Speaker 1: pieces out there companies who offer productivity software that is
Speaker 1: an entire suite. UM. Coming to mind off the top
Speaker 1: of my head was thirty seven Signals. UH if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard of base camp, the project management software. They
Speaker 1: also have a client tracker called high Rise Backpack, which
Speaker 1: is uh you know, helps you organize and coordinate projects
Speaker 1: with other people, and um Campfire, which allows you to
Speaker 1: chat with other people that you work with. This these
Speaker 1: are really useful for uh uh startups and small companies
Speaker 1: that are, you know, using the Internet to work with
Speaker 1: one another. You know people who say a who meet
Speaker 1: at a conference, for example, and one of them lives
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, the other in New York. They can
Speaker 1: use tools like this to share documents back and forth. UM,
Speaker 1: very very highly regarded. UM. You know, and there are
Speaker 1: others you know I work dot com as Apple's um
Speaker 1: sort of shadowy, not really shadowy, that means public knowledge
Speaker 1: that it's out there, but people are speculating that I
Speaker 1: work will be more than just a way to share
Speaker 1: I work documents between different people in the future. They've
Speaker 1: been ramping up on the UH Data center space, so
Speaker 1: there's speculations that that Apple might get into this space
Speaker 1: as well. UM and all kinds of other stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of photo editing software and videos and software
Speaker 1: out there that's also online and UM, I was gonna
Speaker 1: mention very briefly, I think this would be a good
Speaker 1: way to close that. Chris and I have worked a
Speaker 1: little bit on a Google Wave which in a way
Speaker 1: you can kind of seeing Wave being an attempt to
Speaker 1: create what will be the next generation of collaborative soft
Speaker 1: where where you can build documents, you can have an
Speaker 1: instant message, conversation between two people, you can uh kind
Speaker 1: of sort of email. It sort of does all of
Speaker 1: these things all in one. The problem is, right now
Speaker 1: it's still in preview mode. It's not even in beta. Um,
Speaker 1: and I agree with it that it shouldn't be in
Speaker 1: beta yet because it's there's just not enough functionality there
Speaker 1: right now. Disappear without noticing. Yeah, well it's it's it's
Speaker 1: more than just being buggy. It's just that there's not
Speaker 1: enough focus yet. I think I think it's it's an
Speaker 1: amazing tool that doesn't have enough focus. So right now
Speaker 1: it's more confusing than useful. Most people when they get Wave,
Speaker 1: the first thing they think is awesome, I've got Google Wave.
Speaker 1: And the second thing they think is how the hell
Speaker 1: am I supposed to use this thing? And then like
Speaker 1: the third or fourth thing they think is, hey, don't
Speaker 1: have a Google Wave account because because if you're you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's so confusing to the average user that I
Speaker 1: think most people quickly abandon it. But I think that
Speaker 1: could be uh kind of a glimpse at what we
Speaker 1: will see online collaborative software. I think this word's going
Speaker 1: to be moving in the future. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'd be remiss because I just thought of this as
Speaker 1: we were talking UM about a very unusual suite of
Speaker 1: cloud computing software, because it's not the typical productivity software
Speaker 1: that you would think of. But I was thinking of Aviary, right,
Speaker 1: are you? It's a if you because UM, when you
Speaker 1: were talking about how other there are other ways to
Speaker 1: UH other types of image editing software. Aviary UM is
Speaker 1: strictly where where Adobe offers a version of Photoshop online,
Speaker 1: there's a cloud computing piece of software. Aviary is strictly UM.
Speaker 1: For the creative types. UM. There's a color chooser, there
Speaker 1: is a an image editor, a vector illustrator. UM. They've
Speaker 1: even offered the beginning to offer UM a sound editing program,
Speaker 1: very much like you might see UH in garage band,
Speaker 1: where you can edit tracks UM. And it's free to
Speaker 1: get started with it, but there are certain things that
Speaker 1: become available to you. UM. The idea is it's sort
Speaker 1: of a social media project too, because you can share
Speaker 1: tracks with other people and images with other people. But
Speaker 1: if you want to keep your stuff private, you have
Speaker 1: to be a paid account holder. So and so it's
Speaker 1: kind of different. Everything you create being immediately appropriated by
Speaker 1: everybody else go ahead. But it's fantastic stuff though. I've
Speaker 1: you know, I've played around with it some and you're going,
Speaker 1: how do they make these tools available to you in
Speaker 1: a web browser? Um? Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing more and more a move towards having
Speaker 1: a web browser based operating system. The Google Chromos is
Speaker 1: going to be that. So clearly, these sorts of of
Speaker 1: services will be necessary in order to make those those
Speaker 1: machines that are running that kind of operating system a
Speaker 1: useful machine. Otherwise you've just got, you know, a bunch
Speaker 1: of chips that don't really do anything. Um. Well, I
Speaker 1: think this was a really good conversation on productivity software.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it sounds like it's kind of a
Speaker 1: dry topic, but this is for a lot of our
Speaker 1: nurse you guys who are in in middle school and
Speaker 1: high school in particular, this is the source of stuff
Speaker 1: that's probably going to be affecting you as you enter
Speaker 1: the workforce. A lot of these these software suites, um,
Speaker 1: are probably gonna be things that that companies start to
Speaker 1: rely on more heavily in the future, especially new companies.
Speaker 1: Older companies tend to hang on to older software longer
Speaker 1: because it's just they've got so much stuff invested in that.
Speaker 1: But for newer companies, I think this is one of
Speaker 1: those things we're gonna see a lot more of. We're
Speaker 1: gonna see more people kind of move to this online approach,
Speaker 1: So keep your eyes open, get a little familiar with them.
Speaker 1: Most of them have the availability for you to have
Speaker 1: a free account and uh or at least a trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know that with limited features even for things
Speaker 1: like study groups and stuff. I think it's really really handy. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, take a look at it because this stuff
Speaker 1: is this will be important later on. Trust me. I know.
Speaker 1: I was in that world for seven years and then
Speaker 1: I was free. So if any of you have any questions, comments, suggestions,
Speaker 1: anything like that, send us an email or email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Chris
Speaker 1: and I are going to get a little productive here
Speaker 1: and try and work on our next podcast, so we'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think. Send an email to
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