The video on Google Docs reminded me of a lot of Christian evangelism I've received: they spend a lot more time explaining the problem they have the solution to than they do explaining the solution. (If it was a real problem, wouldn't you already know you had it?) I guess most marketing uses the same approach, i.e. create the psychological need for which your product has the solution. My response is similar, too: if Google Docs works for you, great! I've used Google Docs with one collaborator, and Dropbox with another, and I'm not sure that the learning curve doesn't negate whatever advantage they have over e-mail attachments.
If you don't use Google Docs, you will fry in hell.
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The only advantage of these shared file storage services is when there are email quotas and/or limits on transfer size. As a phd student, I get very little space on the UIUC email server, so when a professor asked me to format the papers for the digital proceedings, I exceeded my quota very quickly.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have used a lot of technologies for sharing files. The best ones do version control and check for simultaneous updates.
Most often, I use the low tech and just compress files (zip) and attach them to an email. Or I mount the file in my webspace and send the URL to the person with whom I am sharing (if you do not link to that URL from any webpage anywhere, then it will not be indexed by the search engines and can be very secure).
We humans keep track of the versions by adding numbers to the file name and we hope that simultaneous revisions don't happen.
The BSCW Shared Workspace System used to be big with collaborative computing people.