Online Office Suites. As boring as it sounds (word documents, spreadsheets?), this stuff is pretty cool and you'll be seeing it more and more often as time goes on. So you better get ahead of the curve and find out how these things work and what you can do with them. Fortunately, I've taken the initiative and tried out a couple of the more successful OOS ventures to see what can and can't be done with these new applications of utility and everyday practice. Today, we'll be checking out the office suite from the uber-popular Google, Google Docs.

But first, let me tell you why these things are cool, and belong as another part in this movement of internet connectivity. So much of our technology these days have integrated some form of online capability within it: the iPhone had changed it's product and service plan within one year partially because of it, we can now use the mini-blog-like Twitter service to broadcast our every moment to an online audience, and even the latest, trendy sub-notebooks depend on the internet for practically every possible use (the EeePC, Cloudbook, and soon to be Mini Inspiron). You can expect every aspect of the computer and cell-phone to include some way or form of being connected, 24/7.
Is this bad? Not at all, by a large majority this is only a benefit to the end-user. You're able to do and enjoy so much more with some connection to a larger resource than your immediate computer. Thanks to online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, media resources like Youtube or Hulu, and countless specialized web resources that cater to individual interests and needs, really does seem like everything is just a few mouse-clicks away.
The negative side to this is a simple, obvious one. With all that wealth of information and entertainment at your fingertips, all organized in your favorites or bookmarks, the one key ingredient to this idea is that you are connected, and that it's always available all day, everyday. It's getting closer to that sort of online presence, but until then there will be those moments where your machine won't be capable of getting online. And when that does happen, when our machines will depend on the internet so much and they won't be connected... I suspect that our laptops and phones won't be worth more than the plastic and metals that they are made of.

But, anyhow, let's talk about Google's own online office suite, Google Docs.

-Google Docs-
Google, the behemoth of all things web. These are the guys that provide you with features like Street View, services like Adsense and GMail, and a kick-ass search engine that is hard to beat. Now they have their own release of an online office suite: Google Docs.
One thing I've always liked about Google and their products, is their speed in delivering something useful to the public, and improving upon it while reading the response from everyday users like you and me; I believe that idea is something of a creed to their practice. Docs was released sometime in 2006, and has made limited but effective improvements since the beginning. The three office applications that Docs consists of are: a word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet editor. All of the documents that these three programs produce can be published online for public viewing, as if they were a webpage; they are hosted by Google. Each one of the programs are, much like Google's search page appears, very simple and clean. The menus are not cluttered, the direction is clear for whatever you'd like to do, and the majority of features found in popular, offline office suites are there.
As for what offline suites don't offer, you can expect some pretty cool features. Like live-multi-user editing of a file: you're able to edit a word document or spreadsheet with a number of co-workers or friends, simultaneously. In inclusion to that, you're able to track revision changes to a document via your e-mail, your documents are saved automatically to protect you from data loss, and they are stored online where they can be accessed anywhere, from any computer that's connected online. By using your iPhone or other mobile device, you're able to view your word documents and spreadsheets in the palm of your hand. With all of your documents being stored online, there is a limit to how many documents you may store online at any given time: every document can't be bigger than 500kb in size, and no more than 5,000 word documents and presentations, 5,000 images, and 1,000 spreadsheets. Each document can be downloaded and exported to be stored offline to help keep you from reaching those limits.
One common limitation of many online office suites is the filetype support that they can share. In the case of Docs, I'd give them a B-grade for this category. Docs supports the common .DOC and .XLS Windows formats, the .ODF (Open Document) format, and Adobe's .PDF format, among other less popular alternatives. I would've liked to see, and I thought they would, include support for the new Windows format, considering that it has grown a bit older and more common these days, the .DOCX and related formats. As a student, this is a frustrating, common happening, when you are sent a document from your instructor that the majority of you and your peers can't open and edit on a daily basis.

Despite the lack of support for the new Windows, Microsoft Office document formats, I'm still impressed with the capabilities of Google Docs. Some of those features are really unique and make my practical-soul very complete, specifically the ability to share and edit a document live among your peers.

As a sidenote, I'd like to point out that there are online resources that can reformat the .DOCX Windows format into a .DOC or a number of other available options. It looks like Zamzar offers the best support and widest selection of file formats. They even support reformats of other new Windows file formats, like Powerpoint's .PPTX and Excel's .XLSX. Check out Zamzar for yourself, here.