Particularly Virtual

To work in the Cloud or not to work in the Cloud; that is the Question.

As discussed on @BarJD Virtual Professionals and Web Chips, there are some interesting and challenging aspects of working online or in the Cloud.  Working in the Cloud is a topic I first learned about from other virtual assistants asking questions and sharing information at Vanetworking.com

Tools at Google Docs and Google Apps now let us utilize all of our office software skills for easy, swift collaboration for most tasks.  No doubt, there are some aspects of working together that would be better served at one of the services available such as BaseCamp (not an affiliate link), but Google’s tools are a good place to start.

Spreadsheets, documents, slide presentation and sites/wiki tools are basically the ones we use with any office software.  Google Sketchup is a modeling, dimensional tool that works with Google Earth, is for sale, requires a download, therefore, not exactly the CLOUD aspect that you find at the other tools.

I used to think there was nothing like WordPerfect/Corel, then I got ahold of MS Office which I confess to loving.  There were some tense moments before I learned that “labels” in the spreadsheet had now become “text”.  (In my mind, I still refer to them as labels.) MSWorks is another beast that can be used, but is very different from WordPerfect and MS Office.  OpenOffice is pretty close, but not the same.   Just so moves Google Docs…a different beast that needs some attention for you to find all the options for the tools.  There aren’t many toys, but adequate tools to work on a collaborative project.  When it is all done, it can be moved into something more complicated if necessary.  Let’s be honest, just how much of our collaboration truly benefits from the software toys or cannot develop without them.

Read more at the other blogs and try out the Cloud Tools for yourself.