The one-way web, or Microsoft Office vs the Internet

A friend of a friend who's organizing a hike made a route map in Google Maps. He then took a screen shot, put the image on a PowerPoint slide, and attached the file to his email invite. Wouldn't it have been easier to leave the map online and give out the URL? More convenient for recipients, too, to be able to zoom in/out on the map.

David will point out that not everyone feels comfortable publishing their whereabouts for the whole world to see, but I don't think Map Guy's selective use of the web was driven by privacy concerns. Instead, for him and many, many others, the Internet is more readily accepted as an information source than authoring tool.

A while back, for instance, I did some freelance writing for an ad agency. I started the project in Google Docs, and my contact and I worked on it together over the web. In the end, he asked for the document in Word, so he could "format it for production". The text was destined for someone's website though, and (as so many of my non-tech friends have complained) Word formatting isn't always consistently transferable into content management systems.

Non-tech folks aren't the only ones under the Microsoft Office spell. I've gotten more Excel spreadsheets than I can count from people who (a) are in the business of selling online storage and (b) agree they'd be better off if the info were kept in an online database. But I guess Word/Excel/PowerPoint create the magical feeling of having composed an actual document. And somehow users choose this sense of completion over productivity and convenience.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it? I think the first step towards widespread SaaS adoption is helping people shake off their irrational MS Office dependence.

Comments

[George Roberts]

I think there are still any number of reasons why online office tools have not taken off. A few reasons might be:

1. Concerns over data ownership/privacy/security

2. Existing investment (corporations are largely Office shops and have thousands of documents already in those formats)

3. Lack of features. While many online office apps are quite good, they often lack in certain features commonly used in companies, such as versioning/change tracking.

4. Lack of integration. Many companies have found that buying into the Microsoft "ecosystem" helps them integrate functionality across many applications and delivery points. For instance, Outlook over the air synchronization of contacts, calendar and email with Windows Mobile devices.

I'm definately a proponent of software as a service, but in many cases the tools just aren't up to snuff yet.

I do agree, however, that sending the link to the map would have been better. :)

[eMarv]

Ditto Isabel!

The first step off MS Office is http://OpenOffice.org

I've used it since 2000!