Online productivity tools - SILS20090

Ros Pan Head of E-Strategy and Innovation, UCD Library Web 2.0 & Social Media Online Productivity Tools

Links (will also be in Slideshare)

This presentation https://show.zoho.com/public/poppypan/Onlineprod091

The workbook https://writer.zoho.com/public/poppypan/online-productivity-tools-workbook1

Bookmarks for this class http:// delicious.com/ucdetoys/Onlineproductivitytools

Coverage of the class

Scope of the topic and its defining features

Starter – trying out a couple of simple stand-alone tools. Practical 15minutes Workbook 1 These do one thing, no registration, nothing to download.

Nature of these tools summarised for the individual and the organization Case Study 1 – use in universities

The bigger picture into which this fits – Cloud computing, Rich Internet Applications, Web applications, AJAX, Software as a Service, Hardware as a Service Case Study 2 – use in business and Video

What is available for you at the individual level and why and when might you want to use it? Practical 5 minutes Workbook 2

Practical work on your own Online Cloud – Practical 30 minutes Workbook 3

Reminder blog entry – Workbook 4

Scope of the topic

Already looked at whole range of things, blogs, wikis, social networks, RSS

Is no easy boundary – WIKIS are certainly online productivity tools

General the focus today is a bit less on the sharing and collaboration side of Web 2.0 and more on the technical aspects than enable you not just to share stuff via the internet and the web but to PRODUCE things using entirely web-based applications

But they do enable sharing and collaboration as well

Scope of the topic

These tools can be used by the individual OR they can be taken up by the organization which is a very major shift that we are in the early stages of. Your own use will focus on the individual, a couple of case studies introduce the implications at the organization level

These tools can be little things – typically they just do one thing like a spreadsheet, or scheduler or note taker OR they can be very large suites of applications aiming to take market from Microsoft Office in the main – first practical covers little things and second main one looks at one of the big suites

Scope of the topic

Practical 1

Single function tools

Easy to use

10-15 minutes

Recommend you bring up the workbook in ZOHO so the links can just be followed without keying as a bit long in some cases

Summary of some key features

frees you up to pick what YOU like to use though may be problems if cannot save into a fairly standard format

Can complement the UCD offerings of software OR

Replace them if you wish

Carry on with them when you leave UCD

e.g. use ZOTERO rather than Endnote http:// www.zotero.org /

Library examples of colleagues using these things include applications for bookings and MAILCHIMP for creating a graphic newsletter and creating a mailing list to send it round – in both cases filling gaps in the IT solutions being offered to us in relation to what we need

We cannot get frequent access to UCD mailing lists to reach all students and staff

When we DO get access to it we cannot send out any mailings that include nice graphics and layout in them

So we have looked elsewhere

www.mailchimp.com

Can use them anywhere more or less Some of the higher end applications require download of extension to browser or a client – and this does limit where you can use them

Merge of work and play time Tend to use playtime things at work but also because of the portability of these tools tend to carry on with work-related things at home, so work-life balance perhaps being replaced with work-life melding and bleeding at the edges

save on infrastructure, staff support, kit, data storage

For the ORGANIZATION, there are potentially very large savings in making this move to web applications, here is one businessman quote:

“… . says he has slashed Serena’s IT bill from £500,000 a year to £25,000 by signing up to Google’s cloud.”

Advantages

“ As Randall Stross, the author of Planet Google, puts it: “The headaches we’ve wrestled with in the past, for example, ‘I edited that document at the office but I didn’t bring a copy home with me’, will disappear.” Moreover, we never need to buy any software updates because these are tested and constantly sprinkled into the cloud by operators. There are no licence fees to pay. Best of all, we never have to worry about losing our laptop or mobile phone or backing up their contents because no important data is stored on the devices.”

Case Study 1 – in workbook

Google apps available since 2006

Offer education packages

Universities have concerns about security, future-proofing

Are slowly switching over

The cautious approach is to just move e-mail and calendar (Diary) over

More ambitious places are shifting over to replace any local offering of Microsoft Office altogether

The bigger picture – CLOUD COMPUTING

“ Today, most of us use electronic devices with closed systems. Each device creates and stores certain types of information. We store Word documents and spreadsheets on our laptop and PC, contacts and e-mails on our mobile, TV and video on our television and set-top box, and music on our iPod. The cloud reverses that model. Cloud-based devices create and store nothing. They are merely connecting devices that draw down the information we need. Computing best illustrates the shift. In the cloud, the internet becomes our operating system. We use online software that runs in our browser to create the files we need. The files are stored in remote data centres .” http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6740886.ece Are our heads in the cloud? Times Online August 9 2009

Also good - 7 Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing -

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EST0902.pdf

A mention of some key terms

Follow up delicious bookmarks if interested…

SaaS Software as a Service

HaaS Hardware as a Service

Webapps or Web applications

RIA Rich Internet Applications

AJAX

In software engineering, a web application or webapp is an application that is accessed via a web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is also a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.) and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.

Web applications are popular due to the ubiquity of web browsers , and the convenience of using a web browser as a client, sometimes called a thin client. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers is a key reason for their popularity, as is the inherent support for cross-platform compatibility .

(From wikipedia)

AJAX

This is a suite of various technologies, the term coined in 2005, that you may want to be aware of which enables many of these internet based applications to run so smoothly.

Gmail (2004) Google maps (2005) are just a couple of examples of web apps that use AJAX

If you are in a hurry go to http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/02/ajax_explained.html Don Dodge blog clear explanation, all you need to know.

AJAX

From Don Dodge blog:

“ AJAX is not a product or a platform. It is a set of technologies used to build interactive web applications that don't require constant page reloading each time the user takes an action….The AJAX engine and associated snapshots of files and data are downloaded to your browser in the background asynchronously without you knowing about it….AJAX has re-energized web based applications”

Case Study 2 – in workbook

Google apps available since 2006

Offer business packages

Businesses certainly have concerns about security, future-proofing – this example company maintains financial and accounting information to a local system

Concerns about web applications

“ There are strong advocates for the Cloud but also significant resistance to the concept of ‘private data in public spaces’.

As well as the advantages they share the worry t hat a lot of the web hosted things do – will they endure, are they backed up, will they stay free, who can look at my data and so forth.

Notwithstanding that some university IT managers are choosing to shift over to these tools because they save so much resource and money. “

“ A hacker recently guessed the password to the personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, then used it to access the employee’s Google cloud services and found documents that revealed Twitter’s secret business projections. The documents were leaked to the US website TechCrunch. “Before, the bad guys needed to get their hands on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud, all you need is a password,” warns Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and author of The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It. From The Sunday Times

The final section of this article is a good concise summary of the concerns around cloud computing for organizations:

Sunday Times, August 9 2009 “Are our heads in the cloud?”

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6740886.ece

“ It’s whizzy stuff, alright. But should we believe in the wisdom of clouds? There are several practical — and one giant ethical — problems that could turn it into a thunderstorm. Living, working and playing online may be convenient, but it raises serious issues surrounding privacy and security. To sign up for many cloud services, we need to reveal personal information, such as our date of birth. Once online, we effectively surrender our data — files, e-mails, photos, our location, what we listen to, in effect, our own 24/7 digital footprint — to a third party.“

Cloud computing summary video