In the Cloud without a Notebook
My current W2 assignment involves pre-release stuff from Microsoft. What this means is security and non-disclosure—and more security. Eventually, as things ramped up, we were told that bringing private “external devices” (like notebooks and storage keys) was not going to be allowed. This effectively forces me to experiment with using the cloud—stuff like Google Docs and Office Live. So, these are the reasons why Google Docs did not work out for me—sure it works for you but not me:
-
Google Docs HTML is not “clean”—it even uses
<font />tags for some reason. The app is not designed to copy/paste markup from one system to another. -
The ‘publish to Blog’ functionality simply did not work for me. The login test to Wordpress worked but the actual post did not—no messages about success or failure from Google—which is a serious turn off for company as big as Google.So I’m actually in the Microsoft Word Web App from Office Live because I’ll be able to use my unreleased version of CleanXHTML (for Word 2007) to post to WordPress. So here are some notables about Office Live:
-
I would rather use the full Word application but I cannot until the Office Live Spaces upgrade is over. According to TechCrunch, “Microsoft didn’t provide a solid timestamp for when the automatic upgrade will occur, only saying that it will come in the ‘coming months’, and that it will be opt-in.”
-
I notice that my favorite keyboard shortcuts are not working in the Word Web App (like Ctrl+Shift+N and Ctrl+Shift+L). I need to read this.
-
My use of Custom XML is not available in Word Web App but is preserved and marked with the message “Word Web App can’t display this item…”
-
I am very impressed with the preservation of my document styles—which are available in the More Styles section of the Styles area in the word Web App Ribbon.It must be said, however, that Google Reader is vastly improved (it no longer chokes on my rather large OPML file of feeds)—and, by the way, I am writing with Word Web App in Google Chrome.