what's up docs?

I love the concept of free good quality applications on the net! I came across a free online Photo Shop alternative a while back. It worked a bit like Big Huge Labs in that you can upload an image and then manipulate it just about anyway you like, although it was much more technical like Photo Shop rather than quick and fun like Big Huge Labs. Unfortunately I didn't bother to bookmark it and I can't for the life of me remember what it was called (it had a strange quirky name as most of these things seem to do), so it's identity for now will remain a mystery... but I know it's out there somewhere, and I want to believe!!!

Google Docs is great. I knocked up a quick rant about one of my favourite Lee Perry albums as an excuse to have a play around with it. While the formatting options are obviously much more limited than with MS Word, I think it could be a great tool to use for collaborative documents such as grant applications, etc. I don't think you'd really be able to create the final document in Google Docs as the formatting is very limited, but once all the contributors were happy with the basic content you'd be able to cut and paste it into Word for the final layout.

I also had a look at Zoho and was very relieved to find that I could use my Google profile to login, as it's honestly getting to the point where I'm going to go insane if I have to come up with yet another user name and password! I had a bit of a play around with the word processing function and it does seem to have more formatting options than Google Docs. Zoho also has a whole heap of other cool stuff which I'd like to have a closer look at later on.

I think both Zoho and Google Docs are great for collaborative documents, or even for word processing on the run - when you need to do something portable and don't have your memory stick with you (don't you hate it when that happens!).