Thing #8: Try Out Either Google Documents or Zoho

Description:

Google Documents and Zoho are online wordprocessors. Well, actually, they are suites of productivity software, including spreadsheets, presentation software and the like. I even showed you a demo earlier on that described why these products are important. Now, I just want you to try it out. Create a document. Write out a brief letter, or fill in some blanks in the spreadsheet. That's all.

Hints:

• Common theme -- you will have to sign up with the service, and that may require an email. The good news is if you've signed up with Blogger to get your blog, you can use your Google ID to use Google documents.
• Another Common theme -- Both Google Documents and Zoho use a WYSIWYG, just like your blog and just like the wikis before it. This may seem just like repetition of your blog!
• There are alot of features available, including the ability to share your document with others and publish it to the Web. How far you go is up to you, but I only expect you to play around with a few things on the page.

Resources:

• Google Docs Tour
• Type and travel: Web-based word processors
  

Thing #5: Write a 50-100 word Post (on your blog) About Your Article from Thing #2

Description:

Write a post on your brand new blog, describing the article you read as part of thing #2.

Hints:

• You can be longer than 100 words if you want, but try to reach 50 if you can.
• Answering these three questions should get you to 50 words pretty quickly:
• What was the title of the article?
• Who was the author of the article and how did you find it?
• What did you think of the article? Was the writing clear enough that you "got" what he/she was saying? Did you agree? Disagree?
• This is not mandatory, but try and play around a little bit when you write your blog post.
  
• See if you can figure out how to add images, movies, or hyperlinks to your post (remember copyright, though -- don't use someone else's stuff without their permission!).
  
• You can change the colour of your text, provide bullet points, add italics and bold print and so on.
  
• Chances are, the compose box is very much like Word or Wordperfect. Geeks call this a "WYSIWYG" editor. It makes doing web pages a lot easier.

Resources:

• What do all the icons mean? -- Wordpress help
• All about Blogger's Post Editor -- Blogger help