These days virtually everyone is in touch with Cloud Computing. In fact, most of us are relying on it to some degree. The internet, metaphorically referred to as “the cloud”, produces ever more Web 2.0 applications that enable us to take our lives online. We don’t write diaries - we blog. We don’t call to share news - we twitter. We meet friends through social networks, and our busy calendars are readily available online.
Once in a while we all need some kind of document, it may be a business plan presentation, rental contract, non-disclosure agreement, or even a name change request form. In most cases, Googling the document may ultimately get you what you need, but it’s both time consuming and frustrating. Below, I want to go through 3 excellent resources that can provide you with any professional document or form template for free.
Previously known as OpenOffice.org Premium, OxygenOffice.org Professional (OOOP) is a modified source of Open Office 2.3 that contains all the “extras” you would find in a standard Microsoft Office suite and more. The simple extras include everything from a rich clip art gallery to variety of standard document templates (CV, greeting cards, etc.).
However, OOOP goes well beyond just the 3,400 graphic clip art gallery and templates… The developers have included over 90 text fonts, OOOWikipedia (an integrated Wikipedia Search Tools), ability to run Visual Basic for Applications from Calc (the OpenOffice alternative to “Excel”), ability to import Office Open XML (Microsoft Office 2007), and option to export (save as) documents to PDF, LaTex and MediWiki. To top it all off, OOOP has been able to integrate importing of Works and WordPerfect documents.
Microsoft Office may be the most popular office productivity suite currently on the market, but don’t expect this to last forever considering the slew of new, web-based, and open-source alternatives coming every day. Recently, in only the last 2 to 3 years, not only has the number of MS Office competitors grown significantly, but also the quality of these products has increased immeasurably.
The best part about these new office alternatives is that they are completely FREE and they work with Microsoft Office, so if you or your company are locked into Office currently, you can integrate open-source software into your systems slowly and carefully. If you’re a consumer, you can now create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the fly, access them from anywhere, and open them in MS Office for compatibility purposes.
Web-based office applications have reached top heights these days: bringing together several features you won’t find in traditional office software i.e. Microsoft Office. These include: document sharing, group collaboration, support for all popular Office file formats, and remote access and editing. Although it’s still yet to reach a stage where it can be used as a viable alternative to your local office software, it definitely makes an excellent complimentary tool. So in case you’re looking for a free, all-in-one type web-based office suite than one of the below ones should be a good place to start with.
