1) Formatting Can Be Frustrating. If you’re design-minded – or just eager to keep your Word documents looking a particular way – Docs’ formatting glitches can occasionally be annoying. Docs can import Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but so far, still doesn’t do well enough at preserving complex formatting. The original document’s words, numbers and information are all imported, but sometimes the tabs, spacing and other formatting isn’t fully maintained from the original Word doc. Google Docs has been improving its formatting capabilities, though, (Docx documents can now be imported) and has added new features. You can now add images, tables, and drawings to spruce up your documents. Formatting options are less robust but easier to use than those offered by Microsoft Word. And Google Docs now has a template library which lets you use pre-made document styles created by other users.

2) Passwords Aren’t Perfect. If someone intent on getting into your documents gains access to your Google password, they could view and potentially alter your documents, much as they could view or misuse your e-mail account. The same holds true for your computer, of course, but with online documents, the damage can be done knowing only your user name and password, whereas hacking into your computer – or stealing it – might entail more effort. Google offers tips on picking one carefully. Additionally, for those who have experienced the frustration of a forgotten user name or password, you could find yourself locked out of your documents if you forget those key details.

3) Storage Limits. You can store up to 5,000 documents and up to 1,000 spreadsheets. (Click here for Google’s detailed explanation on file size limits). That’s plenty of space for most of us, and just as GMail storage has kept growing, it’s possible Google will eventually boost the free space it offers for Docs. If you bump up against the limit, you can always open a new account. And as noted above, you can now purchase more space for Docs – $5 a year gets you 20GB, enough for hundreds of videos and many thousands of documents. Individual documents have size caps, though the limits are large enough that they rarely create a problem.

Alternatives to Google Docs?

• If you want to check out other free online Word processing options, start with Zoho Writer.
• If you like minimalism, try DarkCopy.com.
• If you just can’t leave Microsoft Word behind, try Microsoft’s Officelive.com.
• Mac writers can try Ommwriter for a Zen approach to words.

Drop.io lets you set up free digital drop boxes – as many as you want – where you can share photos, documents, PDFs, videos, audio files and links with colleagues.

On the home page you start by naming your drop box or “drop.” (You don’t have to sign up, log-in, or provide any personal info at all). I’ve called the drop I created for this post “cunydnj,” as you can see in this screenshot. The next step is to select files to upload to your new, shared workspace. Or just create the drop to use later.

You get 100mb of storage for free for each drop you create, which is enough to upload lots of photos, documents, PDFs, audio files, links and whatever else you might be sharing. You can create as many free drops as you’d like.

I have several drops where I share teaching materials with students, including how-to tipsheets and audio and video tutorials. I have a couple drops I use for collaborative writing and multimedia projects. I store document drafts, interview transcripts and recordings, photos, and PDF research files. I also maintain drops for sharing personal photos and documents with friends. I access the drops online and from my iPhone, using a new free app called Droppler.

One of the nice things about drop.io is that once you create a shared workspace or “drop,” anyone can access it and add files to it, provided you’ve given them the URL, the e-mail address, or get this — the phone number. They don’t have to register or log-in, unless you’ve added a password to your drop. That ease of access means drops can be used for efficient crowdsourcing, enabling readers, viewers or blog visitors to contribute to the editorial team. Readers of a local blog, for instance, could call your drop’s phone number and record comments or story tips. Or they could send in community photos or videos by email.

If I were soliciting comments or contributions to this blog, for instance, I could ask you, the reader, to share your thoughts about drop.io by calling my new drop’s unique phone number, which in this case is: 917-512-7396 x 23506. Or you could contribute photos by attaching them to emails sent to cunydnj@drop.io. Once that content is in the drop, I can embed it into my blog. That means site producers can easily post crowdsourced voice messages, photos, videos or whatever else the community has contributed.

Anyone can log-in to a drop to see the shared materials (or to upload additional content) by visiting its URL. In the case of my new drop, which you can visit and try out as an example, the URL is: http://drop.io/cunydnj

If you prefer your drop to be private, you can require visitors to use a password. Each drop has its own URL, generally http://drop.io/ followed by whatever name you give the drop when you create it. (You can also just use the default random letters and digits assigned when you first open the site).

If I want to use a drop for a collaborative journalism project, I can give colleagues the shared drop info and they can add to — or download from — the drop as we put together the project components. If I’m working with remote colleagues, I can even use the drop’s conference call number to set up a free conference call. An answer posted on GetSatisfaction.com/dropio says that the site’s conference call feature can theoretically handle an unlimited number of participants, but it’s been tested to work with 20. There are no fees or codes to use – participants just dial the conference number and extension.

Even if you don’t have a need for its collaborative power, drops are handy for backing up key files and enabling online access to them when you’re away.

A caveat: Drop.io is sometimes sluggish when uploading photos, audio files and videos. And if you’re using a drop primarily for multimedia, you may bump into the 100mb space ceiling. You can upgrade to a 1gb drop for $10/year. Or if you plan to use drop.io professionally, you can subscribe to a pro version with 20 drops of 10gb each for $19/month.

There’s lots more to the site. For instance, it allows you to:

1. Collaborate in real-time on your project with chat and presentation modes.
2. Receive faxes in your drop
3. Set up optional charges for access to premium drop content (A potential revenue source for a struggling local blog?)
4. Automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, SMS or email when new files are added.
5. Download all your drop files to your computer as a Zip file
6. Move files from one drop to another

Oh, and about that “.io” in the site’s name? Here’s how the founders explain it on their FAQ page:

‘.io’ is the Top Level Domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory… yah, we had no idea either until we were poking around wikipedia. We are using it because: 1. We see our role primarily is as a really simple In/Out switch for all your information 2. The British Indian Ocean Territory is an enormous expanse of water with lots of islands in it, which, at a stretch, we think is a good metaphor for our site…”

Please add your comments below about drop.io or other journalism file sharing tools.

A video introduction to Drop.io:

Google backs up your documents on multiple servers, and you can back-up your own docs in at least 4 different ways. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Please add comments below if you have thoughts on these methods, or have an alternative method to suggest.

1) Download the documents to your hard drive as Word or PDF files, or even as plain text. Once downloaded, the files can also be saved to an external drive or burned onto a CD or DVD.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

2) If you use your e-mail account as your backup bin or your filing cabinet, the Docs menu has a big “Share” button that lets you easily e-mail any document to yourself as an attachment or as text in a message.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

3) For old school paper fans, you can print out documents and keep them in a back-up binder.

4) Use software like GDocBackup, Gladinet.com, Cloud Hero or Cloudberrydrive.com – (all Windows only). Caveat: I haven’t tested those, or seen an easy-to-use Mac software tool yet. If anyone has experience with these backups, feel free to add your comments below. You can also backup to Zoho Docs.

In addition to enabling you to backup your documents using any of the methods above, Docs itself can serve as a backup tool for your other documents, even if you plan to continue using Microsoft Word or other software for your writing.

How Docs Can Be a Backup

It’s a good idea to back up documents periodically using whatever method you prefer. But one thing to consider is that storing files online may actually be safer in some ways than storing files only on your computer. Your Google Docs are secure regardless of what happens to one particular computer or device. If you lose or forget your computer, or you get hit with a virus or your hard drive crashes, chances are your old-school Word Documents will be lost or inaccessible when you need them. (Remember the time your computer crashed before you had saved an important document?) Furthermore, if you ever suffer through a flood, fire or other natural disaster that ruins even your backup drives, your cloud copies will remain safe.

How to Backup Word Docs Using Google Docs

Step 1: To use Docs to backup your existing word files, just log in to Docs, click the “Upload” button on the top left-hand side of the Docs menu. That will take you to a menu where you can browse your computer or external hard-drive for any files you want to upload for backup purposes or to edit online.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Step 2: Within the Upload menu pictured below, click on “Browse” to find your file, which will then be uploaded to Google Docs. The types of documents Docs will accept are listed below right on the menu (Docs works with all flavors of Microsoft Word documents).

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

A short-cut method is to use the personalized e-mail address listed on the “upload” page, which enables you to send docs to your Google Docs account as e-mail attachments. That way you can upload several documents at once, speeding up your backup process. On your uploads page you’ll see a special e-mail address to use – unique to you – that may end in @prod.writely.com. Here’s more detail on how it works.

Here’s a 1-minute video about a Google Docs user’s experience sharing and backing up documents.

Docs Constantly Backs Up Your Work

I haven’t yet had to draw upon a Docs backup. Even if you accidentally erase a key paragraph in Docs and then close your browser, all you have to do is go back to the Docs “Tools” menu and select the “Revision History” button. Docs constantly saves whatever you are working on, creating new revision copies minute-by-minute. You can even compare different revision sets to make sure you know what version you’re reverting to.

If your computer freezes, your browser crashes, or your work is otherwise interrupted, when you open up the Doc again, your document somehow pops back up, fully up-to-date. And you can always go later to whatever version of the document you want to revert to, like the one before you deleted a key quote.

If you have other thoughts on backing up, or tools/suggestions to add, please include them in the comments below.