Comments on: The case against on-line collaboration.

By: Luke Szyrmer

Luke Szyrmer — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:34:56 +0000

IMO these are two different things, i.e. accountability and collaboration. While it may be true that GoogleDocs and online spreadsheets currently lack ways of accountability for changes, they may in the future. If you design them correctly, tools to transfer ownership and accountability for online spreadsheets could resolve that as an issue. As for concurrency, well that is the oldest issue in the book. Just because we software folk might not like dealing with it, it doesn’t mean that users don’t need it.

By: Mark Ryan

Mark Ryan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:03:11 +0000

While on-line collaboration is often a great waste of time, collaboration via Excel is on a lot of wish lists. Excel is installed almost everywhere. The learning curve is almost 0 for most users. All that is needed to put Excel to use in a collaborative way the add-in Distributed Spreadsheet. No on-line access needed. Full versioning. Full control of all changes. Yes, this is a prop for a product but before Excel gets a bad rep as a sharing tool, there are products available that address the shortcomings of Excel.

By: simon

simon — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:02:15 +0000

I totally agree Ross, I think version control and accountability are key things they are missing.

By: The case FOR on-line collaboration « Smurf on Spreadsheets

The case FOR on-line collaboration « Smurf on Spreadsheets — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:59:48 +0000

[...] The case FOR on-line collaboration Ross has done an excellent post here on the case against OLC. [...]