Week 2 of productivity

This week has been another interesting week of online learning.  We had to compare search engines as well as discover new ways to make our searches more productive.  Up to this point, I have used Google for the good majority of time when I need to search information.  I don't think that is going to change, though after looking at some other sites, I think I will be more inclined to use them if I feel my Google searches aren't producing exactly what I need.  I did look into Exalead, another search engine, and I found it's home page a lot more welcoming than Google's.  You are able to book mark your favorite pages and they are bookmarked as pictures, not text.  You can also access your computer from this website, no matter where you are are what computer you are on.  It was nice to see something that was a little different than Google, but again, Google has seemed to work well for me and I probably will still use Google a lot. 

Another thing that we did this week was look at more online word processing websites.  During this class, we have been using Google docs for our papers and presentations.  It really has been a great tool because  you can do your work from anywhere and you are not dependent on your own computer.  You can also share your work with anyone and they can edit the work (great for group work).  The two other programs that I looked into were called ThinkFree and Zoho Writer.  ThinkFree is a lot like Google docs.  You can do word processing documents on it, spreadsheets and slide presentations.  You can also share your work with others, like Google docs.  Although I will be continuing to use Google docs for class, it was nice to see something different in case I need to use it for work or in some other aspect of my life.    Besides ThinkFree, Zoho was also another interesting online word processor.  It felt a lot like Microsoft Word, so I liked how i felt familiar with it, even though I never used this particular program before.  I did notice that this sight only offers word processing, and not spreadsheets and slide presentations like Google docs and ThinkFree does.

Overall, this has been an eye opening week.  I feel that I may not be changing everything I do because of what I learned this week, but I may be doing some things differently in order to get more work complete in a faster manner.