Google Documents
This online application has so many uses, I feel that it is the most versatile of the 3 choices given to review. The only thing that could hold the use of this application back is that the user must have a gmail email account in order to use it. A gmail account is free and has many other benefits, so I think people would be willing to sign up. Google documents allows users to share and work collaboratively on word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and/or data collection documents. Since the documents are saved and stored online, you can access them from anywhere which is a huge benefit. One drawback of this is if you do not have access to the internet you can not modify the documents. The editing tools are familiar if you have had experience with the Microsoft Office Suite. For the most part, you can modify the documents the same way as you could in Microsoft Office. The "presentation" suite does not have as many options for slide themes and layouts, but the ones included are pretty good. The last feature that I found very helpful is the "history" tool that allows anyone with access to the document to look back at all the changes made to the document. This is nice when working with a group, in case one member deletes something important or makes unwanted changes. Overall this online application can be used and shared easily while allowing as many people to collaborate as needed.
PicMonkey
This online application is an image editor but has so many features and tools you can do much more then that. I really liked the do it yourself cards and invitations. I am an avid scrapbooker and am always looking for new ways to be creative. PicMonkey allows the user to easily choose templates, or start from scratch to create so many different kinds of materials. I also tried out the photo editor, which is very simple to use and can really transform a picture. My husband is a photographer and uses photoshop to edit. Photoshop is so expensive, and he has tried to show me how to edit photos on it several times and it is just too complicated for me. PicMonkey has a basic menu that allows the user to change the picture in may ways, including cropping and resizing, filters and effects, adding text, overlays, frames and banners. You can even add props such as a mustache or pirate eye patch to a person in a picture! I like this online application for its ease of use and variety of features!
