I've used Google Docs a few times - it's helpful when you're on one continent and your spouse is on another.
The PARC team was thinking about using it for some of our group work, but IT put the kibosh on that - I wonder if we could get away with it now? Certainly a number of SPL work groups are using web-based tools to get group work done - is PBWiki really that much more secure than GoogleDocs?
I wish we could convince our customers to use these sorts of internet-based tools... Imagine how much simpler it would be if folks could just save to the interweb, rather than having to figure out if their particular storage device coordinates with the quirks of the terminal they happen to be using. Nice, no?
I do suspect that web-based storage, rather than storage you carry around with you, is what's coming next. My husband still pays for a backup service that involves some hard storage, but he's got his PhD to worry about - I probably wouldn't trust that to the free net either, but neither would I trust it to a (corruptible, breakable) external storage device I could carry around. When I have something I really, really want to keep safe, I e-mail it to one of my various gmail accounts.
Eventually, I predict, we'll have all our data out there in the ether, to access from whatever device we happen to be sitting at. Convenient, and also risky. Some things (banking?) you may still opt to link to a particular computer. But beyond that, I predict convenience will trump security concerns. I know it has for me already.
As for web-based productivity tools, I want to plug FreeMind, a freeware Mind Mapping program. You do have to download it to your computer, so you'll have to do it at home or come up with a really good reason why you need it at work. But if you're looking for a brainstorming tool, I can recommend this one wholeheartedly.
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When we began working on the 27 Things program, we tried a couple of web-based collaboration tools. The problem was, we each were familiar with different tools, and the learning curve was more than we could handle. I think if we pick one and everyone learns to use it, there would be a greater incentive for online sharing. OTOH, Sharepoint pretty much bombed ...
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