A few odds and ends this week. My wife has a project that she asked my help with; I told her it was not possible (as presented) so she went out and looked through the tools I suggested and found a product (service as it turned out) that made it possible. Sometimes how you view a project can make it unnecessarily difficult and sometimes you just need the right tool to make it, not only possible, but easy. It is my general approach to favor using Windows PC’s for projects for a great many reasons; however, I try not to lose sight of Unix products, Apple products, and Android products and the wonderful tools they can be for the “right” project.
In this particular case, the service was Google Apps and specifically the “sheets” app which allowed us to take an outline and turn it into a series of ORG charts. It, like so many other tools, required a bit of a learning curve so that we could import the existing information into a sheet and have the app convert it to a visual representation that would be easy for others to grasp or understand. Turning lists and tables into easily understood graphics has long been a primary function of spreadsheets.
Another part of the puzzle was resolved by another feature of Google Apps; the collaborative features allow two people (or more) to simultaneously share and work on a project. Similarly, any project saved onto a google work space (google drive) is available to share with whomever the author specifies.
One of the obvious advantages to hosted solutions (like Google Apps) is that all the heavy lifting (the processing, calculating, etc.) is done by the server hosting the service instead of the computer you are using to view and manipulate the project. The user can be using their choice of tablet, phone, computer of most any type to participate in the project and neither special equipment nor special software is required. Restated, this type of solution is inter-operable on any platform (device) which is capable of browsing the internet.