Why Online Apps May Never be a Great Way to Get Things Done
Should we start relying solely on online applications for our work? Recent experience makes me think that we shouldn’t.
You may know that I publish the posts you read on this blog through Wordpress, an online publishing platform. It’s an application that relies on an Internet connection to work. So what happens if that connection suddenly fails? I learned the answer while writing about my thoughts on the ongoing WGA strike. After I finished the article, I clicked on “Publish.” Moments later, my connection failed, while Wordpress was attempting to upload my text onto this blog. After I restored connectivity, I tried recovering my post, and saw that only a portion of it was saved.
My point is that, if I bothered writing my lost article on Word, there would’ve been less chance for my work to disappear. The process that converts my taps on the keyboard into words stored on my hard disk is much more direct than trying to save it on a remote server somewhere on the Internet. With the latter, there are more chances for failure, simply because there are much more steps involved.
Obviously, the creators of web applications are constantly finding ways to improve the speed and reliability of their products. And the advances they’ve made are spectacular. But I believe that, no matter what, saving your work directly on the computer will always be faster and more reliable than relying on an Internet connection to get the job done. At least in the foreseeable future.
So for now, I’m returning to an old habit, writing my blog posts on Word and copying them to Wordpress once I’m ready to publish. That way, even if Wordpress fails somewhere, I’ll still have a copy of my work, relatively safe and snug on my hard disk.
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POSTED IN: Useful Info, Ways to Work Faster
2 opinions for Why Online Apps May Never be a Great Way to Get Things Done
Sean Hodge
Dec 27, 2007 at 11:18 am
I write my posts in Journaler. Or at least part of them in Journaler. I usually jump over to Drupal to finish them up and import them.
I use Drupal for blogging, but its the same kind of issues that could happen to me. I do save often when making a post though. It just part of my process. I do get the benefit that if the connection went down I would have my last save. There may be a tool to autosave while your working. Do some plugin research for Wordpress as I’m not sure. I thought I saw something like that in Drupal, but not sure about Wordpress. Of course I won’t follow up on finding this out until I actually loose a post and then looking for an autosave plugin would go up higher on my to do list.
Overall, I agree working locally is often much better for getting things done. Connection speeds are one issue. You’ve brouht up a good issue about loosing docs your working on. I would expand this to include many GTD apps. I’m currently using a preview of Things which is awsome. I highly recommend it.
Rico
Dec 28, 2007 at 7:00 am
Things? What’s the website? :)
I’ve recently discovered Adobe’s AIR technology, which promises to give web apps full functionality even if there’s no active connection. Maybe that’s what online apps need.
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