Working from home comes with its own set of challenges.
Here are five web apps that are designed to help you get the job done whether it’s securely transferring files over the internet, checking for updates to a document, collaborating with colleagues on authoring a report, transcribing text, or opening unidentifiable file formats without installing any extra software Bublup.comThis website provides you with an easy and secure way to transfer files.
When you sign up for a free account, you get up to 15GB of space for your file transfers.
You stand to earn an extra 1GB for life every time a friend or colleague joins the service with your referral.
To transfer, simply upload your document, video, or any other digital format into a Bublup folder.
Then, click the “•••” menu in the top right corner of the file you uploaded and select “copy shareable link”.
Thereafter, you can send the link via email, text, social media, or however else you share information.
The website even lets you share multiple files at once.
If required, you can upgrade to 1TB of storage and transfer files as big as 50GB with Bublup Premium.
Diffchecker.comSay, for instance, you have to work with multiple versions of a text file that has been passed—back and forth—between team members.
With Diff Checker, you can copy-paste the text from those files—or even upload them—onto the site to get a list of the differences between the two.
Diff Checker comes with myriad functions including ‘compare and merge’ that lets you create an updated document with all the additions.
It also supports comparison between images, PDFs and Excel worksheets.
Besides the web app, you also get a paid desktop software that packs extra features such as the comparison betweentwo folders on your computer; it lets you export to PDF, highlights syntax in text, and it even works offline for faster results and greater privacy.
Etherpad.orgEtherpad is an open-source online editor that provides you with collaborative editing in real-time.
With this tool, you don’t need to send a text file to your colleagues and collaborators.
Just set up a pad, and share the link.
Etherpad allows multiple people to edit documents collaboratively, much like a live multiplayer editor that runs in your browser.
You can use it to write articles, press releases, to-do lists, and more with friends, fellow students or colleagues, all working on the same document at the same time.
All instances provide access to all data and support import/export to many major data formats.
Etherpad is available as a download for Windows, MacOS and Linux, along with a detailed installation guide on how to set it up for your organisation or group.
Alternatively, you could head to the ‘List of public instances’ on the home page for publicly hosted Etherpads that you could use without any set-up whatsoever.
Now, if Etherpad’s built-in feature set isn’t enough for you, there are nearly 300 plugins that allow you to customise your instance to suit your needs.
Speechnotes.coSpeech Notes is a web app that works in Google’s Chrome browser.
When you start, you have to give the app access to your microphone and select your language of choice.
The latter could include Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Urdu.
After that, you can start dictating, and the Speech Notes will transcribe it for you.
You also get a sidebar that lists all the voice commands you would need for your punctuation.
When you’re done, you can choose to make manual corrections to your transcription, and you also get a ‘speaker’ icon via which you can have your entire text read out to you.
All your dictated text can then be copied and pasted into any word processor.
You could also choose to directly upload it to your Google Drive or download it in TXT or DOC format.
Speech Notes is great for note-taking and for those times when you’re ideating and need a tool to quickly get your thoughts into a document.
Rollmyfile.comIt’s almost impossible—and also not practical—to install software for every file format that exists.
But at times, you could receive a file that you might not recognise, or even have the program on your PC to open it.
Enter Roll My File: Just upload the unrecognisable file to the website, and it will automatically launch an application via its rollApp cloud service and load your file.
Roll My File can open more than 500 file formats, whether they are documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-books, compressed archives, graphics, diagrams and even publication systems.
When you are done working with your file and close the application, the file is deleted from the server without a trace.
If Roll My File cannot open a certain format, its team gets notified and they then work towards adding an application that works with that type of file, so support for newer formats is constantly being added.