Have you used Google Docs yet? If not you are missing a fantastic free tool. Google Docs is a very useful platform for group collaboration or sharing information to others. It is very easy to use and fairly intuitive if you have used other word processing, spreadsheet or presentation software packages. I am going to share access links to some quick documentation that I wrote up on getting started with Google Docs. Please keep in mind that these are just the very beginning of what you can do.
This document walks through the process of creating a new document in Google Docs. You can either create new documents from scratch (from a blank document, spreadsheet, presentation, form or drawing) or you can start from a template. Google Docs provides thousands of templates which you can use.
You can upload virtually any document to Google Docs. For word processing files, spreadsheet files and presentation files, Google Docs can convert many popular formats into the Google Docs format. If you convert the document to a Google Docs format then you can edit the document online in Google Docs. If you do not convert the document or it is a different type of a file then the file must be downloaded and modified on your local PC. Any changes to the document must then be uploaded back to Google Docs.
In my opinion, the real power and value of Google Docs comes from the ability to share documents. This provides the collaborative benefits of having multiple people edit the same document at the same time while retaining a revision history of the changes made. It also provides the ability to restrict access settings on an individual user basis. In addition to individual users, you can also chose to share your document publicly. The public access can either be made as an open public link, available to anyone, or as a restricted public link which is only available to the people that you provide the link to. These public access links are read-only by default but can be configured with edit access.
Give Google Docs a try and I think you and your collaboration team will be sold on the concept. It is a great tool to publish content as well while retaining the flexibility of being able to edit the document easily.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARE1jMMw1BtGZGd0MzhtajVfNThkYmJwanhmNQ&hl=en&authkey=CO-w_foD