Web productivity tools

Web productivity tools

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Wikipedia

A web application (or web app) is application software that runs in a web browser, unlike software programs that run locally and negatively on the operating system (OS) of the device. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection.

Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings, electronic music and digital video). Its names arose from it increasing productivity, especially of individual office workers, from typists to knowledge workers, although its scope is now wider than that. Office suites, which brought word processing, spreadsheet, and relational database programs to the desktop in the 1980s, are the core example of productivity software. They revolutionized the office with the magnitude of the productivity increase they brought as compared with the pre-1980s office environments of typewriters, paper filing, and handwritten lists and ledgers. In the United States, some 78% of “middle-skill” occupations (those that call for more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree) now require the use of productivity software. In the 2010s, productivity software has become even more consumerized than it already was, as computing becomes ever more integrated into daily personal life.

Productivity software traditionally runs directly on a computer. For example, Commodore Plus/4 model of computer contained in ROM for applications of productivity software. Productivity software is one of the reasons people use personal computers.

An office suite is a bundle of productivity software (a software suite) intended to be used by office workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not normally allow.

The earliest office suite for personal computers was Micro Pro International’s Star Burst in the early 1980s, comprising the Word Star word processor, the Calc Star spreadsheet and the Data Star database software. Other suites arose in the 1980s, and Microsoft Office came to dominate the market in the 1990s, a position it retains as of 2019.

During the 1990s, office suite products gained popularity by offering bundles of applications that, when bought as part of a suite, effectively discounted the individual applications, with four or five applications being bundled for the price of two applications bought separately. When faced with such potential savings, customers could be “tempted by the suite, rather than the value of a particular product”, and by 1994 more than 60 percent of the sales of Microsoft Word and around 70 percent of the sales of Microsoft Excel were as part of sales of Microsoft Office. Such considerations had an impact on vendors of individual applications, often smaller companies, raising concerns that office suites were “stifling innovation”, and even established vendors such as Borland and Word Perfect were having to adapt to the suite phenomenon, Borland ultimately deciding to sell its Quattro Pro spreadsheet to WordPerfect as the latter sought to assemble its own suite product. The dominant suite vendors, Microsoft and Lotus, downplayed competition and innovation concerns, claiming that users were still able to exercise choice and that “user-driven development” was guiding the evolution of office suites. Another view was that component-based software would eventually emerge, focusing development on more specialised components used by productivity software, empowering “a plethora of third-party developers”, and that a “mix and match” approach of such components would adapt to the user’s way of working.

A tool is an object that can extend an individual’s ability to modify features of the surrounding environment. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools.

Early tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for preparation of food, hunting, manufacture of weapons, and working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. The introduction of automation allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.

While a common-sense understanding of the meaning of tool is widespread, several formal definitions have been proposed.

In 1981, Benjamin Beck published a widely used definition of tool use. This has been modified to:

The external employment of an unattached or manipulable attached environmental object to alter more efficiently the form, position, or condition of another object, another organism, or the user itself, when the user holds and directly manipulates the tool during or prior to use and is responsible for the proper and effective orientation of the tool.

Other, briefer definitions have been proposed:

An object carried or maintained for future use.

— Finn, Tregenza, and Norman, 2009.

The use of physical objects other than the animal’s own body or appendages as a means to extend the physical influence realized by the animal.

— Jones and Kamil, 1973

An object that has been modified to fit a purpose … [or] An inanimate object that one uses or modifies in some way to cause a change in the environment, thereby facilitating one’s achievement of a target goal.

— Hauser, 2000

Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. Because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were likely made of perishable materials such as sticks, or consisted of unmodified stones that cannot be distinguished from other stones as tools.

Stone artifacts date back to about 2.5 million years ago. However, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of stone tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia. One of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe.

Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the only tools of “early man” that were studied and given importance. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant. As well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools”.

Tools are the most important items that the ancient humans used to climb to the top of the food chain; by inventing tools, they were able to accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or bow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many animals’ skins. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned. Based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators’ carcasses rather than killing their own food.

Many tools were made in prehistory or in the early centuries of recorded history, but archaeological evidence can provide dates of development and use.

• Olduvai stone technology (Oldowan) 2.5 million years ago (scrapers; to butcher dead animals)
• Huts, 2 million years ago.
• Acheulean stone technology 1.6 million years ago (hand axe)
• Fire creation and manipulation, used since the Paleolithic, possibly by Homo erectus as early as 1.5 Million years ago
• Boats, 900,000 years ago.
• Cooking, 500,000 years ago.
• Javelins, 400,000 years ago.
• (Homo sapiens sapiens – modern human anatomy arises, around 300,000 years ago.)
• Glue, 200,000 years ago.
• Clothing possibly 170,000 years ago.
• Stone tools, used by Homo floresiensis, possibly 100,000 years ago.
• Harpoons, 90,000 years ago.
• Bow and arrows, 70,000–60,000 years ago.
• Sewing needles, 60,000 – 50,000 BC
• Flutes, 43,000 years ago.
• Fishing nets, 43,000 years ago.
• Ropes, 40,000 years ago.
• Ceramics c. 25,000 BC
• Fishing hooks, C. 23,000 years ago.
• Domestication of animals, c. 15,000 BC
• Sling (weapon) c. 9th millennium BC
• Microliths c. 9th millennium BC
• Brick used for construction in the Middle East c. 6000 BC
• Agriculture and Plough c. 4000 BC
• Wheel c. 4000 BC
• Gnomon c. 4000 BC
• Writing systems c. 3500 BC
• Copper c. 3200 BC
• Bronze c. 2500 BC
• Salt c. 2500 BC
• Chariot c. 2000 BC
• Iron c. 1500 BC
• Sundial c. 800 BC
• Glass ca. 500 BC
• Catapult c. 400 BC
• Cast iron c. 400 BC
• Horseshoe c. 300 BC
• Stirrup first few centuries AD

Several of the six classic simple machines were invented in Mesopotamia. Meso pota mians have been credited with the invention of the wheel. The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the potter’s wheel, invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. This led to the invention of the wheeled vehicle in Mesopotamia during the early 4th millennium BC. The lever was used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.

The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC. The Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) claims to have invented automatic sluices and to have been the first to use water screw pumps, of up to 30 tons weight, which were cast using two-part clay molds rather than by the ‘lost wax’ process. The Jerwan Aqueduct (c. 688 BC) is made with stone arches and lined with waterproof concrete. The earliest evidence of water wheels and watermills date back to the ancient Near East in the 4th century BC specifically in the Persian Empire before 350 BC, in the regions of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Persia (Iran). This pioneering use of water power constituted the first human-devised motive force not to rely on muscle power (besides the sail).

Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources, especially waterwheels. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills.

Machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial machinery was built by various craftsmen—millwrights built water and windmills, carpenters made wooden framing, and smiths and turners made metal parts. Wooden components had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal parts and frames became more common.