TinyLittleOffice, where the link is the document

Don't need a full-fat productivity suite and worried about where your documents are being stored? Welcome to TinyLittleOffice, a set of applications where the document is the link itself.

Using a URL to stash information isn't new.

Look at many URLs, and you'll see a lengthy sequence of seemingly random characters at the end.

Using that space to stash data isn't novel, but using it for documents is an interesting approach.

TinyLittleOffice comprises a selection of tools, including a basic word processor, presentation builder, spreadsheet, calendar, and a drawing tool.

The theory is a simple one: create a document and get a link.

The link is the document.

The document isn't saved on a server or made into an attachment (although it is possible to export to a variety of formats), so it is, in theory, private.

That is, unless you're worried about what the server is doing when it opens the link.

Using the URL for documents is far from a completely new idea.

Paul Ford's (the author) "co-conspirator," Rich Ziade, came up with the idea of TinySheet six years ago: a simple spreadsheet that ran in the browser and kept its data in the URL.

"We moved on," wrote Ford, "and sadly, those sites fell off the web, and the old links all broke." Years later, the concept was resurrected and expanded to include other productivity tools.

The server code is on GitHub, which should, in theory, at least ease concerns about the new links rotting away.

We tested the project, and it is indeed very impressive from a technical standpoint.