Planning documents such as magazines, handbooks and newsletters can be daunting. Many editors use a form of flat plan to map out the document, showing how one page relates to another, allocating advertising space and the flow of articles. Flat plans can be set out in programs such as Word, Excel and even InDesign. A new option has recently become available -- the online flat plan. Online flat plans enable a large number of people to access the same file whatever their location, and to quickly map the building blocks of a long document. These document planning solutions are a prime example of web 2.0 at its best -- innovative, customisable, updateable and easy to use. Intelligent Flat Plan charges on a per page basis, and the slightly less fully featured Blink Plan charges a monthly rate.

Many Internet Service Providers place a fairly low limit on the size of email attachments they will allow. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) offers an alternative for moving large files, but the receiver needs to have their server configured to receive such files. Other options include uploading files to your own website (if such you possess) and emailing the file location to the intended recipient. However, if you only need to send large files occasionally, and to a range of people, YouSendIt is a far simpler solution. At this stage the 'Lite' level of service is free. The user simply joins at www.yousendit.com, enters the recipient's email and a brief message, locates the file (or zipped collection of files) to be sent and presses the "Send It" button. The receiver soon receives an email inviting her to download the waiting file -- a one-click process. YouSendit offers pay-per-use services also, featuring document tracking, online storage facilities and the ability to send even larger files. YouSendIt now offers plugins for use within Outlook, Acrobat, Photoshop and others, so users can send files directly from their native application. So far, YouSendIt is all upside. Perhaps email as a medium will eventually adapt to the new demands placed upon it, but until then YouSendIt is an elegant stop-gap.