Google Docs Viewer can display Powerpoint presentations, PDFs and TIFF images right in your browser, without adding extensions or downloading the files. The problem is that you have to manually open the Doc Viewer by pasting in a URL. There's a way around that, though, thanks to a slick userscript with an unwieldy name: "PDF/PPT/TIF viewer with Google docs."

With the script installed - you'll need Greasemonkey in Firefox or Greasekit in Safari - links to PDFs, PPTs and TIFFs will automatically open in Google Docs Viewer. If you need to download or print them, no worries: you can do that from with Docs Viewer as well.

[via Lifehacker]

Tabbed browsing might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, after having tabs for so long, it's frustrating to try using an older browser that doesn't support them. We still deal with it in our office applications, though. Granted, it's rare to have as many Word documents open as we do webpages, but even 4 or 5 can turn into a mess. OfficeTab helps out by adding tabs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so you can save screen real estate and switch between docs more easily.

You can choose to add tabs to some or all of the apps OfficeTab supports, in case you want them in Word, but not in PowerPoint, for example. OfficeTab doesn't take up much space, it just keeps your tabs in a standard-sized toolbar. You can even view your documents side-by-side in the same window, which is handy for comparing drafts. OfficeTab works in Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows XP, Vista or 7. It's made by a Chinese developer, so both Chinese and English versions are available.

[via Slashnow. Thanks, Ben!]

DocMazy is a novel kind of search engine exclusively dedicated to finding documents. Instead of returning websites, it digs up PDFs, DOCs, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and text files. DocMazy was designed to find information that gets buried in other search engines because documents often don't score well in search engine algorithms, or aren't indexed by search engines at all.

Once you find the doc you're looking for, you can download it or view it online. DocMazy uses iPaper, which opens a preview without making you leave the results page. All in all, it's a pretty nice tool if you're looking for the kind of longer, more detailed information that often isn't published in its entirety on a webpage.

When Adobe launched its online office suite at Acrobat.com last year the site was a bit on the anemic side. Sure, it featured the slick Flash-based Buzzword word processor. But it lacked a good spreadsheet or presentations application. There's still no spreadsheet app in sight, but today Adobe added an attractive tool for viewing and editing presentations to Acrobat Labs.

Like Buzzword, Acrobat Presentations is built on Flash. It features the smooth and attractive animations you'd expect from a Flash-based application. But it's also fairly intuitive to use. At the top of the screen are a series of icons which expand into toolbars to give you access to the features you need at any given moment. The left side of the screen shows thumbnails for each slide, while the slide itself hangs out in the center for your viewing, creating, or editing pleasure. Or you can hit the Play Slideshow button in the bottom right corner if you just want to sit back and enjoy the show.

Because the application is built on Flash, the right-click button on your mouse is useless which MS Office addicts might find frustrating at first. But Acrobat Presentations does give you most of the tools you'd expect from a presentation application, plus online collaboration tools. You can share your presentations with other users and let them edit your files.

[via VentureBeat]

Google is bringing some of the online office technology of Google Docs to Gmail. The company added the ability to view PDF documents attached to Gmail with an online document viewer a few months ago. Now Gmail also has document viewers for PowerPoint and TIFF files.

Actually, Gmail users have been able to view PowerPoint files as slideshows for a while. But now you can view presentations using a fuller featured web interface. The new viewer makes it easier to skip pages, change the image size, and change the page layout of presentations.

The TIFF viewer works much the same way, making it easier to see multi-page TIFF images sent to your Gmail address.

It looks like Microsoft is finally prepared to launch its answer to Google Docs, Zoho Office, and ThinkFree Office. About a year after launching Office Live Workspace, which is really just a service for people to store and share documents created using desktop apps, Microsoft has announced plans to go ahead with true web-based versions of MS Office applications including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

The Office Web applications will reportedly be stripped down versions of the desktop apps. And it looks like Microsoft will offer at least two tiers of service, with an ad-supported version and a subscription based option for business customers.

The next version of Microsoft Office for the desktop will include the ability to synchronize documents over the web for access on the go. So Microsoft clearly expects customers to continue paying for the offline version of Office. Somehow I suspect the company will also set aside at least a few special features that are only available in the desktop version.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Ever created a PowerPoint that everyone in your organization wanted a copy of? Sure you could go ahead and clog up your corporate email server with the 200MB + file or you could just convert your PowerPoint to a smaller flash file with iSpring and publish it to an internal or external website (slideboom account required) for others to view.

Converting your PowerPoint presentation to a flash movie couldn't be any easier as the iSpring installation puts the conversion buttons right in your PowerPoint menu bar. In addition to the one click conversion iSpring also allows for some customization such as generating HTML codes, looped and automatic playback, slide advance via mouse click as well as changing the duration of the slide.

iSpring comes in 3 flavors ranging from the free version which we tested on up to the Ultra version which allows the creation of E-learning content to additional playback controls. In our testing we found the free version more than adequate for most PowerPoint presentations.

So before you send that PowerPoint thru your company email, try converting it with iSpring instead.

Those folks at Zoho just don't quit, do they? Last year the company rolled out a major redesign of its powerful, web-based PowerPoint clone. And now Zoho Show 2.0 has 8 new features, some more exciting than others.

1. Export to PPT, PPS, PDF, and ODP. You've been able to export files as HTML for a while, but the addition of PowerPoint and PDF export brings Zoho Show a bit closer to being a true PowerPoint replacement
2. You can now import images from Picasa (Zoho Show already supported Flickr importing)
3. Support for up to 50 undo/redo actions
4. Support for 9 new languages: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
5. Create contact groups for sharing your presentations with
6. Copy and paste slides from one presentation to another
7. Enhanced remote presentation user inteface
8. Advanced options for embedding presentations on a web site

You can see a demo presentation highlighting the new features after the jump.

[via Mashable]

The first thing you'll probably notice about the new web-based presentation creator, 280Slides, is that it looks an awful lot like Apple's Keynote. As great as Keynote is, 280Slides has a few advantages: it's free and it's web-based. It's got all the features you would expect from good presentation software: you can present in full-screen mode straight from the web, download your slides, or share your presentation to SlideShare. Vimeo and Youtube integration let you add video to the mix, too.

We can already see 280slides saving numerous butts at conferences. Equipment failure? No big deal, just borrow a computer (any platform will do!) and pull your stuff from the web. Presentations were a good candidate for the next desktop function to hop aboard the "cloud computing" bandwagon and go web-based, and the folks at 280 North have pulled it off with style and functionality. Frankly, we're a little relieved that we'll never again have to ask, "Hey, does this machine have PowerPoint?"

[via Daring Fireball]

It's Microsoft's world and we're all just living in it. As much as you may try to pretend this is true, it becomes readily apparent any time somebody launches a Microsoft Office competitor. Because the first question isn't "does it have all of the features I'd expect from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint?" No, the first question is "can it open MS Office documents and save documents in Office formats?"

Up until recently the answer for Google's online office suite, Google Docs was "kind of." While you could import Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with no problem, there was no way to export Google Presentation documents as PowerPoint presentations. Now Google has finally rolled out a "save as PPT" feature for presentations. You've always been able to save Word and Excel files.

Google has also added a new saved searches feature which lets you access searches for keywords, document types, or other features from your sidebar.

[via Lifehacker]

Google promises a feature-packed 2008 for Google Docs and we believe them. Not even a week into the new year, Google Docs has already implemented some new features. The most striking additions affect Google Presentations, the newest arm of Google Docs. Although we were impressed with Google Presentations when it debuted a few months ago, there was definitely room for improvement.

What stuck out to us the most was Google Presentation's inability to export a presentation as a .PPT file. While you can't export presentations as a PPT file, you can now easily embed presentations into your blog or website.

Take a look at this presentation we made with Google Docs to see some of the other features.




[via Googlified]

Online office suite Zoho has rolled out Zoho Show 2.0. Probably our favorite part of that sentence is the fact that Show and 2.0 rhyme. Try saying it out loud. Fun, isn't it?

But seriously, brings much of the power of Microsoft PowerPoint to a web based application. In fact, there are some things that you can do with Zoho Show that you can't do with PowerPoint. For example, you can embed a presentation on a web site, or invite a group of people to watch a presentation live in real time while sharing comments in a chat window.

A few of the updates in Zoho Show 2.0 include:

• New themes
• Clip Art
• Zoho Meeting and Zoho Chat integration
• Enhanced import feature
• New user interface
  

[via Zoho Blogs]

We covered Live Documents, the new online office documents competition last month, that is about to make a move to steal some market share aware from Zoho, ThinkFree and Google.

Live Documents has released some screen grabs from its interface, giving a little more insight into what they are all about. The Flash based interfaces do resemble what Microsoft currently has on the market, but add the ability to collaborate. Screenshots include Presentations, Spreadsheets and Documents.

Live Documents does reference Microsoft, and Microsoft's Office applications quite a bit when talking about its own suite, and the look and feel closely resembles what MS offers, so we have to assume that they have relied heavily on Office as a starting point. Is this a bad thing? Not if you're looking to quickly build and sell the business.

We'll have to test Live Documents when it becomes readily available to see what its winning points are, and whether or not it will become a major player in the online office space.

Microsoft Office 2007 may include a bunch of nifty updates from previous versions of Microsoft's office suite. But it also includes new document formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In other words, it causes a bunch of headaches when an Office 2007 user sends files to Office 2003 or OpenOffice.org users.

There are a bunch of services that will convert the new .xlsx, .docx, and .pptx files to old fashioned .xls, .doc, and .ppt files. But Microsoft has a solution for anyone who just needs to read documents without editing them.

This summer Microsoft release a compatibility update allowing Office 2003 and earlier customers to open the new file formats. It turns out that update also lets you use the free Word Viewer 2003 to read .docx files. Now Microsoft has also released PowerPoint Viewer 2007 with support for .pptx files.

There's no update to Excel Viewer 2003 yet, but we're guessing it's just a matter of time.

[via ActiveWin]

Google's long-rumored and eagerly anticipated PowerPoint clone has finally shipped. Although we've only had a chance to have a first look, here are some impressions:

What it does have or do

• Importing PowerPoint files
• Exporting HTML file
• 15 built-in themes
• Text formatting
• Basic image manipulation functionality (adding, resizing)
• Versioning
  
• Collaboration
• Online presentation sharing

What it doesn't have or do

• Animations of any kind
• Advanced image manipulation
• Advanced text formatting
• Sound
• Video
• Exporting PowerPoint files

Google has done a very good job of making this new Presentation application (based on code from Zenter) fit in with Docs and Spreadsheets. It looks right at home, and the functionality is about what you would expect from another Google App. File versioning and collaboration functions work exactly like they do for Docs and Spreadsheets, which is to say just fine.