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.
How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.
Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.
Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.
Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.
Google is beginning to roll out offline functionality for Google Docs. What this means is that you can create documents online, share them with collaboraters, and make edits while you're nowhere near an internet connection. So, for example if you're on an airplane, you can work on a report, and as soon as you get back to your home or office, you just visit the Google Docs page again and all of your changes will sync up and your collaborators will see the latest version of the document.
If two people make changes offliine and then try to synchronize the same document with the server, Google should bring up a message letting you know about the conflict and asking which changes to keep.
You'll need to have Google Gears installed in order to use Google Docs offline. Google is doing a phased roll out, meaning that not all users will be able to access their documents offline right away. You should look for a little green arrow in the top navigation of Google Docs to see if you have access.
At first, users will only be able to access spreadsheets in read-only mode, but you'll have full edit capabilities for text documents. Presentation support will come in a few weeks.
Update: Google has posted an official announcement, including a video that will give you a better idea of what Google Docs offline looks like. (Here's a hint, it looks a lot like Google Docs online). Check out the video after the jump.
Google has rolled out two new features for Google Docs, the company's online word processing application. The first is a new improved menu toolbar. Well, improved might be a subject term. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't appear to add a whole lot of new features. But it looks far more like the menu toolbar you'd expect to find in a desktop application, complete with File, Edit, Insert, Format, Tools, and Table options.
Google has also added the ability to select colors for your labels/folders. This is a feature that Google added to Gmail a few months ago. And we have to say, it's one of those features you didn't necessarily know you needed until you have it and then it's hard to imagine life without it.
If you use Google Docs regularly, these two features, particularly the colored labels could make life a lot easier. But as much as we love us some free Google office applications, we have to say, Zoho Writer still blows Google Docs away in a feature by feature comparison.
Google seems to be rolling out improvements to Google Spreadsheets like there's no tomorrow. Or like there's no Microsoft Office tomorrow anyway. When you click the little chart icon in the Google Spreadsheets toolbar, you now get a whole slew of charts and other gadgets to choose from in addition to the pie, bar, and line charts that Google introduced a while back.
The new gadget gallery includes:
Tables and pivot tables
Maps and heatmaps
Google web and image searches for selected values
Organization charts
Users can also create their own custom gadgets using the Google Gadgets API. In non-chart/gadget news, Google has also added the option to receive email notifications when someone changes a spreadsheet, and a variety of other bug fixes and feature enhancements including improved sort, filter, and unique functions.
Google isn't the only company beefing up its collaboration features. Online file storage service Box.net has added a new "invite collaborators" button that lets you share the contents of any folder with other Box.net users.
So if you've got a folder of images, Word documents, and other items that you want to share with a colleague, just right-click and enter the email addresses of people you want to share the folder with. They'll be able to open and edit the contents of the folder. If you just want to let them see the documents, but not edit them, you can grant "viewer" access.
Unlike Google Docs, Box.net does not offer its own applications for editing documents and spreadsheets. But using the OpenBox framework, you can edit any document stored at Box.net using Zoho's online office applications.
Earlier this month, Google Docs added a bundle of new features to kick off 2008. Apparently the feedback the team got was good, and they've been busy adding even more features that people have been requesting to the mix.
And today, some very in-demand features have gone live on Google Docs. Most of the new goodies are for presentations - much like the last update.
You now have the option of saving your Google presentations as PDF files, as well as being able to do PDF-style printing - allowing you to choose up to 12 slides to appear per page. And, if you like peppering your presentations with visual flair, some basic drawing tools and vector shapes have been added to give them that extra impact.
Unfortunately, the option to save as a PPT file is still not an option, but hopefully we'll see something of the sort in the near future.
We spend a lot of time talking about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho, and other online office suites. For the most part they don't have all the features of Microsoft Office, but they attempt to make up for that in convenience (access them from any computer) and price (usually free). But we've always had a suspicion that most computer users have never heard of these web based office suites. And if you believe a recent NPD survey of 600 PC users, we were right.
According to the study, 94 percent of US computer users have never tried a web based productivity suite. More than 20 percent say they've at least heard of Google Docs or other suites, but have still never tried them. And only 0.5 percent of users say they've replaced Microsoft Office with an online office suite.
So while online office suites are perfectly serviceable replacements for Microsoft Office if you don't need advanced formatting options or other fancy features, the simple truth is most people just aren't ready to let go of Microsoft Office. That makes Microsoft's online Office strategy a bit more understandable. We may have slammed the company for failing to offer a standalone word processor, spreadsheet app, or presentation platform online, (Office Live Documents simply provides a way to access documents created on your desktop from the web), but Microsoft isn't worried about the competition from Google, Zoho, ThinkFree, or anyone else at the moment. Not in the short term anyway. Office Live Documents is just a new bonus feature for many users, not an alternative to Google Docs.
If you find yourself typing some documents up on your desktop and others using the web-based office suite Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you might find it hard to keep organized. With your documents spread all over the place, it's easy for a few things to get lost in the shuffle.
While OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs won't quite let you synchronize your OpenOffice.org documents with your Google Docs, this OpenOffice extension does make it easy to import/export your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Once you download and install the extension, a new toolbar will show up in OpenOffice.org with two options: Export to Google Docs and Import from Google Docs. The export button basically lets you save your documents online so you can edit them from any computer, share them with collaborators, or do whatever else it is you do with Google Docs. The import feature brings up a list of all your documents stored online and lets you open them up one by one. There's no batch import option available at the moment.
We'll repeat, this is not a synchronization option. If you have an older copy of a document on your desktop and a newer version with the same version on Google Docs, it's up to you to resolve the differences. But this is still a pretty handy extension if you prefer using OpenOffice.org on your desktop, but might need to access your documents on the go.
But while Office Live Workspace certainly looks a lot prettier than Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the two services might be addressing different markets. That's because Google Docs is a standalone suite of Office applications allowing you to create text/HTML documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can also import and export files compatible with Microsoft Office.
Office Live Workspace, on the other hand, is a way to share and collaborate on files created using Microsoft's commercial desktop application. Look, we're not saying Microsoft has to give everything away for free just because Google's doing it. If you've got superior applications, go ahead and charge a premium. But we'd like see Microsoft offer the ability to create and edit documents online without first purchasing MS Office. We might even consider paying a small subscription fee for access to such a service.
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:
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.
In April, Google bought one company with presentation technology, and another in June. Also in June, Gmail added the ability to view PowerPoint slides sent as e-mail attachments. But while the company has an online word processor and spreadsheet app, presentations have been a no show so far.
Well, rumor is it's coming soon, and it'll be called Presently. Which is kind of funny, since once upon a time Google bought up a web service called Writely and renamed it Google Docs & Spreadsheets. We're guessing Presently is just a temporary name.
We should point out that Google will hardly be the first company with an online office suite that includes a Presentation application. You can already open PowerPoint files or create your own slideshows using Zoho and ThinkFree. But neither of those companies has been nominated as a potential Microsoft killer just yet, so all eyes are on Google to see if a mover and shaker can release an online productivity suite that will truly rival Microsoft Office.
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?"
