Google now lets users import .docx or .xlsx files into Google Docs. In other words, next time someone sends you a document created in Word 2007 you don't need to convert it into a format that your aging copy of Microsoft Word 2000 can handle. You can just load it up in Google Docs and read or edit the document online.

This brings the complete list of file formats supported by Google Docs to DOC, DOCX, HTML, TXT, RTF, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, TSV, TSB, PPT, and PPS.

Of course, Zoho Docs has supported Office 2007 files since last year. Zoho Docs also lets you export files in those formats, while Google Docs will only let you import Office 2007 files.

If you often transfer files back and forth between Microsoft Office apps on your desktop and Google Docs online, OffiSync might be exactly what you need. It pulls Google Docs functionality into Office, letting you save, manage and browse your Google Docs as if they were in a directory on your hard drive. You can also share docs and add collaborators, and send email and notifications, all while you're writing up that next draft in Word.

The first version of OffiSync is apparently close to launching, and you can sign up for the beta right now. It's initially going to roll for Windows XP (SP2), Vista and Windows 7, but a version for Office Mac is also in the works. The idea is pretty interesting, and it looks like OffiSync could be an extremely useful product if it ends up working as advertised.

Remember the shouting about the Google Docs privacy lapse a few weeks ago? As it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Security consultant Ade Barkah has found several more gaps, and they're all just as alarming - if not more so.

Issue #1 appears right at the top of his blog post: an image that he embedded in an unshared document. Apparently all uploaded images can be accessed directly by anyone, as long as they've got the url.

On top of that, Barkah discovered that another user can view past versions of diagrams you insert in a document even after your replace them. As with the image access flaw, finding the previous versions is as simple as replacing the rev=# in the drawing's URI.

Last but not least, users you've previously granted access to your docs but later removed aren't necessarily gone for good. There are certain cases in which they can regain access themselves without you ever knowing about it.

Tin foil hat wearers rejoice, this is further confirmation that just because you're paranoid that doesn't make you wrong.

[via TechCrunch]

Google has confirmed that a TechCrunch tipster was telling the truth: an error indeed caused some users' text documents and presentations to be unintentionally shared with others.

According to Google's statement, the glitch affected "less than .05% of documents" and only shared files to people with whom a user (or one of their collaborators) had previously shared another document.

Somehow, that's not very comforting.

Regardless of the number of users affected or how isolated an incident this was, it raises some serious concerns. Even if none of your documents were involved, they could have been. Accidentally violating privacy and exposing data (whether it's confidential or not) is a massive problem, and one that just shouldn't happen. Period.

None of my Google Docs contain any sensitive details. They don't contain any useful information about anything, for that matter. That doesn't mean I'm not concerned about who sees them and who doesn't. They're my documents, and I certainly don't want collaborators being accidentally given permission to access them.

For a while I've been pondering finally moving my documents from my desktop to my Google Docs, but that's a move that I'll be putting on hold for the time being.

Running a mobile handset with a Webkit-based browser? If so, Google has added some functionality to the Google Docs mobile view just for you.

Up until now, the interface has really only be a handy way to view your files on the go. Now, however, you'll be able to perform simple edits on your spreadsheets right from your handset. iPhone, iPod Touch, G1, and Nokia S60 users can all get in on the action.

You won't have access to the same breadth of options as you do in the desktop version, but that's to be expected. It's still incredibly useful for doing quick edits on the go or maintaining simple lists directly in your gDocs from your mobile.

While other document types still can't be edited yet, they may not be far behind.

[ via Google OS ]

I use a lot of Google services on a day to day basis, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. So I'm always excited when Google announces a new way to make these web apps play well together. Yesterday the company announced a new feature in Gmail Labs that adds a "create a document" link to your email menu.

When you open an email and click the document link, the message will be exported as a Google Document. From there you can edit it, share it, or download it as a Word, PDF, or RTF file.

In order to enable the feature, just click the Gmail Labs icon (it looks like a beaker and hangs out next to the settings link in the top right side of your Gmail homepage) and scroll down until you see the Create a Document option. Click enable and Gmail will reload with the feature enabled.

By now, many of you are probably using web-based office suites like Zoho, Google Docs, or Thinkfree as your primary office applications. If you do and you're a Firefox user as well, you'll probably love the OpenIT Online addon.

I mentioned it previously in my list of 14 extremely useful addons, but it's been updated quite a bit since then.

When you install the plugin, the configuration wizard will help you create file associations. You're not limited to one suite, either. If you'd rather open spreadsheets with Zoho and documents with Thinkfree, OpenIT can handle that. Zoho viewer is also supported and is a nice, fast way to view files you don't need to edit.

OpenIT adds two context menu entries (which you can see in the screenshot above): one to open a file with your default viewer/editor and a submenu that provides access to all available options.

This is a great extension to add to your portable Firefox install. It's an excellent way to make sure you can open a wide array of documents on any computer.

Google has long offered Gmail users the ability to open PDF attachments as HTML files without downloading the file and firing up Adobe Acrobat, Foxit or any other PDF viewer. But you lose a lot in the translation when you convert a PDF file to HTML.

Now Google has begun allowing users to open PDF files using the Google Docs PDF viewer. That means you can view PDFs sent to your email inbox without downloading them and without losing the formating, graphics, or other elements that make PDFs do darn fun to look at.

[via Google Operating System]

Gladinet is a new Windows utility that aims to help bridge the divide between desktop and web-based applications and storage. Here's how it works. You install the free (at least while in Beta) Gladinet utility and select the web based services and applications that you want to access locally. For example, you can mount your Windows Live SkyDrive or Amazon S3 Storage as a local drive that you can access using Windows Explorer.

You can also mount your Google Picasa Web Albums and Google Docs folders as if they were local folders, allowing you to upload, download, and access documents and images stored on Google's servers as if they were on your desktop.

But the ability to mount remote storage as a local folder is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also use Gladinet to launch web based applications like Google Docs, Google Calendar, or ThinkFree Doc, XLS, or PPT viewers in a standalone window as if they were desktop apps.

Last, but certainly not least, you can use Gladinet to mount folders on remote computers as local folders.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Hosting documents online is nothing new, and neither is sharing them for collaboration. Right off the bat, you're probably thinking of Google Docs. I was too, until I found EtherPad. It doesn't beat Google Docs at everything, but it does have advantages, like editing in real time, and using highlighting to distinguish who wrote which text. EtherPad is also faster to set up, since it doesn't require an account to use.

Just pass the URL to your collaborators, and everyone is set to start editing. There are stylistic limitations, with no fancy fonts and formatting, but edits happen in real time. There's also a handy chat box in the sidebar, in case you need to discuss your changes. Where you might want to use Google Docs instead is if you're writing something long that needs to be exported to Word or another file format. EtherPad does saving -- and infinite undos for all users, which is quite handy -- but it doesn't do exporting. You'll have to plug your document's URL in to pick up where you left off.

Complaints? Not many. The aforementioned exporting would be nice, and although it's great that you can quick-start with no accounts, they should at least be an option for privacy. And, speaking of privacy, users can see each other's IP addresses in the sidebar. I'm not sure what that adds. A built-in spellchecker would also be a perk, but it's not necessary. What EtherPad has so far is quite impressive, and I hope it continues to improve, while staying fast and easy to use.

As usual, TechCrunch makes a good point about Zoho calling their offerings "still a bit all over the place." But the fact that Zoho now has over one million users and just launched Zoho Docs bodes well for the company (and the still-nascent online business suite business at large). Zoho Docs integrates Writer, Sheet and Show, allows some version controls, more organization features and access control lists. That's a powerful set of glue tying some already-useful apps together. Now we'll have to see if they continue to grow beyond their core users and make real traction in the business space. With Office Live Workspace and Google Docs + Chrome powerhouses coming on strong in Q4, it'll be one heck of a battle.

Previous coverage of Zoho:

• The launch of Zoho DB.
  
• Zoho's iPhone-tuned set of pages (we'll give them a full review soon).
• Zoho did DocX before some others, and it works well.
• Did you know you can export PPT, PDF, ODP files and send to Picasa and Flickr?
• It was only a week or so ago that they released Zoho Share, which allows you to embed docs on a page.

And here's how you can log in to Zoho with your Google Apps account.

According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to release the final version of Office Live Workspace by the end of 2008. The Google Docs competitor, which was launched as a beta in December of 2007, has been downloaded by over a million users.

Office Live Workspace is NOT a web-based version of Office. Instead, it is something of an Office-add-on (though you can use it on a computer that does not have Office installed). You can upload Office documents (Word, Excel and Powerpoint files) to Office Live Workspace and then access them from another computer (so it is a virtual flash drive of sorts) or grant permission for other users to access your documents. They can then edit and upload versions and share new documents with you.

Live documents cannot be edited directly in OLW, though you can create "web notes" which are similar to Google Docs documents and spreadsheets or "web lists" -- that as of right now don't do calculations. You can also comment on an Office file, so even if you don't have access to Word to immediately edit a document, you can comment on what changes need to be made.

I have an Office Live Workspace account, but I have to admit, it has received little use. It isn't so much that Google Docs is that much better -- the spreadsheet and forms options are, the word processing is about the same -- it is just more ubiquitous and has become a more streamlined part of my workflow.

If you have a Windows Live ID (nee Passport), you can use that to sign-up or sing into the Office Live Workspace beta. It is aimed at Windows users, but works fine on a Mac running Safari (and works with Mac formatted Office documents).

Some of the applications I use most often aren't desktop apps, they're web apps that I access through a web browser. Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Docs, for example. GMDesk is an Adobe AIR-based client for these and other Google-based services. It's based on the idea that you shouldn't have to fire up a web browser just to check your email.

The concept is sound, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. We've seen other attempts at taking web apps away from the browser. Bubbles and Mozilla Prism are two examples. But as with those programs, GMDesk just doesn't seem to offer much functionality that you couldn't get from a browser. What's more, while Prism and Bubbles offer stripped-down browser-style windows that tend to be a little lighter on your computer's RAM usage than Firefox or Internet Explorer, GMDesk eats 100+ MB of RAM as soon as you launch it.

There are two other factors that make GMDesk a bit limiting. First, the fonts in Gmail are kind of small and awkward to read. And second, you can only have one window open at a time. So if you like to keep both Gmail and Google Reader open throughout the day, you're going to want to fire up a web browser.

That isn't to say that GMDesk is useless. If the developer can reduce the RAM usage, and/or allow you to open multiple windows or multiple tabs, it would be nice for Gmail addicts to keep a window open all day while resisting the temptation to do some web surfing when they should be working.

[via CyberNet]

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]