In honor of my new (unofficial and possibly temporary) policy of general blogging, I'm going to re-post a couple of things I've done for my other blogs. The first one will actually show up above this post on blogger view, but ah well. I was proud of these, so I'll move them to my main blog.
NOTE: Original Posting on February 23, 2007
Way back when, Google snatched up Writely.com, closed registrations, and left it at that for months. During my hiatus, Google opened up Google Docs and Spreadsheets as the product of that deal. It's an online office application that edits documents and spreadsheets (no charts), but wider support seems to be coming. But it's more then just a document editor, particularly when when you look at the larger Google picture.
Google just released a Enterprise version of Google Apps. For $50/member, you get 10 GB of storage space, Gtalk, Google Calender, Docs and Spreadsheets, Extensibility APIs, 24/7 customer support, and 99.9% guaranteed uptime. Fifty bucks each is a great price when you compare it to buying a copy of Microsoft Office for every employee. And even though the service was just launched (and is free through April 30), several major businesses have already signed up.
In a world moving away from paper, Google Apps is the ideal organizational solution. I'm a college kid without a printer. Now I don't have to worry about cluttering my inbox with emails to myself so I can download them on another computer, or even bother with flash drives that don't always play nice. I can just walk down to the lab, log in to Google Docs, and it's right there. Google's powerful tagging and archiving, combined with the complete content searching, makes it easy to find exactly what you're looking for.
Google Docs also gives you the "revisions" tool. Click on drop-down menu, and select the date/time you changed the document, and you can see how the document looked when you started, and what you added and deleted. This goes for every change since you first opened the document. I've used this feature writing papers, and it's nice. It also prevents you from accidentally saving a copy of your document in which you may have somehow deleted all the content, or really screwed things up. I know I've wanted to roll back the clock in Office before, and now Google lets you.
And Google Docs and Spreadsheets fully supports document types for both openoffice.org and Microsoft Office. It also lets you export in .html, or .pdf. You have a print function in your documents toolbar, opening the document in a clean, printable window and invoking your browser's "Print..." command. And right in the editor you can email the document, share it with other Google Docs users, and even chat live with others looking at the same document.
Moving away from docs and spreadsheets, Gmail is amazing, which the tagging features to help you organize, 2 gigs of storage space (which is huge for email), Gtalk built in, and easy email searching. I still use Mail for OS X, but Gmail is my provider. The spam filter works incredibly well (those sometimes too well, as companies sending legitimate notices may be filtered).
Everyone seems to be singing Google Reader's praise. I've messed around with it, and it's better then any other free RSS reader I've found, though I still prefer Newsfire.
Google calender is another feature I personally haven't used much. It's very iCal-esque (which is a plus). Lots of calendar goodies. Check it out sometime, it's better then almost any of the alternatives I've seen.
Oh, and all of these also have personalized homepage integration.
But I'm not a walking Google ad. This post at heart isn't so much about what Google has, as it is what Google needs.
As useful as Google Docs and Spreadsheets is, there are limitations. Previously mentioned lack of support for presentations and charts (those both appear to be forthcoming) is a painful blow to the service. Charts are vital to a spreadsheet application, and presentations are a must in any office suite.
Also hurting Google spreadsheet is the limited support for formulas. Don't get me wrong, they have everything most every average Joe is gonna need. But there's some fairly basic ones I'm surprised they don't include (like =ROMAN() for converting to Roman numerals). In fact, if you look at the help for formulas, it's merely the list of functions provided by openoffice.org, with a column added specifying whether or not Google supports it too. Providing the document is a good move on Google's part, so you can enter in an formula that will translate if you later open it up on a desktop client. But looking at the list, that's a LOT of unsupported functions. The list also gives rather technical explanations for the formulas, making it harder for the average user to figure out exactly how to use them. If you're paying for a service, it should have all the bells and whistles. And it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out how to add these other functions down the road.
Next: as soon as Google announced they were going to start charging for a more advanced service, all of those services should have moved out of the beta stage. Generally speaking, no one pays for betas. You may only offer beta versions of programs to certain people, or have some selection process, but it is almost invariably free. The whole point of a beta is getting help from the customer in finding flaws you may be overlooking. The customer is providing a service to the company. Beta should not be an excuse to say, "things may screw up or we may change things at will, but it's just a beta so you can't complain," and I'm afraid that's what Google has been doing. Gmail has been out for over a year now, with Gtalk not too far behind it. It should be well out of the beta stage. I can understand Google Docs still being a beta, but they should get away from that quickly. Moving away from beta shows you're confident in your product, and should help draw in more customers. Also, this means that features you add in later on down the line can be just that: new features, not beta changes.
Finally, I think Google Docs needs a desktop client. I know, I know. That does defeat some of the purpose. But I'm not talking about a full Office Suite made by Google. It can even require an internet connection to log on. Google Earth is a desktop application that works well on both Macs and PCs (it's possible) and requires you to be online; Google Docs should have one too. I'm not saying get rid of the web browser version. That's perfect for getting documents anywhere, which is a major selling point. But with a desktop client you get the full use of your keyboard, without a web browser taking up valuable common shortcuts. It's also easier to make menus faster, more intuitive, and flow better (that's not to say I'm saying Google did a bad job with the online toolbars. It's far more then I should expect from a web-based client. It's amazing).
Google has seriously invaded Microsoft's turf here, but I'm not suggesting you throw out your NeoOffice, OpenOffice.org, or Microsoft Office package quite yet. Let's let Google flesh out this service a while longer. With the right development, Google could become the new Office standard.
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