Google has this website, where working together with Weekly Reader, they help show educators how they can use Google Docs and its collaboration and revision features to help their students write better essays and other classroom writing assignments. Read the Google Blog post and check out the Educators Guide, tutorials and other articles here.
Image by Night Owl City under CC license
Google has launched a mobile site for Google Docs. It isn’t a mobile version of the office suite, so you can’t create and edit text documents or spreadsheets, but you can use it to view or download documents from your Docs account, making it a useful way to access your free Google Docs storage. You can download all your documents, but you can only view text and spreadsheets as HTML in the mobile interface (though iPhone users can view Presentations on their phone as well).
Philipp has screenshots, including showing the strange view spreadsheets have within the interface, showing only a single column or a single row (displayed vertically) at a time. You can see that presentations exist, but you can’t download them to view in PowerPoint mobile on a Windows Mobile phone, presumably because Presentations shipped without a PowerPoint export function.
I love the first line of Elinor Mills’ article at CNET linking to my article on the Google Presentations security leak:
Nathan Weinberg at Inside Google sure can write a dramatic blog entry.
That’s gotta be the nicest thing anyone said to me all week. I like.
Elinor’s also got a quote from a Google rep on the story:
A Google representative provided this statement when asked for comment: “We take our users’ privacy and security very seriously. We acted quickly when we discovered this bug and delivered a fix: e-mail addresses are no longer archived during presentation chat sessions.”
What are you looking at? You’re looking at a small selection of the email addresses I harvested from innocent readers of this blog and others, thanks to a security flaw in Google’s new presentation feature in Google Docs. The list that clip was taken from has 450 email addresses in total. Here’s almost the whole list, way too pixelated for anyone to read:
So, how did this happen?
Google Presentations has a chat feature, based on Google Talk technology, that lets people chat while viewing a presentation. I embedded a presentation here, as did Matt Cutts on his blog, and a number of people linked to it. Everyone who went to that Presentation and logged into their Google Account to chat gave their email address to me and to every other visitor to the chat, without even knowing it.
The reason is that Presentations logs your chats, just like Google Talk does, and those logs appear in your Gmail Chat folder. While the chat window in the presentation doesn’t list email addresses, the logs do, and almost everyone gets them automatically.
I used Find and Replace to remove every space, letter, number, symbol and whatever else from the chat log, and these are how many @ symbols were left:
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And that’s just one chat log! I have two others. Now, don’t worry about the vulnerability anymore, because my chat logs terminate at 3:44 pm, so it looks like Google turns off the feature after a number of people (including I’m guessing Philipp) noticed this problem. Still, if you’ve already been in a Presentation with a chat feature, even if you didn’t say anything, someone (probably me) might already have your email address.
It’s a pretty scary vulnerability, one that you’d wish Google had caught before someone could have harvested 15 hours worth of email addresses. Google’s been working on Presentations for a lot of months, and something was bound to slip through. Still, many new Google products seems to ship with a vulnerability that exposes email addresses (cough*Pages*cough), so Google should pay better attention next time.
Some of the email addresses I recognized in the list:
If you’ve been using Google Presentations (the whole three hours it’s been live), you probably wish you could embed one in your blog (in fact, I said so in my overview). Well, Matt Cutts read my post and figured out a gosh-darned easy way. Here’s my Presentation:
Yeah, that’s easy. All you need to do is wrap the Presentation URL in an IFRAME. It’s so simple, it should be illegal! Use this code:
< iframe src="http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?fs=true&docid=dg346trx_3drprrt" width=600 height=400 >< /iframe >
… but change the URL to your Presentation, and adjust the size as necessary.
Head over to my Presentation to join the chat room. People are discussing lemurs, Google, and whatnot (especially whatnot).
Oh, god, they finally did it.
Smart readers will note that I’ve been calling Google Docs & Spreadsheets just “Google Docs” for a while, since it became obvious that a name that mentions everything in the suite would probably be shortened to Docs eventually anyway. Google’s done exactly that, so Google Office is going to be called henceforth Google Docs, as it should be. Google also made the smart move of not giving it an awful name like “Presently”.
Go to docs.google.com and click New, and you’ll see a new entry for Presentation. Here’s the basic interface:
You can create new slides, duplicate slide, insert images and text, change themes, re-order slides, share your presentation, publish your presentation to the web, and run a slideshow.
Presentation comes with 15 themes (including “Blank”, natch) you can set for your slide backgrounds. There is no way to add one of your own, though you could probably fake it with an image.
When you create a new slide, you can choose from five pre-set layouts (including Blank) to pre-populate it.
You can right-click on items to delete them or re-order them.
When playing a presentation, you are given an interface with a chat room (which also shows you how is watching the presentation online), a URL to share it, and the option to go full-screen with the F11 button. The chat window is present even in full-screen mode, though you can click a divider to hide it. There is no option to chat in a seperate browser windows. Standard keys will advance and rewind through the presentation (space, backspace, enter, left mouse click).
Dissapointingly, there is no option to embed the presentation in a webpage. Go here to view my presentation.
So, how does it look? It’s pretty basic. Put things here, move around, set a background, publish. The chat room is nice, and the fact that collaboration is as easy as it with the other Google Docs products is good, too. Otherwise, you won’t be creating anything spectacular with this, but it adds another feature for Google, and it doesn’t suck. PowerPoint killer? Not anytime soon.
UPDATE: Another thing: You can import PowerPoint files (but not PowerPoint 2007 files) into Presentations, and you can output your Presentations as a zipped HTML.
The ZIP file contains a single webpage, plus folders with JavaScript and the images. The Presentation can then run locally, on a single page (so it never has to load after the first time) on any computer with a browser that supports JavaScript. You can even run them on an iPhone! Keyboard shortcuts work, and it looks good.
Very well implemented.
Another thing: Chats in the chat frame are saved in your Gmail account. Nice, nice, nice!
Not so nice: Everyone’s email address is revealed.
Google has 6 days, 18 hours to launch its presentations product and not have it be considered delayed, and it looks like it might make it. In fact, Google might launch it under the questionable name of “Google Presently” in the next day or two at the TechCrunch 40 conference.
Michael Arrington announced that Google would definitely be making a product launch at the conference, which runs Monday and Tuesday, just not what the product would specifically be. Meanwhile, The Inquirer reported that Google would launch its long-awaited presentations product within a few days, and it’ll be called “Presently”.
Hopefully, Google does launch the product, and hopefully, it’s pretty good. Hopefully they also change the name to something better. Right now, the document product is “Docs”, the spreadsheet product is “Spreadsheets”, and “Presently” doesn’t fit or even make sense. It’s “Presently what”? Why the “-ly” at the end? What does it mean?
It’s a product name that goes nowhere, and should be changed. Unless they’re renaming the other products to Writely (as it used to be) and Gridly, the name is just pointless.
Microsoft has sent out an email from a corporate spokesman listing the top ten concerns companies should have before switching to Google Apps (top ten? They trying to make Digg? It didn’t work). Mary Jo Foley was the first to print the list. Here is the list, along with my editorial comments:
“1. Google touts having enterprise level customers but how many “USERS” of their applications truly exist within the enterprise?
Not even sure what this question is asking. Are they saying that Google has customers, but those customers don’t use the product? Are they saying that Google’s customers are customers for publicity reasons, but that they don’t actually deploy Apps? Are they saying that companies sign up for Apps, but only use it for the portion of their employees that they deem not important enough to get copies of Office?
That last one is possible, and yesterday’s CapGemini announcement seemed to indicate as such. Microsoft could win a major battle on that point alone, that important people use Microsoft Office, while low-level clerks and lackeys are forced to use the inferior Google Apps. It makes Google Apps look like a punishment.
“2. Google has a history of releasing incomplete products, calling them beta software, and issuing updates on a “known only to Google” schedule – this flies in the face of what enterprises want and need in their technology partners – what is Google doing that indicates they are in lock step with customer needs?
Uh, Microsoft has a recent history of shipping late. Still, it’s a good point, but release schedules are more important if you are buying upgrades, not if you are paying for subscriptions. In a subscription market, you want to know when new features are coming, but you don’t pay more for them, so planning ahead isn’t as important.
“3. Google touts the low cost of their apps –not only price but the absence of need for hardware, storage or maintenance for Google Apps. BUT if GAPE is indeed a complement to MSFT Office, the costs actually become greater for a company as they now have two IT systems to run and manage and maintain. Doesn’t this result in increased complexity and increased costs?
This point is excellent and needs some explanation. Microsoft is saying that if you are running Office for some employees and Google Apps as a complement for other employees, then you are now running two seperate application platforms for the same purpose, and your cost saving may evaporate in the IT costs for running two system.
In addition, it’s worth pointing out again that the “complementary” system is a loser, admitting that Google Apps is not even trying to be the best. It also creates an upper and lower class of employees, and can cause a lot of problems as workers get pissed off at being stuck in the lower class.
“4. Google’s primary focus is on ad funded search. Their enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1% of the company’s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut down given it will them in a minimal and short term way? Should customers trust that this won’t happen?
Good point. Google could just up and quit, realizing that Apps is going nowhere years from now. If they do, what happens to years of subscription fees, wasted away on software you don’t own? Companies could still now be running Office 95 or Office 97 because software is mostly forever, something that would not be possible with Google Apps.
“5. Google’s apps only work if an enterprise has no power users, employees are always online, enterprises haven’t built custom Office apps – doesn’t this equal a very small % of global information workers today? –On a feature comparison basis, it’s not surprising that Microsoft has a huge lead.
Again, Google Apps is being positioned as the office suite for people who don’t need power or features. Its a crappy marketing position, but its true, and both Google and Microsoft are using that to sell their side of the argument. Microsoft argues Apps is not good for power users, offline user, those who use the big features; while Google argues that Apps is good for those that only need occasional document tasks.
They’re both right. I’d like to argue that companies didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for Office because their employees used it for simple tasks, that they only bought it so their employees could use advanced features and be more productive, but that hasn’t always been the case. How many of you have an expensive desktop computer, Windows, Office, and play a lot of solitaire, write up a few memos, and add some numbers to a spreadsheet? More than Microsoft would like to admit.
“6. Google apps don’t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, tables of content, footnotes, etc. Additionally, while customers can collaborate on basic docs without the above noted features, to collaborate on detailed docs, a company must implement a two part process – work together on the basic doc, save it to Word or Excel and then send via email for final edits. Yes they have a $50 price tag, but with the inefficiencies created by just this one cycle, how much do GAPE really cost – and can you afford the fidelity loss?
Yes, Google’s Apps are missing features, features that if all the hype about Google and high-speed coding were true, Apps would already have them. I’d never use Apps for a document I intended on printing out, and it doesn’t look like they even care if it is used for desktop publishing. And Microsoft is right on one thing; any company editing in Apps, then finishing in Office is just being stupid, and should stick with Office for the entire workflow.
“7. Enterprise companies have to constantly think about government regulations and standards – while Google can store a lot of data for enterprises on Google servers, there is no easy to use, automated way for enterprises to regularly delete data, issue a legal hold for specific docs or bring copies into the corp. What happens if a company needs to respond to government regulations bodies? Google touts 99.9% uptime for their apps but what few people realize that promise is for Gmail only. Equally alarming is the definition Google has for “downtime” – ten consecutive minutes of downtime. What happens if throughout the day Google is down 7 minutes each hour? What does 7 minutes each hour for a full work day that cost an enterprise?
The first half is an oft-cited point, and a good one. Google needs to implement local backups, preferably through Google Gears. If they hype on Gears is to be believed, this could have been done in a simplistic fashion months ago. Google’s got a lot of hype it doesn’t deliver on, and that doesn’t make them trustworthy. Company-side backups for compliance is 100% necessary for many, and until it happens, those companies can’t consider Apps.
The second half is unrealistic. 7 minutes, every hour? Please. Users would shit a brick if that happened. Google needs a more solid uptime guarantee, but this doomsday scenario isn’t helping anyone.
“8. In the world of business, it is always on and always connected. As such, having access to technical support 24/7 is essential. If a company deploys Google Apps and there is a technical issue at 8pm PST, Sorry. Google’s tech support is open M-F 1AM-6PM PST – are these the new hours of global business? And if a customer’s “designated administrator” is not available (a requirement) does business just stop?
Where did Google get those hours? Ah, 1 AM Pacific is morning in the foreign call centers Google has probably employed. Glad to see Google going with outsourced foreign customer service, which as we all know has a great reputation.
Jeez, pay a little extra for Americans. You’ll win some happy customers that way, trust me.
“9. Google says that enterprise customers use only 10% of the features in today’s productivity applications which implies that EVERYONE needs the SAME 10% of the feature when in fact it is very clear that in each company there are specific roles people play that demands access to specific information – how does Google’s generic strategy address role specific needs?
Good point. I use a bunch of high quality charts and visual materials, other require mail merge and form controls, others are heavy into macros, others into PowerPoint madness, others into… You get the point. I don’t even know some of the roles Office users fall into, and that means a lot of people to satisfy. Microsoft Office has something for everyone, while Google is a lot more limited and specific. There are few things Google has that Microsoft doesn’t, and there’s a ton of stuff Office has that Apps can’t and won’t.
“10. With Google apps in perpetual beta and Google controlling when and if they rollout specific features and functionality, customers have minimal if any control over the timing of product rollouts and features – how do 1) I know how to strategically plan and train and 2) get the features and functionality I have specifically requested? How much money does not knowing cost?
This is pretty much question 2 all over again, but there is a good argument here. Microsoft’s Office development process has become a thing of beauty over the years, to the point that if Office’s development team where working on Google Apps, Apps would be able to kick Microsoft Office’s ass. Google’s been moving slowly, especially in an environment where new versions should be coming monthly, not every three years like Office, and the development of Apps doesn’t make it seem like we should have a lot of confidence in their ability to move fast, compete and innovate.
I don’t know how much I agree with Microsoft, but they’ve got the superior product from now and speak from a position of strength. It’s hard to side with Google on anything but potential, and enterprise customers don’t usually sign giant contracts on potential. What do you think? Is Microsoft ridiculous for taking this tactic? Is it ridiculous because they are so far ahead? Do you agree with them? Are they just being naive?
Interestingly, Microsoft isn’t the only one striking like this. Zimbra, another competitor, is sending out emails challenging Google and saying the limitations of Apps (again citing government regulatory compliance) make it a terrible choice for businesses.
Google Apps, Google service for running corporate email, calendaring and documents, has gotten a new partner in the form of Capgemini, a major systems consulting firm. Capgemini will incorporate Google Apps into its outsourcing service, which currently manages over a million corporate desktop PCs. The goal of the partnership is to bring Apps into larger companies, past just the educational and small business clients the service currently enjoys.
Regarding the big question, if Google Apps is even ready for big companies, Nick Carr got an interesting answer from Capgemini outsourcing exec Steve Jones:
I asked Jones about the commonly heard claim that Google Apps, while fine for little organizations, isn’t “enterprise-ready.” He scoffed at the notion, saying that the objection is just a smokescreen that some CIOs are “hiding behind.” Google Apps, he says, is “already being used covertly” in big companies, behind the backs of IT staffers. The time has come, he argues, to bring Apps into the mainstream of IT management in order to ensure that important data is safeguarded and compliance requirements are met. Jones foresees “a lot of big companies” announcing the formal adoption of Apps.
They go on to say that Apps will be marketed as a complement to Microsoft Office, but that it should prove a good idea for employees who the company can’t afford to give copies of Office. Both are interesting arguments, but here’s a counter:
Both Carr and TechCrunch point out the obvious problems with accounting under current U.S. law, and the fact that no new customers were being announced with this news. Supposedly a big telco is going to announce a switch to Google Apps on some of its computers, so we’ll have to wait and see.
A Miami University student did some cool work with the Google Docs API to create a desktop-style file manager for Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It accesses the API for a list of docs, letting you see your documents as icons arranged on a desktop, just like you might on your regular desktop. Add icons for other Google services (search, Gmail, Calendar), maybe some widgets, and we’ve got a real Google OS. Nice!
It’s by no means perfect, but some really cool things are possible with this idea. Check out Google Web Desktop and see for yourself.
Lots of people were expecting Google to launch Google Wiki and Google Presentations, the next two pieces in its Google Docs office suite, at the Office 2.0 conference this week. It was such a widespread belief that I stopped running my “Days Until Google Presentations Is Late” countdown, figuring the wait was finally over.
But…
The conference ended two days ago, with nary a Wiki or a Presentation to be found. So, since Google isn’t going to use a big venue like that to launch, when the hell are we seeing Presentations? Anyone want to put odds on it at this point that we’ll see Presentations in the next 13 days, 21 hours?
Google Spreadsheets has added some really amazing features related to the use of data sets. Ionut Alex has the details, complete with screenshots and some instructions, but the short story is that you can:
If Google can do a good job exposing these advanced features to regular users, Spreadsheets could really win some converts. One of the best things Microsoft’s Office 2007 does is expose advanced features through a new Ribbon interface, since the features users tell Microsoft they want most are features they didn’t know the product already had.
If Google can do a better job than Microsoft showing off the power available to users, Spreadsheets could steal a lot of users, and deservedly so.
Labor Day Search Logos
Barry listed these search engine (and related) stuff being done for today:
This ran on Dogpile:
and this on Search Engine Roundtable:
Google didn’t run anything, and neither did Yahoo, Ask or Windows Live.
New Google Web Toolkit
Google released a new version of its Web Toolkit, a toolkit for creating high-end Java applications in the Google style. Read more about it here.
Google Earth, Windows Live Maps & Others In Flash
Flash Earth now lets you use a Flash interface to get around Google Maps, Windows Live Maps (aerial and labeled), Yahoo Maps, Ask Maps (aerial and physical), OpenLayers and NASA Terra daily satellite imagery.
(via, via, via)
Google Sued For Email Patent
Polaris IP, one of those soul-sucking companies that appears to exist for no reason except to sue companies who do productive and innovative things over patents they own and don’t use, has sued Google, Amazon, Yahoo, AOL, Borders and IAC over some email patent. The patent has something to do with email rules and automatic message routing.
Considering they didn’t invent anything, but bought the patent from a company that did, and the patent shouldn’t have been issued (other companies were doing the same thing before the original patent holder filed for the patent), this is just another one of those patent lawsuits that would go away in a world with a sensible justice system.
Some Quintura Stuff
Someone pointed out Quintura to me. They’ve got this kid search engine (I think they may have just launched it), which has a kid-friendly interface (including only five results per page, to make things easier). Both their kid search engine and their regular search interface include this really cool tag cloud feature, where you roll over a word and it rebuilds the cloud (without you clicking anything) based on that word, and does so endlessly as you roll over new words.
YouTube Competitor Gets A Crappy Name
NBC and News Corp revealed the name of their YouTube competitor, which they have been talking about but still haven’t launched for half a year. The name: Hulu, exactly the sort of means-nothing non-offensive crap name that you’d expect six months of focus groups to turn out. Good work, time to move on to being a failure!
Not only does the name mean nothing of importance to users and is likely to bore people away from visiting the website, it actually means “cease and desist” in Swahili. So, at least we know they have their priorities straight! Where would you rather go: (a) YouTube or (b) SafeguardingIntellectualPropertyTube?
I guess you could get Hulu pantyhose.
Of course, you could also feel bad the NBC/FOX appears to have taken the four-letter domain name from a seven-year old girl’s picture website (though the kid shouldn’t mind, since she probably got paid a hefty sum).
Google Says “We Do Dogfood, We Swear!”
After an Infoworld article mentioned in passing that Google Apps/Docs aren’t used at Google for major tasks, and I wrote an article focusing on how companies shouldn’t develop products that aren’t good enough for their own employees to use, the Google Docs blog released an article saying that Googlers do, indeed, use Google Docs.
They say that they didn’t need to convince or force employees to use it, it just happened, and that 87% of Googlers used it in the last week and 96% in the last month. Which sounds nice, but a better stat would be: How many have stopped using Microsoft Word and Excel? If Word and Excel usage have dropped by half, then you’ve got some real confidence, and I apologize.
AdSense Vista Gadget
If you need to check your AdSense earnings every few minutes without loading a webpage, there’s an AdSense Gadget for Windows Vista’s Sidebar. And if you can get the Gadget to actually work, you deserve a hug (and send me an email).
(via, via)
Google Docs Gets Right-Click Menu
Google added a good UI feature to Google Docs & Other Things, letting you right-click in the file manager to get a context menu. While it would be unfair to say they’ve now caught up with Windows 95 (they are trying very hard, and this takes time), it is good to know that the interface is maturing. Ionut Alex has examples with screenshots.
YouTube Partners Winning Over YouTube Users?
Ionut Alex wrote a post looking at the new branding for YouTube partner pages I mentioned recently, with a different YouTube player and a giant advertisement, but he also noted something strage: The Universal Music Group official version of a music video had 14 million views, compared to the user uploaded version, which had 378 thousand. This despite the fact that the user version could be embedded on any website, and the partner version was trapped in the walled garden.
Could it be that these partners are solving a problem for YouTube, bringing the user onto YouTube with their market power, instead of having users leech most of the bandwidth from external embeds? Could the partners be winning? I have so many questions, but this is supposed to be a lazy post, so, moving on…
23 days, 1 hour until Google Presentations is officially late.
Some events that have been in the news and have happened since April 17:
24 days, 14 hours, until Google Presentations is officially late.
From Wikipedia
Day: 25
“Our due date is this summer.”
Google said that on April 17 about Google’s presentations product, the third leg in its Docs family that would make the suite that much closer to being ready for real businesses. In 25 days, 17 hours, they will have officially missed that target.
I intend to count down every day from now until September 23, 9:51 am, the moment of the autumn equinox, at which point the product is delayed. Does anyone think Google will ship before then?
InfoWorld has an article about a study by a consulting firm that says Google Apps isn’t the right move for any sort of decent sized mature business, that it better fits smaller businesses with very limited needs. Bad enough to have in the press, no doubt, but then there’s this:
Even at Google’s offices, Apps is used internally only as a collaboration add-on to Microsoft Office, the report says.
It never sounds good when your employees are using your competitor’s product, not your own, because your product has a number of glaring limitations that limit its use in major corporations. How can Google expect any business even a tenth the size of Google to use Google Apps or Google Docs if they don’t use it themselves?
Some of the limitations the report lists:
– Documents: “Google Docs does not support a table of contents, headers, footers, automatic creation of footnotes or end notes.”
– Spreadsheets: “Google Spreadsheets does not support some of the more esoteric functions within formulas (e.g., database functions), and cannot hide rows or columns.”
– Presentations: “Google does not yet offer a presentation application, although it is in the process of developing one.”
– Customized applications: “Using Visual Studio Tools for Office, developers can create customized business applications that leverage capabilities in Microsoft Word and Excel, for example. While the Google APIs offer some programmatic control, they do not offer the broad level of capabilities that Microsoft does.”
Ah, Google Presentations. That reminds me…
(via Bink)
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AdWords added a nice little bit of integration, connecting with Google Docs & Spreadsheets. You can now export your AdWords reports, with all the data you want from your account, to a Google spreadsheet. You can work with the data there and print it out (pretty useful if you don’t have Excel or another spreadsheet program) or have some real fun and work on it collaboratively with a bunch of colleagues.
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