Posts Tagged ‘Google Docs’

Changes At Google

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Once upon a time everyone thought that Google was unstoppable. However, the worsening economy is taking its tole on search giant. The company has issued a number of official blog posts over the last week or so detailing the changes.

Google Video will no longer be accepting uploads shortly. No surprise there, actually, I’ve been wondering why this didn’t happen a long time ago. Google Video, IMO, should have been one thing… search for (and in) videos.

Google Notebook, a service that I actually love, will be stopping development. However the service will continue to work, for now. I guess with this service shutting down, I’ll have a reason to switch over to Evernote.

A number of services that Google picked up, but never really did anything with will also be getting the axe. Jaiku, Google’s service similar to Twitter and Plurk will be shutting down, and the code released as an open source Jaiku Engine under the Apache license.

Other fatalities include:
- Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service.
- Google Mashup Editor will quit working in about 6 months. Everything should be moved over to the App Engine.

That’s not all of the Google news. Google is also making changes to recruting and engineering. About 100 positions in the recruiting section are being eliminated, and 40 satellite engineering offices in 20 countries are being closed. No word on how many engineers that will impact.

As long as Google doesn’t mess with my Picasa, GMail, GDocs, GCal, or Grand Central I’ll be happy. Though I will miss Google Notebook.

Mac World Expo Keynote 2009

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

So the Mac World Expo is over with now, and if you haven’t heard yet there are a lot of people that were rather disapointed by the event. Why? Two main reasons, first there were a lot of rumors floating around as to what would be announced. People expected these rumors to be true, and when they weren’t, people felt let down. The other reason, is the event was pretty boring.

If you hadn’t heard, this is the last year that Apple is attending the Mac World Expo. In addition to that, there was also no Steve Jobs to present the keynote, instead it was handled by Senior V.P. Phil Schiller. I don’t know if it was just Phil, or if it was the products he was announcing today but the event was boring. He spent half an hour along talking about iPhoto 09. iPhoto might be nice, and there may be a lot of new things in it, but half an hour? Really?

So what was covered during the keynote? If you fell asleep, or just missed it, here is a recap: (more…)

Google Updates iPhone Interface (Again)

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

Google has updated their mobile apps for the iPhone again. The first time wasn’t that bad of an update, and this time is even better. The new UI has a much cleaner and crisp appearance. Additionally you can customize what tabs are displayed (up to three). By default you have GMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and of course the main Google page. A more button will give you access to Google Docs, Picasa Web, Blogger, Google Notebook, GOOG-411, and Google Search SMS.

Also, I don’t know if i it’s just the Google stuff or if it is related the the 1.1.3 update, but the new sites are going much, much faster for me.

Google Docs Updated

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Google has made some general improvements to Google Docs and some very nice improvements specifically to Google Presentations, Google’s web based PowerPoint-esk tool. To see what’s new, check out the Official Google Docs Blog.

OpenOffice.org To Google Docs Plugin

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

I quit using Microsoft Office a long time ago. I don’t have a whole lot of use for an “Office Suite” at home, and OpenOffice.org handled everything I needed it to. When Google Docs & Spreadsheets came around, I gave it a try, and fell in love. There was now a way for me to edit spreadsheets and documents online from any computer.

Granted, Google Docs still had some limitations, and I didn’t (and don’t) want to post anything that had personal or private information. Aside from the PII, there were still some times I found working with OOo to be better than working with Google Docs. But then for some reason, rather than import my doc to Google Docs, I’d send it to myself via email.

Well, I read about a new OOo plugin the other day that sounds like it’ll make things better for me, especially when it comes to combining the Google service with the desktop power of OOo. It’s appropriately named OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs.  It allows you to import docs, spreadsheets, and presentations between the two services.