Google Playing Around with Offline Usage of Google Docs

Came across a post of Google Blogoscoped today on Google testing using Google Gears for offline Google Docs access.

This would be huge in taking more market share from Microsoft Office. It would allow users to work with documents much in the same way they do with the desktop Microsoft version.

They seem to be only testing it out right now and will be initially making it only available for Google Docs and not for spreadsheets or presentation.

This is something I would us a lot, been enjoying it for my Google Reader.

Application Idea using the Google Platform

Had a new idea on how to use the Google Platform today. Reading so much about micro-blogging and twitter these days in the blogosphere.

Was reading how non-profits can use micro-blogging and how it could be used in disaster and emergency scenarios until I read how Twitter failed during the MacWorld conference.

So I was building upon an old idea on how you could use Google Notebook for micro-blogging and I thought even better you could use Google Spreadsheets.

You could build a widget or firefox add-on for micro-blogging and it would store all your entries for a day in a single spreadsheet.

This way you would have ownership of all your data and neatly organized and searchable.

Then using the Google Data API you could syndicate and share your feeds and existing Google Data Widgets and Code to access your feeds.

There would need to be some sort of registry of users and it would have the path and address to get your latest set of entries and offer all the features of Twitter, etc.

Just a thought on how to build a micro-blogging on the shoulders of giants.

Google Platform for Writing

I use the "Google Platform" to help me build and evolve my central "content platform". For either one project or across all of them.

I too am a software developer so I approach very similar.
I have been using Google Platform to organize and publish my thoughts for some time now. I have wanted to start blogging on how I do this and work to organize my thoughts in a way I can share with others. I was reading Development Approaches to Writing?, by Fred Stutzman today about his development process approach to writing. So let me start with a basic post about this and I will work to refine.

Everything starts in Google Notebook, because I can harvest from a web page or blog with just a right click and it keeps the reference to the original piece. I can also just capture my own thoughts as I am surfing using my firefox add-in as well.

I can then organize these "notes" into notebooks by relevancy. I can further refine and handle the evolution by scripts using the Google Notebook API.

Then as information and throughts mature I migrate to Google Docs with a simple right click in Google Notebook.

Once in Google Docs I can refine more formally and with the assistance of others if necessary through collaboration.

Then I can also organize data in spreadsheets and evolve aspects into presentations.

From there I can publish to blogger, PDF, a book or whatever publishing format I wish.

I like the Google Platform because of how the applications compliment and work together, however the API is the biggest piece that allows me to work with things programmatically using scripts.

Share my Google Docs with my Gmail Groups

All right I have a couple of new Google Features for Google Docs tonight. In addition to Taking an ordered list in Google Docs and highlighting and publish as a Google Presentation, I would like another one:

I am working about 40+ documents in Google Docs right now. I would like to share them all with someone and have them help me work on some and generally allow them to acess them.

So what do I have to do? I have to go through each Google Doc and share it with this contact.

It would be much easier if I could just share them with a group.

New Google Docs Feature

I have been using Google Notebook pretty heavily. I use it for about 80% of my data gathering in combination with the Google Notebook Firefox Add-on.

I have permanent and temporary Google Notebook Folders for different purposes. I will export a notebook from a Google Notebook to Google Docs using the export feature available in the top right corner under tools.

It really helps me internally publish gathered information to allow it to be more refined using Google Docs. Also now I can collaborate with someone on the refinement.

A new Google Docs feature along the same lines that would be nice is:

Taking an ordered list in Google Docs and highlighting and publish as a Google Presentation.

I have created an ordered list in a Google Doc representing some topic, and I think...."This would make a nice presentation."

It would be nice to highlight an ordered list and right clicking and be able to publish as Google Presentation.

It would take each <> in the <> and make a slide with a caption of the text within the <>

Then I would save a great deal of time extending a Google Doc or a portion of the Google Doc as a Google Presentation.

Just a thought on a new Google Feature, thanls for making it happen.

Embedded Presentations with Google Presentations

I have started building OWS Network system based presentations using Google Docs Presentations. This helps me explain to customers how they can manage their systems using our tools.

I noticed you can now publish the spreadsheet as an embedded presentation. This is nice for presentations that I will be publishing within sites.

I will have to try and see if I can upload these to other sites and / or reference them from other sites.

Better Folder Organization for Google Docs

Noticed today that Google slipped in the ability create sub folders now in your Google docs management.

Definitely a nice feature to allow me to better organize my Google Docs and keep them meaningful and combined with he search you are able to find exactly what you need.