Google Enhances Presentations

I have to admit that I have not tried to use Google Presentations, though I do use Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The reason simply has been that normally, if I am creating a presentation, it is for use at a speaking engagement of some sort, and that means I want to ensure that it runs on the projection system and PC that will be on the dais, and that it can be copied and viewed by attendees later, in a format I think they will use. Microsoft PowerPoint, in other words.

But Google coders have enhanced the Presentation application in ways that immediately made sense to me. Presentations now can be saved in a file format that allows them to be embedded directly into Web sites. Now that is something one cannot really do with a Microsoft Powerpoint.

In fact, there is now a new use case. If I want to create content in that format for Web distribution only, I don't have "native application" issues. I can simply embed the presentation directly onto a blog or other site. Cool.

Low Awareness of Google Apps?

In a recent survey, NPD asked PC users whether they had heard about online, browser-based office productivity applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets or other similar Web-based apps.

About 94 percent say they never have heard of Web-based productivity suites. About half of one percent have substituted Web-based productivity suites for desktop software such as Microsoft Office.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets perhaps is the most visible of the Web-based suites. But apparently a long ways from being a mainstream application.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets Use up 84%

After a year, the data seems to suggest that users are figuring out how to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets, according to Compete data. Usage has been up sharply since June 2007, for example. In its first full year, Google Docs and Spreadsheets has seen an 84 percent year-over-year increase.

So why use Google Docs and Spreadsheets? Some people might like the fact that usage is free. Others might like the fact that Docs and Spreadsheets is easy to use. More important, perhaps, is the online sharing and collaboration aspect, which seems to be on the verge of greater importance in today’s workplace.

Personally, I use Docs and Spreadsheets because I do a lot of blogging, and Microsoft Word seems frequently to require translation to "text" to post cleanly on some sites. If I am going to have to do that, I'm simply not going to bother with Word.

Google Docs on iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile

If you have an iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile device, you can now point your phone's browser to http://docs.google.com/m to view (no editing yet) mobile-optimized versions of your docs, spreadsheets. Owners of iPhones additionally can view their presentations. Support currently is available only for English-language users at the moment.

Okay, the images are going to be pretty small. But it is one more small step towards a Web-enabled portable desktop.

GooglePack Adds StarOffice

GooglePack has added Sun's Web-based productivity suite StarOffice. I don't see any icon for Google Docs & Spreadsheets in the Pack any more, so apparently Google has decided that the more robust StarOffice functionality warrants the switch. I suppose I would have to agree about that. If you are a heavy Microsoft Office user, StarOffice arguably will operate more along the lines of what you are used to, feature-wise. It's the small things, in many cases. The big thing is the presentation tool in StarOffice that wasn't part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.