Web Worker Daily

In the world of branding, Web 2.0 companies are clamoring for name originality. Bookgoo is out there in terms of weird names but in terms of applications for collaboration, their technology rocks. The company set out to “empower users to collaborate more effectively.” And you, dear Web worker, get the benefits of their hard work.

Through Bookgoo, you can upload a document (pdf, html, doc, xls, jpg, gif) or URL and opt to make it either private or public. At first, I was envisioning another Scribd. Then I thought it sounded a bit like Backboard, a feedback site I recently reviewed here. But that is where the functionality diverges from both of those sites into a nifty annotating tool for marking up documents in a way that makes Google Docs look a little plain vanilla and some of the online whiteboard apps available seem a bit old school.

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Google Docs is a definite blessing to web workers.  It allows for easy document creation with only a web browser and includes collaboration tools that enables you to have co-workers view and edit your documents, all with version control.

Google Presentations, Google’s attempt at a Microsoft PowerPoint-like application was recently launched.  To enhance cross-office collaboration, users can now export to PowerPoint.  To use this feature, chose “Save as PPT” from the File menu from within Google Presentations.

Also, you can use now save your searches.  So if you’re looking for a document from a particular person named “Joan”, you can save your search for future use for quick file reference.

[via Google Docs Blog]

Oh, Google Docs, how I’ve wanted to love you. Sometimes, I can be at the “cutting-edge” of technology and new Web apps, but at other times, I’m practically a Luddite.

I’ve been a fan of Gmail for so long but have avoided the Docs feature for almost as long because I just wasn’t getting it. Why did I need to upload my documents, I wondered, when I could easily email them to my clients or team members. What was the big deal?

Beause I’m not one to “read the manual,” when I finally started using Google Docs in the middle of last year, I didn’t take advantage or even know what it could do. Even today, as I find myself using it daily, I’m still finding features I never knew existed so it is like falling in love all over again with each discovery. Here’s is the evolution of my slowly evolving love of GD.

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According to a post on the Google Docs Blog, Google Gears, a Firefox extension that enables users to create and edit files without an Internet connection, will bless Google Docs with offline access in the coming weeks. The rollout will begin today with a small number of users.

At first launch, word processing documents can be read and edited in offline mode, while spreadsheets will only be able to be read (but not edited). Support for Google Presentations is in the pipeline and will not be initially available. Naturally, collaboration on documents that have been created offline will not be available until the new document has been synced when the user comes back online. On a related note, it is currently unclear how smooth reconciliation of offline documents will be.

Google Documents has been in dire need of offline access in order to realistically compete other office suites including Microsoft Office and Zoho. Users of office productivity suites don’t always has connectivity to the Internet.

Currently, the only Google product to use Google Gears is Google Reader allowing for offline access to RSS news items. Google is not first in offering offline access of productivity apps through Google Gears, having been beaten to market by Zoho and Remember The Milk.

Google Gears for Google Docs will require Internet Explorer 6 and above or FireFox 1.6 and above (not including Firefox Beta 3) on Windows, Mac, and Linux. There is currently no support for other browsers including Safari, Flock, Opera, or the various mobile browsers.

The key to using Google Docs (GDocs) document editing effectively is to understand that it’s a web word processor rather than an outright replacement for full-featured desktop word processors like Microsoft Word. GDocs includes features that make it easy to produce content for the web — it understands HTML (though not as well as it should), makes it easy to put in links inside and across documents, allows you to publish online, and encourages collaboration with features like version control and real-time multi-person editing.

If you go to the Google Docs home page, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and folders to organize it all. This article focuses only on the word processing aspects of Google Docs — and looks at features that make it easier for you to get in a web word processing state of mind.

Edit the HTML directly. From the “Edit” page of your document, click on the “Edit HTML” link to the right of the “Revisions” tab. You’ll view the raw HTML of the document — and I mean raw. It’s not at all easy to read, lacking as it is in whitespace. If you want to do anything more than minor tweaks, you might want to take it to your favorite HTML editor to do so.

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