"Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them." - Steve Martin
 |
||
Web Sites
|
||
Syndication
|
||
|
Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Groups
Friday, October 13, 2006
Google is one of those companies that clearly sets the bar way up there. When Gmail came out, they were lightyears ahead of anyone and even to this day, Gmail is still very unique in its style and philosophy of emailing. The other two big email providers, Yahoo and Hotmail, are also currently developing new systems. Some people have access to the beta-versions of these systems and they both seem very nice. Of course, as always, Microsoft will be releasing its version last for two reasons: one, it’s not ready and two, it needs time to copy what the others have done. That being said, the new Windows Live Mail will be a welcome upgrade for Hotmail users who have been waiting for such a change for a very long time now. In fact, I think that many users who were using Hotmail as their default personal email account have migrated to other systems like Gmail or Yahoo for the simple reason that Hotmail has barely evolved in the past 5 years. Google Docs and Spreadsheets One onamatopia: Wow. A few weeks ago, Spreadsheets had already gone into its Beta version and was very promising. Today, Google Spreadsheets does the most common things that we use Excel for and it even has some features that Excel cannot replicate because of the very nature of online services. One such example is intelligent co-op. To test the system, I decided to create and share the ownership rights of a spreadsheet with Zarry. While we were both hacking away at it, I noticed that the spreadsheet is quite smart in fact. For example, if we both happened to be modifying the same cell, the sheet would put the latter person’s input into the cell right underneath. This is great since all changes done in co-op are instantaneously seen by your collaborators. For now I’ve been able to create an expense-type spreadsheet to help me see how much I spend and where. It’s working great. Google Docs is also one of those things that will just blow you away. It’s like having OpenOffice but online. Again, you can collaborate on the same document with someone else. Although the rectification did not seem to be immediate on both sides. There is also a cool revisiong tool that allows you to compare the before and after version of the same document.
Google Groups
If you’re an AUP student or alumni, you can join this group. If you’re a close friend, this one. There’s lots of subliminal humor in Google products. For the Groups feature, the Language of your group seems to be creative:
Elmer Fudd? Borkborkbork? I doubt very much that Google Groups will be able to create Added Value with this product but it does certainly explore the Added Potential of networks that would otherwise die if they didn’t have such a convivial communications tool. Like all networking sites, it is important to remember that they only get value because we, the users, agree to use them and give information to them. Posted by: Nick in
• Funny
• IT / Technology
• Personal
(0) Comments | Permalink |  Digg this |
 Other |
 Share on Facebook
|
||
) And the list of nonexistent languages goes on! My group uses Elmer Fudd as its language and so far it seems to be doing OK.
Syndication
|
||
Categories
|
||
Search
|
||
Monthly Archives
|
||
Post a comment