Google Presentations

Google Presentations is part of the Google Docs suite of software which is free and done online. This is the newest member of the three (others are spreadsheets and documents) and the most basic. Right now it is somewhat limited but simple presentations can be made and can be easily embedded into a website or blog (see below). Problems that I encountered are:

• No special characters
• No subscript/superscript
• Shapes are very limited
• No animations

Advantages to using this program are:

• No file transfers
• Sharing with others is super easy
• Presentations can be easily added to a website/blog (~4 clicks)
  
• Gchatting can occur within the program
• Videos can be added to presentations with ease
• Does not require any software installation
  

Hopefully Google Presentations will evolve like other members of the Google family and the world can move away from PowerPoint.

Presentation Created with Google Presentations

Page Creator

If you want to easily design a website, Google Page Creator is the answer. I have developed my first webpage with this product and it was super easy to do. Like most Google products, you need a Google account, then you can start creating and adding pages to your site. With a few simple clicks, images, links, and headings can be added along with basic text formatting and bulleted/numbered lists. The webpage can have several different looks, such as 1 column, and there are about 15 different colour/design templates. There are a ton of gadgets that can be added, examples of the ones that I am using are Picasa web album viewer , the periodic table, and a simple fish animation. The Google page creator discussion group is extremely helpful and here is an example. One of the negative things about Google Page Creator is the column width, I wanted to increase it, so I posted the question on the discussion group, and within 1 day an answer was provided that involved producing a css file and adding some provided code, and it worked!! If your wanting to make a simple, yet sexy website, you should check out Google page Creator.

Snapsot of Google page Creator Editor

Google Picassa

          Google Picasa is another piece of free software from the people at Google. This software is very easy to use, although I do get a bit confused with their photo indexing which collects and organizes all of your photos. Pics can be viewed as a slideshow, and also as a timeline, from oldest to youngest in terms of being added to the computer. 

          Now the good stuff, when a photo is double clicked on, the photo editing mode is entered, here you can do all sorts of quick, easy, but effective stuff. First of all there are Basic Fixes including adjustments for colour and red eye removal, next Tuning involves increasing highlights, adjusting colour temperature, and finally Effects can produce a black and white photo in one click, sharpen an image, and various focus options. Photos can be starred and then exported to an album, or uploaded to Web Albums which is basically an online photo storage solution that allows photos to be viewed by others and can be accessed through GMail and there are various gadgets that can be added Googles webpage development tool Google Page Creator. Through Picasa, photos can be quickly emailed, printed (prints can also be ordered), or blogged about. 

Before Picasa

 

After Picasa

Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets is part of the Google Docs software that is free and done online. It has standard spreadsheet features such as a ton of functions (equations), freeze rows/columns, and insert images/charts, although this is a bit limited. Hopefully in the near future they will add a quick button for producing a line of best fit (aka trendline). What I love about Google Spreadsheets and the whole line of documents is that it is done online which equals to  zero file transfers. I can work in my office on a spreadsheet, and save it (it autosaves very frequently, kind of like blogger) and then view and edit the same spreadsheet at home without transferring any files. I can easily invite friends to view or edit the spreadsheet, and it can be published to allow people to see it. When editing the spreadsheet, it is done in real time, such that me and a colleague can be edition the same spreadsheet but on different computers. 

Those geniuses at Google have also solved the problem of loosing your internet connection. They refer to this as "offline access", all you need to do is install Google Gears, and it is done by "cloud computing." Microsoft feared this feature so much that they came up with their own version, but it is extremely slow and you need the expensive Office software in order for it to work. Googles version is fast, with minimal delays. 

Compared to other popular spreadsheets like Excel and Calc, it is somewhat basic, but I think it is good for the average persons needs. Features are constantly being added that are based mostly on user demand and it has advanced quite alot since its release. If you need help, you can search Google Groups which has all of the answers to most problems plus Google Docs has a good help page. Google has yet another hit software product. 

 

    Google Docs Offline Access