Zoho Mobile Gets Refresehed On iPhone and Android

Zoho mobile's app for android and iPhone was updated today to allow sign-in with Google, Google Apps, and Yahoo accounts (the desktop version already had this) along with a redesigned home screen, the introduction of mobile Zoho Docs that is limited to viewing documents, and some performance tweaks. All of these are great improvements, but editing of any type of mobile document would have been a game changer. I have been expecting this feature from the Google Docs team but it hasn't arrived yet. Whoever (Zoho, Google, or Microsoft) introduces this feature first will definitely cause a spike in their number of users along with a drastic change in how we use our smartphones. 

        

The New Mobile Zoho

Goodbye Google Gears

Google Gears, the offline sync tool, is being pushed out the door to make way for the offline capabilities of HTML 5. This is a great move  because all of these plugins have some sort of browser-specific bug. For example, using Chrome I could not view drawings in presentation mode with Google Presentations because of a conflict with Google Gears, I could see them in FireFox. As we get rid of these plugins, developers can spend more time of evolving the the web as a whole and lest time on bug fixing.

RIP Google Gears.

Google Docs Gets A New Clipboard

Recently, Microsoft posted a series of videos touting its advanced copy/paste feature compared to Google Docs. Now Google Docs has answered back with a new and improved copy/pasting that uses a web clipboard to store copied items "in the cloud" for 30 days. Prior to the introduction of this feature, Google Docs had simple copy and pasting and worked quite well for placing information from websites into a document, but not so well for copying information between Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. As shown in the photos below, spreadsheet data can be copied and pasted into a presentation as a table.

There are problems with this feature though. I tried copying images from a Google document into a presentation and vice versa, it simply wouldn't work, and the feature is very browser dependent (guess which one it works best in?). Also, the fact that clipboard storage only works for Google Docs and not other websites is a major let-down. Hopefully they will keep improving this feature. 

Is Microsoft Feeling Threated by Google Apps?

I came across these videos by the Microsoft team promoting their Office suite vs. Google Apps. They compare the desktop version of Office with the web-only Google Docs (we'll have to wait and see what the web-version of Office will be like). They make the expected points that Google Docs has limited options and that formatting is lost when converted to Office documents. Interesting enough, Microsoft shows the limited copy and paste option in Google Docs , this has already been updated and vastly improved by the Docs team. Another interesting point, these pro-Microsoft-anti-Google videos are hosted on Google's service, YouTube. 


I think that Microsoft is really worried about the Google Apps suite and they should be; there are currently 2 million businesses worldwide that have gone Google along with 7 million students, faculty, and staff. Most of my work is done in the cloud (like this blog posting) and although the formatting is limited compared with desktop applications, the advantages of collaboration, access from anywhere, and ease of publishing to the web are very strong. I love the cloud!!


Uncool Microsoft Videos








Cool Google Apps Video

Create Panoramics Easily With AutoStitch

To begin with, I love Picasa, the great photo organizing, editing, and sharing (much easier than sharing through Windows) program. So, I love taking photos but I am far from an expert; most of my photos are people-free, and if you take a glance through my Picasa Web Albums ( like this one) you'll see lots of outsidey-naturey-scenery shots. Recently I became interested in creating panoramic photos, this lead to the discovery that Picasa can create panoramics but it's through the collage tool which is really time consuming and results are poor. After visiting one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, I gave  AutoStitch a try. This is a simple, free program that is very easy to use and does a great job at stitching photos together. The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, well the following three photos are worth 3000 words. Not much else to say about this program, it works great and is extremely easy to use. 

Before

and after

GDrive Is Here

GDrive is here...well kind of. Within the next two weeks, Google Docs users will be able to upload any type of file, up to 250 MB, to Google Docs. Storage is limited to 1 GB with additional storage costing $0.25 GB/year. Note that Google documents, presentations, or spreadsheets do not count towards this storage. All of these files will be searchable, sharable, and many viewable with the Google Docs viewer.


The 1 GB storage limit is low considering that Dropbox offers 2 GB, Windows Skydrive users gives 25 GB for free and Gmail is 7.4 GB and increasing. As an interesting note, just yesterday the Windlows Live Team blogged about their high storage limit, did they know about the GDrive announcement in advance? The big advantage that Google Docs has over the other online  "drives" is that it can do more than act as a storage location; documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can be created and other file types viewed. Also, the extra storage rate for the GDrive is cheap, for the price of 1 coffee/year, users can have 7 GB of storage, and for a Big Mac Meal per year, 25 GB. 


The GDrive is definitely going to be a hit with current Google Docs users, although I'm not sure how many new people this feature will attract. Expect to see many more of these Desktop meets Web announcements in the coming year as Google preps for the Chrome OS.


Important Note: I'm going to post photos whenever this is activated for my account:

Google Docs Presentations Co-Editing Gets Updated

Today I discovered something that I apparently missed (I've spent too much time reading about Nexus), real-time indication of editing in Google Presentations. Prior to this, editing a presentation with a friend was brutal because there was no indication of what was being edited. Now, when a slide element (i.e., image, text) is being edited, it will be highlighted and the username will also appear. This makes collaborative life much easier.