About a month ago, some additions to the code in Chromium (the open source browser behind Chrome) suggested that the long-fabled “GDrive” may be on the verge of actually launching. A week later, user-facing proof started appearing. Then earlier today, sharp-eyed social media consultant, Johannes Wigand, spotted something interesting during a presentation at a Google-sponsored event: something that sure looks a lot like Google Drive.

And it is.

Over the past month, we’ve been able to dig up more information about Google Drive. First of all, it is very real. And it is being used internally at Google. Of course, it was also real back in 2007 and 2008 before it was eventually killed. But talking to employees back then who saw and used the service all agreed that it was pretty wonky and not ready for prime time. This new version is expected to be much better.

As you can see in Wigand’s picture (above, with important elements circled by me), Google Drive on the web will essentially be Google Docs rebranded. This shouldn’t be a big surprise since Google has been positioning Docs as a sort of Google Drive since early 2010. The difference is that Google specifically didn’t want to call it that at the time. Now they do.

And it makes a lot more sense. Few people are using Google Docs for online storage beyond the files they use in Docs. Most still probably don’t even realize they can. Something as simple as changing the name to Google Drive should help with that. There will also be a new “My Google Drive” area for various folders in Google Drive. There will be other Drive-specific tools as well.

But here’s the real key: there will also be native syncing software that you install on your various computers and mobile devices. Yes, like Dropbox.

This was also true back in the day with GDrive, but again, the service (codenamed: Platypus) was said to be very buggy. Now it is said to work well. If you have a document on your computer that you want to move to another one, you simply drag and drop it into this new Google Drive sync app. Or, of course, you can use the web.

We haven’t heard the timetable for the Google Drive roll-out, but we imagine it will be fairly soon. Again, Google is using this internally right now and has been for some time. One thing that Google may be waiting for is Ice Cream Sandwich, the new version of Android due next month. There may be some built-in Google Drive component to it (though that’s just me speculating). And it seems that it will be at least a part of Chrome, and more importantly, Chrome OS.

Expect Google Drive to reside at drive.google.com (not live yet). It’s not clear how docs.google.com (the current home of Docs) will be used — perhaps as the home of the word processor app or maybe it will just redirect. Also not clear is how Google will allocate storage for this service, but presumably it will be the same as they currently do for Docs/Gmail/etc. You get a certain (ever-increasing) amount for free, and if you need more, you can buy it.

If you are a cloud virgin, what is the best way to get started and learn more about what the cloud can offer? Here are several suggestions, from the perspective of someone who has moderate IT knowledge and not necessarily the full backing and support resources of an IT department behind them. The idea here is to demonstrate some of the key concepts of cloud computing, as well as introduce you to some cool tools. We have also tried to focus on those that offer free trials or services that are relatively inexpensive and easy to get started with.

• Set up a Google Docs account, and create a native document in its repository. Now share it with a couple of friends and see how the real-time editing process works. Resist the temptation to email this document and keep it inside Google’s repository. Think about the benefits here: instead of waiting for comments and trying to resolve different authors’ revisions, you can do it in the now. Certainly, Word documents and slide presentations lend themselves best to this real-time treatment.
  

• Do the same thing for Box.net, , and try one of its fax connectors to send the document from your cloud to your own fax machine to try it out. Box has lots of other connectors to extend the functionality of your storage repository, as you can see below in the screenshot. You can also tie your Box account with your LinkedIn account, so that people viewing your profile there can download PDFs of writing samples or recommendation letters.
  

• Use one of the cloud-based spreadsheet programs that I mention here and upload your own Excel data to it. These can be easier to use than Google Docs, and also support a wider range of features specific to spreadsheets and databases.

• Use the Salesforce for Intuit QuickBooks . You can setup a free account and upload your own customer list. This product connects both the customer relationship Salesforce with the accounting software Quickbooks, and everything is happening up in the cloud to manage your company financial and customer data. Intuit has several cloud offerings besides these connectors, including WebTurboTax where you can do your taxes using the cloud.
• Windows Live Mesh can make it easier to remotely control your Windows and even Mac desktops. You can synchronize files between computers, keep your bookmarks/favorites the same and control your PC from a browser in a remote location. While this isn’t entirely cloud-based – you do need to download the Live Mesh software to each desktop – it does show you where Microsoft is going with some of its Live cloud-based services.
• Set up a server on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon has been a long-time entrant into the cloud computing space and its EC2 offers a wide range of features. Getting started is somewhat cumbersome, and here is a short screencast video that explains the initial setup process.
• Setup two Windows machines on Cloudshare.com. While Amazon certainly has lots of mindshare, as you can tell from the setup video above it isn’t the easiest service to get started with. A better choice might be Cloudshare.com, which has a free trial period and a dirt-simple browser-based process to get going. You can setup a Windows 2008 Server and Windows 7 client for testing purposes and upload a few sample Web pages for IIS or set up a Sharepoint server and client. The two machines are connected via their own cloud network, and you can access them via remote desktop connections too.

By no means are these the only cloud-based services, or even the simplest out there. We use them as examples of how the cloud has begun to grow and incorporate a wide variety of services for both small and large businesses. Do you have your own favorite sites for cloud newbies? Please share your own suggestions.

Gmail’s “Labs” features, brought to you by the experiments of Google staffers, is one of our favorite parts of the webmail service.

While some Labs features, such as the great Mail “Beer” Goggles are fun, others can seriously up your productivity levels with time-saving shortcuts, clever tricks and useful add-ons.

To activate Gmail Labs features and choose the ones you’d like to use, click the settings icon in the top right-hand corner of Gmail and select Labs.

We’re highlighting eight great Labs options that will speed up your Gmail experience. Check out the gallery below, and if you’re looking for some “vanilla” Gmail tips, tricks and shortcuts, we’ve got you covered there, too.

1. Google Search

You can already search Google from Gmail, but this option shows search results inside your mail window. It’s great for quick reference while you’re composing emails. Activating this Labs feature creates a small Google search box on the left of your screen while the results are shown in a pop-up on the bottom right.

2. Canned Responses

Described as “email for the truly lazy,” this is a mega time-saver. If you find yourself typing the same kind of email response time and time again, you can save it down to be pasted into an email body with just a few clicks.

3. Calendar Gadget & Google Docs Gadget

Simple but useful, this adds a mini Google Calendar on the left-hand side of your screen, allowing you to see upcoming events at-a-glance, and saving you from loading the full-fat Calendar. A similar option is also available for Google Docs.

4. Message Sneak Peek

Activate this and you can preview an email by right-clicking on it, saving tons of time loading an entire message that you don’t need to read.

5. Title Tweaks

This will save you from clicking on your Gmail tab to see if you have new mail. It changes the order of the characters in the page’s title from Gmail – Inbox (20) – you@gmail.com to Inbox (20) – you@gmail.com – Gmail. This means the unread message count is more visible, even if you’re working with many browser tabs open.

6. Mouse Gestures

This is a great one for Windows users, and will save you time if you get the hang of it. Holding down right-click and moving the mouse to the left will take you to a previous conversation, moving it to the right to go to the next conversation, and moving it up will take you back to the inbox.

7. Quick Links

This is yet another ace feature, especially for anyone who often searches for particular parameters in Gmail. Quick Links adds a box to the left of your screen in which you can create one-click searches. It’s also helpful for seeing only your unread inbox messages. Search for label:unread label:inbox and make it a Quick Link for easy access. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without this handy feature.

8. Background Send

Finally, another simple but effective feature can be found in Background Send. As the title suggests, it sends your mails in the background, returning you to your inbox a lot faster so you can tackle the next task on your list without slowing down.

The announcement of the official Google Chromebooks has rekindled interest in Google’s Chrome OS. But you don’t need to wait to rent a Chromebook if you want to use the operating system. People have been running Chromium OS on netbooks for quite some time. And Chrome/Chromium isn’t the only option for a cloud-oriented OS – we covered a few that were already available as of November of last year.

One of those OSes, Joli OS, has gone a step further and started offering a cloud-hosted version of its environment. You can access your Joli OS desktop from almost any browser. But it’s not alone in the cloud-based OS world. Many Web desktops have come and gone in the past few years. Here’s a look at a few that are still around.

CloudMe

CloudMe, formerly known as icloud, is a storage-oriented Web desktop. It offers 3GB of storage for free, and Web applications such as a Zoho-based office suite, a photo editor, an instant messenger, a Twitter client, games and more. It has a mobile client available Android and iOS and a mobile-optimized website, allowing you to access your files from your phone or tablet but not the full desktop environment.

One big disadvantage is that the Web desktop environment is a Java applet, and it’s slow and buggy.

eyeOS

eyeOS has been around since 2005, and has been steadily updated since then. It’s written primarily in PHP and JavaScript, and is open source so you can download and and install it on your own Web server. It does use some Flash, but it’s not required.

It has a mobile-optimized version that enables access to files, but it’s not the desktop experience and documents can’t be edited.

Glide

Glide is a Flash-based Web desktop. It’s also been around since 2005. It has the usual features: an office suite, photo editor, IM client, etc. It’s big advantage is that it offers 30GB of free storage space. A premium account, which costs $50 a year, will buy you 250GB of storage. It also has the ability to sync files Windows, Macintosh and Linux desktops.

Glide has both mobile-optimized site and an iPad-optimized site that provide a relatively complete set of features, including the ability to create and edit documents. What it doesn’t seem to offer, however, is the ability to access your files offline from a mobile device.

Joli OS

Joli OS used to be called JoliCloud. Now JoliCloud refers to a service from Joli OS that allows you to access your Joli OS desktop from the Web. The desktop version is a Linux-based OS optimized for netbooks. The Web-based version is written in HTML5 and works from most browsers, including the iPad. An Android version is in the works. However, since the JoliOS desktop mostly just provides shortcuts to Web applications, the Web-hosted version feels like more of a hosted bookmark system than a full OS.

You can find our past coverage of Joli OS here.

Netvibes

Netvibes takes a different approach but offering a number of widgets arranged in a dashboard. We’ve covered Netvibes often. The company now seems to be more dedicated to creating enterprise dashboard products than consumer dashboards.

Other Alternatives

Some might find this approach old fashioned, considering the availability of services like Box and Dropbox – or more importantly, Google Docs. Google Docs has been expanding its storage space, and its functionality. Is there really a need to mimic a desktop operating system when what you really need is universal access to your files?

The trend towards cloud storage is reflected in the marketing materials from the cloud OS vendors. CloudMe has been emphasizing its cloud storage capabilities over its Web desktop in recent months.

Glide is the most impressive of the lot, but without offline mobile access, I can’t think of a reason I’d use it. In 2008 a the Web desktop YouOS closed its doors because its own developers couldn’t find a use for it themselves.

What do you think? Is there any future in the Web-based OS?

Lead photo by Michael Roper

Editor’s note: Guest author Bindu Reddy is the CEO of MyLikes, a word-of-mouth ad network funded by former Googlers. Previously at Google she managed a team of product managers in charge of various Google apps including Google Docs, Google Sites, and Blogger. Her last guest post was on Facebook overtaking Google.

It is truly a great time to be an engineer building new things. Gadgets from sci-fi movies of 10 years ago are creeping up on us in the real world and mobile devices and social networking have made the internet go truly mainstream. We are on the cusp of seeing even more world changing ideas becoming a reality when everyone is walking around with powerful computers connected with over 20MBps of bandwidth to millions of people.

To top it all off, there is another technology boom happening right now. Anyone who has lived in Silicon Valley through a few business cycles can feel it just by watching the traffic on 101, or reading about “bubbles” in the tech press.

In the previous tech booms, a steady stream of top-notch technical graduates from other countries helped fill the recruiting needs of startups flush with VC money. But that is no longer the case. When I talk to recent top graduates from the IITs, my own alma-mater, I can clearly see the trend—very few of the rest of the world’s best recent graduates are planning to build their careers in the US over the next decade. In addition, we have multiple successful large companies, most notably Google and Facebook, which have hired huge numbers of engineers and plan to grow their hiring rates even more.

All this has caused a severe shortage of good engineering talent. Which is why, the time has never been better to work at a startup.

The downside risk is relatively low. With lots of venture capital funding, salaries and benefits at startups are competitive to those at large companies. And the potential upside possibilities are big, as the IPO and exit markets heat up. Worst case scenarios are also getting better as the big internet companies are doing lots of talent acquisitions and acqhires of failed startups.

More importantly, the one thing that every passionate engineer cares about—the ability to build and ship products—is harder at large companies. Engineers become hobbled by large code bases, bureaucratic processes, countless meetings, common infrastructure, and endless email threads, among other obstacles. Amazon web services and other cloud-computing technologies have enabled small teams of engineers to build large scalable products and scale to millions of users without a lot of upfront capital. The competitive advantage has swung over the last couple of years to smaller, more nimble companies.

Until recently, engineers developed their careers by becoming proficient at the latest and greatest platforms, languages and techniques either through experience or by having the ability to quickly get up to speed.

Today, most interesting technology is built directly for end users and it is a crucial skill for an engineer to understand quick iteration based on user feedback, however complex the technology. Increased technology and distribution leverage means that in the future, smaller teams are going to build higher impact things and being able to build an end to end solution as part of a small team is going to be a necessary skill. A startup is an ideal environment to develop your career for the future as far as both these aspects go.

People usually consider making big decisions in terms of what they stand to lose or gain. But often times, the cost to consider is that of an opportunity not taken and a decision not made.

So here’s my admittedly self-serving advice to all engineers working at large companies: Yes, it is a comfortable job. You probably don’t have to work very hard. There are lots of people to keep you company. But think about the cost of staying.

The time is now . . . to join a startup.

Photo by Anirudh Koul.

Tags: Anirudh Koul, Bindu Reddy, Google Docs, Google Sites

Why Engineers Are Better Off Joining Startups

Posted on 13 February 2011 by admin

Editor’s note: Guest author Bindu Reddy is the CEO of MyLikes, a word-of-mouth ad network funded by former Googlers. Previously at Google she managed a team of product managers in charge of various Google apps including Google Docs, Google Sites, and Blogger. Her last guest post was on Facebook overtaking Google.

It is truly a great time to be an engineer building new things. Gadgets from sci-fi movies of 10 years ago are creeping up on us in the real world and mobile devices and social networking have made the internet go truly mainstream. We are on the cusp of seeing even more world changing ideas becoming a reality when everyone is walking around with powerful computers connected with over 20MBps of bandwidth to millions of people.

To top it all off, there is another technology boom happening right now. Anyone who has lived in Silicon Valley through a few business cycles can feel it just by watching the traffic on 101, or reading about “bubbles” in the tech press.

In the previous tech booms, a steady stream of top-notch technical graduates from other countries helped fill the recruiting needs of startups flush with VC money. But that is no longer the case. When I talk to recent top graduates from the IITs, my own alma-mater, I can clearly see the trend—very few of the rest of the world’s best recent graduates are planning to build their careers in the US over the next decade. In addition, we have multiple successful large companies, most notably Google and Facebook, which have hired huge numbers of engineers and plan to grow their hiring rates even more.

All this has caused a severe shortage of good engineering talent. Which is why, the time has never been better to work at a startup.

The downside risk is relatively low. With lots of venture capital funding, salaries and benefits at startups are competitive to those at large companies. And the potential upside possibilities are big, as the IPO and exit markets heat up. Worst case scenarios are also getting better as the big internet companies are doing lots of talent acquisitions and acqhires of failed startups.

More importantly, the one thing that every passionate engineer cares about—the ability to build and ship products—is harder at large companies. Engineers become hobbled by large code bases, bureaucratic processes, countless meetings, common infrastructure, and endless email threads, among other obstacles. Amazon web services and other cloud-computing technologies have enabled small teams of engineers to build large scalable products and scale to millions of users without a lot of upfront capital. The competitive advantage has swung over the last couple of years to smaller, more nimble companies.

Until recently, engineers developed their careers by becoming proficient at the latest and greatest platforms, languages and techniques either through experience or by having the ability to quickly get up to speed.

Today, most interesting technology is built directly for end users and it is a crucial skill for an engineer to understand quick iteration based on user feedback, however complex the technology. Increased technology and distribution leverage means that in the future, smaller teams are going to build higher impact things and being able to build an end to end solution as part of a small team is going to be a necessary skill. A startup is an ideal environment to develop your career for the future as far as both these aspects go.

People usually consider making big decisions in terms of what they stand to lose or gain. But often times, the cost to consider is that of an opportunity not taken and a decision not made.

So here’s my admittedly self-serving advice to all engineers working at large companies: Yes, it is a comfortable job. You probably don’t have to work very hard. There are lots of people to keep you company. But think about the cost of staying.

The time is now . . . to join a startup.

Photo by Anirudh Koul.

Comments (9)

Tags: Anirudh Koul, Bindu Reddy, Google Docs, Google Sites

Why Engineers Are Better Off Joining Startups

Posted on 13 February 2011 by admin

Editor’s note: Guest author Bindu Reddy is the CEO of MyLikes, a word-of-mouth ad network funded by former Googlers. Previously at Google she managed a team of product managers in charge of various Google apps including Google Docs, Google Sites, and Blogger. Her last guest post was on Facebook overtaking Google.

It is truly a great time to be an engineer building new things. Gadgets from sci-fi movies of 10 years ago are creeping up on us in the real world and mobile devices and social networking have made the internet go truly mainstream. We are on the cusp of seeing even more world changing ideas becoming a reality when everyone is walking around with powerful computers connected with over 20MBps of bandwidth to millions of people.

To top it all off, there is another technology boom happening right now. Anyone who has lived in Silicon Valley through a few business cycles can feel it just by watching the traffic on 101, or reading about “bubbles” in the tech press.

In the previous tech booms, a steady stream of top-notch technical graduates from other countries helped fill the recruiting needs of startups flush with VC money. But that is no longer the case. When I talk to recent top graduates from the IITs, my own alma-mater, I can clearly see the trend—very few of the rest of the world’s best recent graduates are planning to build their careers in the US over the next decade. In addition, we have multiple successful large companies, most notably Google and Facebook, which have hired huge numbers of engineers and plan to grow their hiring rates even more.

All this has caused a severe shortage of good engineering talent. Which is why, the time has never been better to work at a startup.

The downside risk is relatively low. With lots of venture capital funding, salaries and benefits at startups are competitive to those at large companies. And the potential upside possibilities are big, as the IPO and exit markets heat up. Worst case scenarios are also getting better as the big internet companies are doing lots of talent acquisitions and acqhires of failed startups.

More importantly, the one thing that every passionate engineer cares about—the ability to build and ship products—is harder at large companies. Engineers become hobbled by large code bases, bureaucratic processes, countless meetings, common infrastructure, and endless email threads, among other obstacles. Amazon web services and other cloud-computing technologies have enabled small teams of engineers to build large scalable products and scale to millions of users without a lot of upfront capital. The competitive advantage has swung over the last couple of years to smaller, more nimble companies.

Until recently, engineers developed their careers by becoming proficient at the latest and greatest platforms, languages and techniques either through experience or by having the ability to quickly get up to speed.

Today, most interesting technology is built directly for end users and it is a crucial skill for an engineer to understand quick iteration based on user feedback, however complex the technology. Increased technology and distribution leverage means that in the future, smaller teams are going to build higher impact things and being able to build an end to end solution as part of a small team is going to be a necessary skill. A startup is an ideal environment to develop your career for the future as far as both these aspects go.

People usually consider making big decisions in terms of what they stand to lose or gain. But often times, the cost to consider is that of an opportunity not taken and a decision not made.

So here’s my admittedly self-serving advice to all engineers working at large companies: Yes, it is a comfortable job. You probably don’t have to work very hard. There are lots of people to keep you company. But think about the cost of staying.

The time is now . . . to join a startup.

Photo by Anirudh Koul.

Comments (78)

Tags: Apple Keynote, Google Docs, Zoho Show, Zoho Show Zoho

Hate PowerPoint? Here Are 5 Web-based Alternatives

Posted on 28 November 2010 by admin

Whether they’re for clients, customers or colleagues, visual presentations are an unavoidable part of doing business. For years, Microsoft PowerPoint has been the standard bearer of slide presentation applications, but several Web-based alternatives have emerged.

For the most part, the alternatives offer similar functionality to PowerPoint, sometimes more, sometimes less. One obvious advantage to Web-based presentations is that they’re stored in the cloud, eliminating the potential for nightmare scenarios involving lost or corrupted thumb drives.

Prezi

If the traditional slide-by-slide-style presentation doesn’t quite cut it for you, there’s Prezi, which works a bit more like one giant virtual whiteboard containing your entire presentation. Instead of flipping through slides, the viewer is zoomed in and out of the appropriate portions of your Prezi presentation, creating a much more animated and visually-appealing experience.

Check out this example:

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a collaborative, Web-based application with a really nice-looking UI (hint: it’s not a visual clone of PowerPoint). Presentations made with SlideRocket can allow users to comment and answer polls in real time and its user analytics can offer hints as to the effectiveness of one slide versus another. It integrates with third parties like Google Docs and Flickr, which is great for pulling live data and content.

280 Slides

This is one of those Web apps that looks and feels like it’s running on the desktop. 280 Slides has been compared to Apple’s Keynote, which isn’t a shock considering both of its founders used to work for Apple.

Sliderocket is less about collaboration and more about making slideshow presentations easy to create and share with others. Like most of its competitors, it supports importing and exporting documents to and from PowerPoint. Best of all, it’s free.

Google Docs Presentations

Not unlike the rest of its cloud-based office suite, the presentation builder for Google Docs is more or less a simplified clone of Microsoft’s offering, but it remains a pretty solid alternative. It supports all the basics: adding text, links, graphics, videos to slides, drawing shapes, presenter notes and playback of the presentation. One limitation is that the full-screen presentation is not actually full-screen, but rather it launches a new browser window without the buttons and toolbars.

Zoho Show

Zoho has its own answer to PowerPoint in the form of Zoho Show. Like Google Docs and others, it offers the standard functionality, but this one goes a step further by including live audio chat with presentees. It doesn’t yet support exports to PowerPoint, but does enable users to import presentations from PowerPoint or OpenOffice.

Comments (123)

Tags: Google Docs, Microsoft Office

Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs

Posted on 22 November 2010 by admin

For years, we’ve been hearing that the future of productivity is in the cloud. But while visions of real-time collaboration leave technophiles like me starry-eyed, it’s a prospect that means one thing to millions of people: leaving the familiar turf of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 so that they can learn their way around yet another application, not to mention some pricey upgrades. But Google wants to let you have it both ways.

Today, Google is launching a new plugin for Microsoft Office called Cloud Connect, which will tie Google Docs directly into the ubiquitous productivity suite, free of charge. Editing a document in Word? It’ll automatically sync to your Google Docs account each time you hit ‘Save’. Want to share a preview of your document without worrying about what file format your coworkers can open? Just send them a link to the Google Docs file. The plugin supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and it’s a big deal for Google’s strategy with Docs. The new product is going live for Apps for Business customers today as part of a preview program (sign up here); everyone else will get it soon.

Now, Microsoft is integrating online collaboration with its newest version of Office, but Google is doing them one better: this will work on Office 2003, 2007, and 2010, and there’s no fiddling with SharePoint required, either. Google also points out that Microsoft’s version doesn’t offer Excel support yet.

The new plugin is a result of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse back in March (note that it only took Google around eight months to get this out the door — obviously a lot of people want it). Installing the plugin should be fairly painless; the download takes around thirty seconds, and the installation process doesn’t take much longer.

Once you’ve installed it, you’ll notice a new ribbon toward the top of the Office UI, which gives you a Google Docs link for the document you’re currently working on, as well as a notification to let you know when it’s been synced with Google’s servers. Documents being edited locally save to your Google Docs account whenever you hit the ‘Save’ button, but unlike the normal Google Docs web editor, changes aren’t saved as you type them. Google Docs product manager Jonathan Rochelle says this is done because of user expectations — Office has always required that you hit the Save button to save (safety recovery versions notwithstanding) so it makes sense to leave it this way.

Multiple people can edit the same document and have their changes synced with each save (hooray for the cloud). But because these changes aren’t reflected in real-time, there’s the potential for conflicts — I could edit a PowerPoint slide to say one thing, and my coworker could put something else on the same slide. Google deals with these conflicts by presenting users with an alert prompting them to choose which version they’d like to save; if they want to go back and switch again later, they can using the document’s version history.

In practice it looks like this should work well, though there will be a bit of a learning curve as people navigate through syncing and version conflict resolution the first few times. And then there’s actually getting them to use the features that Google Docs and the cloud affords. Baby steps.

And that’s really the theme here: baby steps. Google says that it often speaks with businesses who are eager to switch to Google Docs, but who have a significant number of users who still want to stay with Office for whatever reason. This plugin will help clear that hurdle by allowing for organizations with a ‘hybrid’ setup. And in the longer term, Google is hoping that as users get more familiar with Docs, they’ll be more comfortable abandoning the Office client altogether.

There is one significant caveat to the integration with Office, but it’s a bit complicated to describe so bear with me. If you save a document from Powerpoint to Google Docs, and then edit that file using the Google Docs web editor, you will not be able to sync those changes back with the native version of the file. You’ll be able to generate a new PowerPoint file that reflects the changes, but they won’t sync automatically.

This is because Google is still working through fidelity issues, and the conversion from native Office document to Docs web document may introduce some formatting changes that the user didn’t intend to make. Obviously Google hopes to offer this in the future, but we’ll probably be waiting a while for it to overcome document fidelity issues entirely.

You may also recall a company called OffiSync, which we’ve been tracking over the last couple years. OffiSync has offered much of the same functionality that Google is launching for some time — but now that there’s an official solution, it seems like it could hamper OffiSync’s business. Not so, says Rochelle, who explains that OffiSync actually has some additional features compared to Google’s product. He also believes that there’s room for more than one solution to this problem.

Comments (5)

Tags: Google Docs, Hulu Plus

Google Docs editing comes to Apple’s iOS, Hulu Plus now $7.99/mo.

Posted on 19 November 2010 by admin

Google on Wednesday introduced a new mobile editor for its Google Docs productivity service, while Hulu Plus officially launched with a monthly rate of $7.99, $2 less than it charged during its “preview” phase.

Google Docs for mobile now available

Starting over the next few days, users of Google Docs will be able to access the service on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch by visiting docs.google.com in the Mobile Safari Web browser. It will support all iOS devices running version 3.0 or later.

The service will initially be available to English-language users around the world, though support for other languages is expected to be added “soon.” Users can also edit spreadsheets from their mobile browser with the service.

Changes to documents appear in real time, so that shared documents will show updates for other users on other devices and browsers.

An exclusive feature for Android phones allows users to enter text using their voice.

Hulu Plus debuts with lower $7.99 monthly rate

Hulu Plus was officially launched Wednesday with a new monthly price of $7.99. Subscribers who enrolled in Hulu Plus during its trial period at $9.99 per month will be given a credit for the difference that will be applied to their next billing cycle.

The company also announced that over the next week it will issue updates for its iPad, iPhone and iPod touch applications, which allow Hulu Plus subscribers to stream content to their Apple devices. The streaming service is also offering one free week trial for all new subscribers.

Hulu Plus launched in late June with a $9.99-per-month subscription price. It works on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with Hulu’s iOS application, and allows users to watch shows over both Wi-Fi and 3G.

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