Google Presentations Coming This Summer
April 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Google announced today that presentations are coming to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. This was of course rumored a couple months ago, and certainly expected (or eagerly awaited…) by the tech industry.
From the blog:
we want to welcome the team from Tonic Systems to Google. Tonic, which we’ve just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Looking into Tonic a bit more deeply lead to the FAQ on tonicsystems.com:
“Tonic Systems is a San Francisco-based company that provides Java presentation automation products and solutions for document management - Tonic Systems Builder, Tonic Systems Filter, Tonic Systems Transformer, Tonic Systems Viewer, and JarJar Links. Features of their products included text extraction for indexing documents, presentation creation capabilities and document conversion tools.”
My only fear is that the technology they are buying as part of the Tonic acquisition is Java based. Docs and Spreadsheets is much lighter as pure javascript and xhtml. I trust Google will strike the appropriate balance and get this new application integrated and working nicely. As soon as screenshots begin to emerge, I’ll be sure to post those.
Tags: docs, docs & spreadsheets, docs and spreadsheets, documents, google, google presently, java, javascript, office, powerpoint, presentation, presentations, spreadsheets, tonic, tonic systems, writely
Google Spreadsheets Sneak Peek
June 6, 2006 | 3 Comments
I just signed up for the trial version of Google Spreadsheets. At this point the screenshots look pretty cool, I’m sure the interface will be similarly sweet. With Writely purchased and calendar launched, I’m basically free of Microsoft Office all together these days.
Tags: calendar, google, google calendar, google spreadsheet, microsoft, spreadsheet, writely
Google’s Next Big Thing!
March 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment
It was announced this week that Google bought Writely! Clearly this is their first step in building a fully web based office sweet of applications that will hopefully rival Microsoft.
I’ve had some limited email correspondence with Jen Mazzon who is part of the Writely team. As we’ve started using Writely in small groups at Plymouth State University, we’ve discoverer some great power in it’s collaboration abilities. With some APIs and similar integration opportunities, we could see using Writely on a much larger scale. She has always been very responsive and willing to consider our suggestions for improvements and new features. I wish her the best of luck in this exciting new endeavor.
Calendar appears to be around the corner, this gives them word processing… I’d like a spreadsheet application, maybe iRows? Or how about an presentation solution, maybe build an application on top of S5? That would only leave Access and Visio without competition in this space.
For more on this, read Matt’s article on Borkweb.
Tags: google, microsoft, office, web20, word, writely
S5, A Good Start
January 18, 2006 | 2 Comments
I really like the idea of having all my office applications replaced by web based versions. I want to be able to manage any document from where ever I’m sitting on whoevers computer. I then also want to be able to collaborate and share viewing and/or authoring with whomever I like.
Writely does this very well as relates to Microsoft Word. For three months now I have used Writely exclusively for my word processing needs. I no longer have any use for Word.
S5 is billed as “A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System.” Check out this example slideshow. I love what they are accomplishing with their standard, and it is purely XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the background.
If someone can take this concept one step further and build a nice WYSIWYG tool to create slideshows and make it web based, PowerPoint may be the next Office application I stop using.
Maybe the Writely developers could add a simple tab to their app that allows creation of presentations on the S5 standard… Whoever does it, I’ll be in line for the beta, as I’m sure thousands of other will be as well.
Tags: collaboration, excel, html, javascript, presentation, presentations, s5, standard, web 2.0, web20, word, word processing, writely, xhtml
Writely Does It Right
October 18, 2005 | 13 Comments
I recently discovered a web based document or content editor called Writely. Matt at Bork Web tried it out and gave me his opinions on it so I decided to take a stab at it as well. It is a Web 2.0 application that intends to replace Microsoft Word. I consder this similar to the way Gmail completely changed what we expect out of web-based email clients. Now I want all content editing to work just like Writely. I’m actually writing this blog post in Writely, since they have the ability to post content directly to a blog using the standard blogging APIs. If this works out, it will certainly replace all reliance I had on Ecto.
OK, for testing purposes I’m going to try a couple text styles out just to see how they post through.
List:
- element 1
- element 2
- sub element
- element 3
Some boldness and a bit of italics, followed by a touch of underlined text.
I also placed the image in the top left with the WYSIWYG too.
Tags: gmail, google, microsoft, microsoft word, outlook, web 2.0, web applications, web20, word, word processing, word processor, writely