They better acquire Zoho.

I like Writely and Google Spreadsheets, and use both extensively. I like the integration that’s slowly happening across the various Google apps, and that’s probably the biggest factor that’s kept me using Google services instead of the offerings from 37signals.

However, security needs a whole lot more work. Encryption, for one thing. And more granular access control - instead of giving everyone “collaborator” access with full capabilities to edit and share the document, I’d like to be able to designate “editors” who can edit the document but aren’t allowed to publish it or invite other collaborators or viewers.

Google has a good track record of improving their products based on user feedback, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll offer next. Maybe incorporate Writely as the default text editor for Blogger? That would be nice.

Great Update! I was wondring why the article was removed for a while ? And I see a lot of link errors in the docs.google.com page. Probably its not Live completely and google guys are still working around ?

Cheers,
Dreamchaser

just a wordpress error. it got reset to private somehow.

Have you tried upload a .XLS file at docs.google.com? I get an error that Writely does not support .XLS file.

I thought this integrated site allows uploading both .doc and .xls files. What’s the deal here?

Now it seems to be working. Seems like it was a temporary glitch in the app.

@ching -> I suspect you work for google.

@Ching: You can try http://www.instacoll.com which allows you to collaborate from with in your exisitng MS Office apps. There is no need to upload any docs to a central server. You can do it right from the Office SUite.

For having more control on your docs, you can check out http://www.live-documents.com. Again this also works right from with in your office apps.

Kaushal - thanks for the tip!

I love my advanced Excel formulas and functions; the lack of equivalent power in Google Spreadsheets has been driving me nuts. If I can use Instacoll to seamlessly share my Excel spreadsheets, I may consider sharing only the simplest stuff over at Google. Will check it out…

Clarity is great, but the name could use a little work Not too read too much into it, but ‘Docs & Spreadsheets’ alone doesn’t suggest it is one of Google’s largest initiatives . . .

@kaushal: I tried InstaColl a while back, and wasn’t impressed with the usability. When you guys have figured it out, and others are recommending it, I’ll give it a shot again. However, I do believe that such collaborative features within Office apps are a better option and will probably be an integral part of Office in the future. No wonder that the person behind InstaColl is Sabeer Bhatia, who sold Hotmail to Microsoft for some $400 million.

I don’t know about browsing docs. I’ve gotten comfortable with the gmail interface, but using that same method for managing documents I find to be less comfortable. The collaboration stuff sounds nice though.

This is a nice development for those who work in a distributed startup like myself. We’d been using Google spreadsheets and Writely to great effect for months now to keep track of milestones and work items. This step towards integrating the two is nice, and I can’t wait to see how much further Google (and others) take this - each development just makes working in a virtual group that much easier.

Grammar check is still missing from the online word processors. I wonder why, it doesn’t seem that hard (see http://www.spellchecker.net)

Also, I would prefer if the spell and grammer check were ‘live’ instead of ‘manual’ (example: http://me.eae.net/stuff/litesp.....edemo.html)

if these two things are provided by docs & spreadsheet (whats with the name) or zoho, i might just not use word anymore!

Can I please choose to have the old writely toolbar? I use it all the time, I feel like I am stuck in Gmail. Is there a way to make this skinable? Is this what we get for being an early adopter?

Rumor is that Google is now eyeing Facebook for $2.3 bill

The Writely and Spreadly nicknames were far better than “Docs and Spreadsheets”. Its only a matter of time before it all gets rechristened gOffice anyway, so why the delay?

It still doesn’t work in Safari…

http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/.....heets.html

Google Docs basically has a Office 2007-esque Ribbon interface now for the toolbar.

I guess I will have to check both releases out - Zohox and this Google one!

Rex

It would be cool if someone could write a little localhost browser proxy that would somehow cache and enable offline editing of these documents so I can continue working on them on the plane and then synch them back up when I reconnect to the net.

Erik

I have used Writely for blog publishing and works well the email publishing feature - outlook in my case. Worth trying out for bloggers. dozens of these out there… but Google has it down to a simple way of doing it - and definitely stands out.

“It would be cool if someone could write a little localhost browser proxy that would somehow cache and enable offline editing of these documents so I can continue working on them on the plane and then synch them back up when I reconnect to the net.

Erik
”

Why not just save your Writely Document is a .doc file, edit it offline, then import it back into Writely?

also there is a little move to photos.
did u notice the photos link in that left upper corner menu where the calendar,gmail etc was? google pushes picasa.

Text Document collaboration was a big problem a few years back.
If you’re looking for text based collaboration today, just use one of the dozens of wikis out there.
A word processor/text editor is a personal tool and such should be at the desktop. Google and the Web 2.0 crowed are just looking for eyeballs and will do anything to get them regardless of the users needs.
I see Tesco’s decision to sell office-like application for £20 as much more important for consumers. Being the biggest retailer in the UK, Tesco thinks consumers are going to be happy to shell out £20 and get a simple office package.
Makes much more sense to me than living in this ‘live’ universe financed and maintained by advertisers.

Funny listening to everyone expecting a fully-functional product. Both Google and Zoho realize they are in a unique spot in the industry where they can build from scratch and have less features. Most users don’t even use 60-70% of the features in desktop word processers.

But I predict M$ will acquire Zoho. They need to.

-dm

I’m still waiting for Google to allow users of GMail for your domain to access these two offerings. It seems to me those users might be some of the most likely users of these apps, yet I have to use my personal GMail account to try them out.

There’s no Open command for Documents and the Find & Replace feature is (curiously enough) only ‘experimental’ at this stage.

Of all the things I’d have expected to have been nailed down, it would have been the search aspect…

Microsoft’s response:

http://www.computers.net/2006/.....s_spr.html

You guys should check out editgrid.com - an online spreadsheet app with collaboration, dynamic “web generated” fields and “viral excell” features.

google spreadsheet is lightyears beyond

I like writely though.

Was this just released today? Just wondering how they got testimonials from people around the world. Perhaps a special beta invite?:
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour.html

Google is evil monopolist. If so will continue futher, it will be worser than Microsoft

the ongoing problem with all the web-based office tools - lack of suppport for right-to-left (RTL) languages like hebrew or arabic. this is an audience which has no alternative for MS-office (even open-office, at least the hebrew version, has many problems with RTL integration).
So please, just a little effort, for a few hundred million users…

This might piss a few people off, but I agree with Microsoft. Data should be located remotely with local clients doing dirty work, at least for intense applications. Zoho does a good job at making the office environment available via the browser, but what’s the core benefit? Why not just develop a low cost Office and network it as a remote application to all of the enterprise PC’s? I must say that Zoho is far advanced relative to Google - you can run their applications within an intranet setting, so you don’t have to trust a third-party with your data.

One area that I *do* see web-applications and thin-client/web-based computing really taking off is in the embedded solutions sector - cellular phones, TiVo’s, DVR’s, PDA’s, home stereo’s - you name it, and it would benefit from such computing.

would google be open to the idea of letting the documents to be stored on the users server instead of their own ( google) servers. This can solve the concerns about privacy and security.

Critical regulations like Sarbanes Oxley compliance will not let us put our documents on shared servers.

I use zoho regularly for my small business, finding the crm tool to be excellent for managing sales processes, etc. Free for up to 3 people. Meanwhile, writely was the best option for us when doing internal documentation, especially for its shared editing functionality.

My only complaint was that writely documents weren’t ‘yet’ searchable. Now, they are. This tool is especially nice for planning and coordination; ie my partner in Silicon Valley and I regularly used writely to plan our blog/podcast, http://www.acagax.com.

Now that it’s gotten rid of that wacky writely interface, and googlified, it looks to be even better.

Meanwhile, I put my bid on Yahoo or another big player looking for a big zoho acquisition to jump right in this game…thoughts?

rumour has it that microsoft has some really neat office tools that even work when you are offline from the internet.

amazing, but true.

‘Save as PDF’ is an attractive feature.

You are now part of the BUZZ, Sharepoint BUZZ

Visit http://www.sharepointbuzz.com

Caught in a lie. Check http://www.google.com/educator.....heets.html

Goto “Teachers speak out”. Read what the first one says, about having used it for a long time already… and the Charts Wizard… not too good I’d say.

@revan - Google is not evil; in fact, they are famous for not doing evil.

See #6 on their 10 things:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/.....hings.html

I liked writely better. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but the default google blues and whites is getting old QUICK. Not to mention the responsiveness of the servers don’t even compare to each other. Writely was quick, while google hangs.

As a designer, Writely was more appealing. I appreciate Google for many things but unfortunately visual appeal isn’t one of them. It’s a bit sad that they took a perfectly functional AND well designed web app and made it Google Whitebread. Google should get past it’s vanilla interface and move towards a friendlier design system. I thought hiring Douglas Bowman of StopDesign.com would help that.

Hey “nofool”..weird, but like i said, unless they were part of a beta. Google bought Writely back in March (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/writely-so.html), so maybe they’re allowed to use the same quotes and replace the writely name?

After acquiring Writely, everyone knew that google is rolling out its own Web Office. Then came Google Spreadsheets which is really a great tool so far but still needs improvements if comparing to Microsoft Office or Open Office.

http://googlelogs.blogspot.com.....oogle.html

I tried it this morning and really liked it. It’s simple, but I’m a blogger, not an attorney, and I’ve never bothered to learn any more about Word than I originally need to know for producing documents. And having the docs online i helpful. Let’s not make too much of this; it’s meant for the masses.

Perfect!

I am excited for this integration, just moments before I learned of this new development I was explaining to a developer at work why I thought Google was making a mistake by not integrating their products more tightly.

I liked what I say with the new Google Doc’s product and was about to start using it heavily for my work. However, it looks like there is a severe problem with its tagging feature. Check out the Google groups:
http://groups.google.com/group.....d&

Tags worked fine with Writely, but when they migrated to the new system something got frigged big time. I’m interested to see if they can fix the tagging without major hassles for the users…. And I’m sure there are dozens of talented Googlian programmers working long hours trying to find a solution.

Good luck guys & gals on the fix… I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.

Update on tagging problem. I checked this morning and everything is working the way it should.

Thanks Google, great job!!!