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Google Office To Get an API
Orange Crush writes, "Google's new office applications, Docs & Spreadsheets, will provide APIs for custom apps. Johnathan Rochelle, project manager: 'We definitely want to build out APIs, especially for the spreadsheets side, as spreadsheets are more data-oriented, but maybe also for the word processor. People will be able to do mashups with our tools for other things, and not be stuck behind our dev cycle for everything they want. If I've already got data somewhere you can't really rely on manual cut-and-paste to make it collaborative. Imagine pulling data from any application you've already got in use... you get that data over to the hosted app, make it collaborative, then bring it back... that's what we'd like to enable at some point.'" Eating their own dogfood: Rochelle said that "Everybody in [Google] is using the tool" already.
"We definitely want to build out APIs, especially for the spreadsheets side, as spreadsheets are more data-oriented, but maybe also for he word processor," Google product manager Jonathan Rochelle said.
Repeat after me... Spellcheck does not replace good editing. Spellcheck does not replace good editing.
what the heck is an api for the non-nerds out there?
I did a quicky review of Google's Spreadsheet when they released it six months ago. Since then, it would appear that Google has fixed some of my complaints. In particular:
:(
1. Cell borders have been added.
Umm... that's all I've got.
Everything else still appears to be an issue, including the calculation errors I spotted. And while Cell Borders have been added, there is no way to apply different styles. I'm pleased to see that Google is adding a new API for their "Office Suite", but they really need to fix some of these issues before they can be taken seriously.
Also, the continuing lack of charting is really sticking out. Data visualization is an important feature in a spreadsheet, whether you're preparing a market analysis or just balancing your household budget. The fact that plenty of web technologies exist to accomplish charting (SVG, round trip images, Flash, Java, etc.) only makes it stick out that much more. Now the API might allow external coders to help in this area, but so far I'm still not impressed.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I was reading a article on zdnet a couple days ago about how the problem of Web2.0 and Web2.0 storing its data online was that you couldn't use this data when you weren't connected to the internet. Here's the answer: a small app that reads and writes using this API, but can store to your computer for later online storage when reconnected to the internet. I can't wait till it comes to Linux.
As I mentioned on an earlier Google Office thread, the word processor doesn't permit the kind of page formatting options that are an absolute necessity for a professional writer. Specifically, you can't define front-page headers, subsequent headers, or 8.5x11 inch page sizes with 1 inch margins.
Without those features, it's still OK, but no writer will use it as their word processor of choice.
Hooray for Google allowing disallusioned bloggers to create mashups of other disallusioned bloggers using data from Google Spreadsheets into a Google Map where you can click on each user and write a message to them through an API to Blogger while simultaneously overlaying sixteen YouTube videoes while embedding a chat control to GTalk and Gmail and embedding a moon phase widget in your Google Pages tray bar along with a world clock showing the time in thirty-seven timezones simultaneously while using Google Sets to locate good stocks to show charts through Google Finanance in an expandable IFrame using Google UI Controls and integrating Google Search and Google News to be tied into the page so it automatically searches Google whenever you click on any word on the page and if you click on a non-alphanumeric it searches through Google Code Search and every image will be linked to Google Image Search and Google Image Labeler.
And will I get to Google the beans?
From what I've seen about the complex formula handling, all those 0000000's and stock deals could mean its a sad (or bumper) month in the googleplex. Maybe the Youtube aquisition bid calculation was shown as $! and some accountant just thought of a suprising number for a joke.
Take a look at the top of the screen. See where it says "news for nerds"? Do you want that to be true, or don't you?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...another year out, and we'll all be hearing about how Google got caught selling access to Advertisers for searching your online documents, not just your GMail.
Sell me the platform, not the service.
Reality is prettier inside my head...
direct hooks between Google Office and my word processor of choice. As soon as Google Office respects .odt enough so that it can keep track of all changes people make (even if the web interface isn't yet able to let you use all of .odt), you should be able to get the collaborative benefits of Google Office along with all the benefits of having a local office app.
Think: all open standard word procesors could instantly have the best collaboration system on the planet (i.e. real time co-editing, with backups and rollbacks possible) with minimal coding effort.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Slashdot new for nerds. Stuff that matters
RTFM! It doesn't need explaining. It's common knowledge especially in this context
The article mentions a Google employee who uses a traditional office product while commuting, and then gets into the office and (ironically) switches to the Google product. So how does he merge the changes he made while on the road with the changes others may have made in the office? That would be a great feature to have built in for a product with such a strong collaboration focus, but I don't think they have it.
To me, "mashup" sounds like anti-synergy, where the whole is LESS than the sum of its parts. That may not be the intended meaning by the person using the word, but it's typically appropriate enough!
"Eating their own dogfood: Rochelle said that "Everybody in [Google] is using the tool" already."
I'm just an aerospace engineer and not a programmer/scientist....but I thought Google hired the best of the best brightest minds in the country. True I use Matlab for most analysis and Fortran and C for most simulations, but when I want to "play" with a snippet of data a bit and do some simple plots, Excel kicks butt. I feel sorry for them if all those PhDs can't even graph with their spreadsheets anymore. I can understand them not wanting to pay Microsoft but geeze, at least throw them oocalc.
Eating their own dogfood: Rochelle said that "Everybody in [Google] is using the tool" already.
Now I understand why the CFO paid 1.6bn for GooTube!
What I have never figured out is...Why would you eat somebody else's dog food?
Which dog food do you eat?
...getting sick of the term "mashup"?
Given how feature-incomplete the Google Office suite is in comparison to any desktop application, I don't see why this is even important. If this was some no-name web application, it wouldn't be a headline. The amount of hype being generated over the ability to run applications inside your browser through a mess of client side and server side interaction is absurd.
What is clear is we need a better platform for developing these sorts of applications, but AJAX and DHTML fails to impress me.
Developers, developers, developers!
The online coffee making market will be the only thing still owned my Microsoft with their 'Vista Machiato' OS version.
But every drinker must be licensed separately.
Does it run in Emacs?
It's about time their office include an Animal Protection Institute for their code monkeys.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
At first glance of the title, I thought that their offices were getting APIs, as in the developers wrote apps to control various features to automate the offices. Boy, was I disappointed. I wouldn't put it past them, though.
If storage is becoming more net-centric, what really matters is having the most ways possible to access your data. People don't really need the desktop software features. I'd gladly give away 90% of them if it was just easier to collaborate and be able to find our stuff when we need it.
To hell with expensive collaboration tools that require my own server. First there was eroom, then the much cheaper 37 signals, and now the free google. Long live google.
someone in India is selling your financial information?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is there such a thing as a well grammer checker?
Yes it's nice that google are providing yet another API, but I'm really put off by the writely new skin. It's less appealing it use.
I seem to remember a little product called Lotus Notes by Ray Ozzie, who has now become the head of Microsoft. Their special little replication concept seemed to endear itself to a lot of people.
The key is to bundle them all together in an easy to use interface. Perhaps even a desktop client. Heck, with their resources, they could probably wrap it all up into that Google Operating System everyone was all giddy about a while back. Right now, everything (with the exception of the existing Google Apps for Your Domain suite) is pretty spread out as separate products. If they could tie all of these together and make collaboration and integration a little better, it would be the ultimate groupware suite. Just throw in an accounting program (Google Financials?) and you're all set. Charge monthly/yearly fees for companies/domains that go over the maximum storage (perhaps offer a combined storage limit for all of the products put together?) or need more users/groups.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
What a sad, confused little man you must be here.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Last time I checked, you could set up your Google spreadsheets for collaboration, but there was no version control, no way to find out who changed what when, and to revert changes. Has that since been added? Without it, I find collaboration impossible.
It's amazing they can put it on a webpage and it all works flawlessly, but the one drawback of their spreadsheet deal is that it only goes up to 100 entries- I bet for most tasks that's fine but what about folks w/ more rows?
Behold the power of posting at Slashdot!
Dan East
Better known as 318230.