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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.
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.'"
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.
Your phrasing suggests that Google does currently sell advertisers access to gmail content. That's not the case; you may wish to be more clear about your accusations.
"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!
...getting sick of the term "mashup"?
think you wouldn't see a story about a no-name application for various reasons. First, mass audiences might be hesitant to upload files to random companies they aren't familiar with and don't trust. For better or worse, people do trust Google well enough.
I know my big concern with no-named companies making web apps is that, even if they're kind of cool, little companies trying something innovative often fizzle out. You spend some time uploading your documents and playing with things. You tell people that they can access your documents there. Next thing you know, right when you're coming to depend on it-- the site is gone. Or sometimes you might think, "This has potential, but they still need to work on it," but the company doesn't really have the money to work on it.
So I think that's part of the reason why this is getting hype: people expect that Google will make it work. Google isn't running out of money anytime soon, and they aren't going out of business. These apps are pretty snappy, and we all know that Google has the servers and bandwidth to run it, so there isn't a big fear of things being overloaded.
I'm not a huge fan of this stuff. Word processors and spreadsheets in web browsers? I take my laptop with me most everywhere, and I'd rather work locally. Still, maybe if Google works on it and other people can find clever things to do with the API, maybe there will be some use for it. I guess it'd be nice to send a simple spreadsheet to someone, and trust that they'll be able to view it with only a web browser, so it's not all useless. But I think the real thing is the promise that Google will figure out how to make it work.
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.
Well, among other things, I work at Google. And everything about Google's culture of data-handling is that privacy is taken very seriously, even internally. Even as an employee here, I couldn't just go and read your gmail (or search logs, or writely docs, or anything else) myself; I don't have access to it, and would need to make a very strong case for a legitimate need in order to get access to it. Selling it to an outside party would be completely antithetical to the entire way I've seen the company behave.
But let's focus on the "among other things", so you don't have to take my word for it. I think that even if you assume Google to be evil, the logistics of them being malicious here wouldn't really work out.
It's pretty hard to both 1) try to sell a product to outside entities and 2) keep the availability of that product secret. How exactly would Google go about offering your data up for sale without disclosing that it's doing so? And if such deals were somehow arranged, for how long exactly do you think that every advertiser would keep it secret? As with most conspiracy theories, I think this just involves too many moving parts to really be stable.
And even if we assume that Google has both the willingness and the means to make such sales in secret, I don't really see the motive for doing so. Why would advertisers want your email? To extract relevant information to run ads against it... the way that Google already does for them, to the best of their considerable ability, without any human eyes being involved? And why would Google risk the damage to their reputation associated with doing this? They're not exactly hurting for above-board income, you know.
I'm fairly paranoid about the privacy of my own data, so I can see why you'd have hesitation about handing yours over to anyone else. But I don't think that the particular threat being described is especially realistic.
(If it wasn't obvious, I'm not speaking for Google in any official capacity, I'm just talking about how their culture looks from the inside. The "do no evil" thing is not just marketing schtick, it really is something that people talk about and take seriously all the time.)
While I wouldn't be surprised if Google eventually sells the platform, at substantial cost, for enterprise clients, right now they aren't selling you anything, their offering to give you the service.
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.
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.
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.