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Google Launches Powerpoint Competition, Web Ads for Mobile Devices
fullstop writes "Google has finally launched their online presentation tool to complete its office offerings at Google Docs." Relatedly several users have also mentioned that Google plans to start selling ads for cell phone-targeted websites. "The company said that its new product, AdSense for Mobile, would establish a cellphone advertising network in which Google would match ads with the content of mobile Web pages, much as it does online. Other Internet giants, including Yahoo and AOLTime Warner, as well as some start-ups, have also created advertising networks tailored for mobile phones."
Come on editors! It's even underlined for you as a hyperlink!
;)
Either that or the mail-order brides business is booming far more than we originally expected!
The Presentation tool isn't bad- simple interface, but there's a limited number of themes, and it looks like no way to create your own, other than uploading an existing PowerPoint deck. It also doesn't support transitions. However, the integrated sharing ability is what really make this a winner. If anyone is shaking in their boots, it should be WebEx, as this makes it much easier to view a deck than using their software.
Still, it seems that the adoption of Google's tools is pretty slow. Most people I talk to are still skeptical of them.
...the example presentation is Proprietary and Confidential. So don't go spreading this link across the Internet! Especially not on one of those high traffic sites like Slashdot.
[...]
(Oops)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This will definitely overshadow the Zimbra bought by Yahoo yesterday and will haunt Microsoft Office unless they provide a simple webminar option.
I'm not so sure. Office has a lot of momentum and it will be hard to dethrone it or even steal away just a bit of marketshare unless Google finds a strong way to leverage their position to encourage people to use it.
For example, Apple has taken some marketshare away from Powerpoint with Keynote (insofar as I've seen people using it instead of MS Office), but only because they have a captive market to sell to.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Is that a wedding where phones are thrown instead of rice? Inquiring minds want to know.
Since my story didn't get posted, I'll just paste its text here ;-)
"Hours ago, Google announced the launch of AdSense for Mobile, an advertising service in its own class, targeted to mobile users. I took it upon myself to write up a cursory look into the implications of this new class of service, asking myself if it will change the Web advertising landscape."
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
it looks good but..
imagine yourself at a presentation in front of your bosses and network dies or google returns an error "oops our server made a booboo"
that would be fairly embarrassing
If you don't want to RTFA about the presentation app, the example presentation is still reasonably worth checking out. It's impressively like viewing a PowerPoint doc in a browser. The ability to easily publish on the web like this is kinda neat, and the source code of the presentation is surprisingly tidy.
... isn't that why I own a notebook in addition to my desktop machine?
Seriously, why would I want to use anything short of Keynote wherever I am?
The mobile ads are kind of cool though; I imagine with the advent of Safari on the iPod, we'll be seeing a tonne of mobile versions of things we love now.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
at 0.49EUR a MB here in ireland with 3G operator three.ie i hope theres an adblocker available
Google has finally launched their online presentation tool to complete its office offerings at Google Docs."
Why this will never take off:
First- no presenter in their right mind wants to rely on the internet to deliver a presentation. We tell people to have a copy ready on at LEAST one other kind of media, especially if they're giving a big talk. I know people who spread important presentations across multiple media, which is spread across their luggage when traveling. Ie, the presentation is on their USB key in their pocket, but also on a CD in case the key is broken (for example, maybe the plane ride is bumpy and the seatbelt causes the drive's connector to snap off.) We even have them put it on their webmail account in case they lose *everything* for some reason.
But...do the presentation requiring second-to-second internet access to work? Bwahahahahahaahaa.
Second- even if you can export it (for example, as a PDF), very few if any PDF viewers support dual-monitor layout. Powerpoint and Keynote, the biggest presentation tools, both support a "presenter display" on the second monitor; you can see things like a preview of the next slide, a presentation timer+clock, your notes for the current slide- or all of the above.
Please help metamoderate.
if many of us
a) actually cared
b) didn't have a working solution now.
Off the top, I have both XP and OS X machines at home. On my XP machine I have the Office Suite and on the Mac I have NeoOffice. Yes there are alternatives to Powerpoint but the fact is, I don't care, Powerpoint does what I need and if I need advice I can find it so fast its just beyond compare.
In the end most people don't care, the MS products and those of other companies work. Its bad enough learning a new application because you have too but when your time is valuable learning one you don't need doesn't usually occur
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Offline work? Yeah, you can make it with the Google app, then download it and work on it offline...but then, why bother to use the Google app? This is the problem with web-apps: you are relying on an internet connection, and we just don't have that kind of infrastructure here in America. Then there is the problem of putting your data in someone else's hands. And the lack of an actual AJAX standard. And the fact that Google apps don't support my browser of choice (forcing me to change the user agent...and have it work anyway. So why is it still unsupported?).
So get back to me when this stuff isn't a problem, and I'll look at Google apps again.
Palm trees and 8
Now that Google have got a Presentations module, I hope they'll go back and make the word processor usable.
Right now it doesn't have proper support for paragraph breaks, which makes it utterly useless for serious word processing.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This is a great utility because it allows true ultra-portability. As an admin, I can tell you that roughly 1 of 2 executives leave without a presentation. Having this available is great!
Free childcare classifieds: www.carebrite.com
It is interesting that the firefox integrated spellchecker works just fine in the dynamically placeable text boxes.
It's impressively like viewing a PowerPoint doc in a browser. The ability to easily publish on the web like this is kinda neat, and the source code of the presentation is surprisingly tidy.
It's not bad, but did not work in a more locked down browser, and that source code is only tidy if you are used to PowerPoint. Open Office exports to normal html with frames that work anywhere and has robot code that's less cluttered. This will be easier for most people, however, and it's nice to see.
The problem for most businesses, however, seems to be keeping those stupid ppt file OFF the internet. This search, for example, turns up 367 results. I can promise you that more than one of those results is a complete screw up. Separating the places that are for sharing and those that are for normal storage is good practice. Google's service will be easier to understand than many others and will result in fewer accidents.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
WTF is relatedly? That's a douche word.
If Google (and OO) wants to complete it, then they need project management AND visio clones. Until then, the MS world will still have the upper hand.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are many cases when an online presentation won't cut it. I've often found myself without a network connection when visiting a potential client, especially when dealing with large corporations. I've also found that the network drop in boardrooms seems to have befriended Schroedinger's Cat - sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. Wireless may or may not be an issue, depending on the organization. And I've been in several secure nuclear facilities where the mere mention of a wireless network makes everyone start twitching and glancing nervously at the walls. I can only imagine the rectal probing I'd get for asking them for a network connection so I could run an online presentation app.
One of the funniest things the search above turned up is this presentation where M$ makes the case for Software as a Service in late 2005. 30% of SMB are likely to consider "Private web areas with advanced tools for collaboration amongst employees and business partners." I've got bad news for them - Google's work anywhere, someone else does all the work system is far more attractive. Thank you, James Murfin, for an entertaining read.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Chuck in some voice recognition and you could have ads displayed that relate to your conversation. That would be cool.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Another Google Beta is the upcoming Safari support for it. It's been about a year now I recon.
"Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!"
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Office has a lot of momentum and it will be hard to dethrone it or even steal away just a bit of marketshare unless Google finds a strong way to leverage their position to encourage people to use it.
Microsoft thinks that one in three SMB is interested in things like this. I found that information with a Google search, following the hunch that more traditional sharing methods confuse users and ends up leaking information that you would rather keep to yourself.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Google really needs to offer an easy way to do offline backups. Right now I use their POP3 functionality to back up my emails, but this is a manual process. And the only way to save these documents is to do so one by one. They need a desktop client to synchronize an offline copy. Maybe a Firefox extension (though their Google Sync extension is pretty badly implemented as it loses bookmarks all the time for me) or maybe some Java app (so as to be cross platform), but either way there is no way I would use Google Docs without being able to easily have my documents. What happens if Google Docs is unavailable, Google decides to close it, or I just plainly want to migrate off of it? If I had thousands of documents stored there I would find myself in a really painful situation.
than powerpoint.
I like this. I'm going to use it more than PowerPoint and I will force most of my co-workers to do the same. Why you ask? Because most of the PowerPoint slide-shows I'm forced to look at aren't live. I'm sent a training show and have to download it then watch it or try to get that plug in to work. With this I can simply open up IE and watch the show. No download, no extra plug in. No annoying I don't have the correct version of PP to watch the show just a simple show. You my coworkers train by making and sending power-point presentations. We never know if we have the newest version or if it will work on every ones computers.
Google may be trying to create alternatives to Microsoft Office but its biggest payback looks like it's tying itself in with the Microsoft name. This puts it on the top table, making it look big and important, and on the side of the "little guy". Google are a marketing led company and weren't born yesterday. A real war between Microsoft and Google would bring both of them down but it gets you guys rooting for it like supporters of some sports company listed on the stockmarket. You're just pawns in a bigger game and being played like a fiddle.
errr...
or something.
This video combined with this new functionality I think should serve as a wake-up to the vast number of people doing dumb things with computers... using an electronic system that mimicked a paper system, keeping all the disadvantages and missing all the advantages of new technology. It was of course in Microsoft's (and others) best interest to keep us going down this wrong path for as long as possible. Hopefully those days are finally ending.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA
With the introduction of Google Presentation, now you can collaborate a presentation online.
When did the verb "collaborate" become transitional?
transitional -> transitive
A large number of the complaints on this thread seem to amount to "I would never trust the internet for a presentation! Give me my trusty laptop any day!" I think these folks are missing the point of this product.
I work on a scientific collaboration that spans several institutions across the country. We use weekly teleconferences for specialized subgroups and occasional online meetings of the whole group to keep coordinated on what each other are doing. For these occasions we're always dealing with distributing presentations over the internet in a reasonable way. We usually post PDFs or HTML on the web, but we've had problems in the past with our own servers going down during telecons. We're also often editing our talks at the last minute, and we can have problems where someone downloads their PDFs before one of us posts his or her last changes.
For collaborations like ours this is a very intriguing product. I trust Google's servers more than my group's, to be honest, and we can always post backups on our own server. A consistent-looking presentation that I could easily edit right up to the last minute (or even collaboratively) is appealing. I grant that there are other solutions which may be better in some cases and that I'd probably never use this for a conference talk, but it's still intriguing for groups in our situation.
Backup Google Apps Documents
Not yet ready for prime time, but it's nice to see they're adding more functionality.
They've been pushing this idea for years, twitter. It's not a big secret. My company demands that all the internal documents are marked as "confidential" even if they contain the cafeteria menu for the week. Ooooh, there are PPTs from Microsoft marked confidential on teh internets. You're so clever.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Is it just me or did someone else read that as a "Google Powerpoint Competition". For a second there I lost all respect for Google thinking they were hosting a contest on who can make the prettiest set of slides :D.
I know where i work they use Sharepoint and as of now there is no way to get away from it. If google wants to succeed they need to make something like Sharepoint but better because i hate Sharepoint currently but all the people above can't live without it anymore.
As many people already corrected, you can save a Zip file to your drive that contains the entire presentation that you can run in your browser. Sheesh.
=S
Google has not announced a competition. Yes, I know what the headline meant. Google Launches PowerPoint Alternative, Web Ads for Mobile Devices and Google Launches PowerPoint Competitor, Web Ads for Mobile Devices are clearer, though.
Joe Egan
MCP on XML Web Services with C#, MCSA, Security+, Network+, A+, Linux+
http://j0e3gan.blogspot.com