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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.
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(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!
Probably a Slashdot wedding, where iPhones are thrown instead of confetti.
Wait, did I say a Slashdot wedding? Who am I kidding...
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
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.
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
It is interesting that the firefox integrated spellchecker works just fine in the dynamically placeable text boxes.
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.
It looks to me like where this is really useful is in preparing the presentation. Rather than having to email versions around the office, forgetting which is the current one, all those involved can just edit it online.
As for doing a presentation, Firefox 3 should allow this app to work offline. That's when it gets interesting, and web connections are no longer an issue.
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.
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.