Collaborative Strategy Guild » Google Docs

Official Google Blog: Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:38:00 +0000

Check the full post for a cute real-time collaboration scenario video

We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You'll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.
We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important.

Official Google Blog: Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

Google+ readies new features – FT.com

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:08:00 +0000

Check the article link for more Google+ feature/integration point previews

Google will roll out major improvements in the next three months to Google+, its new social networking service, as it seeks to close the gap with Facebook, the market leader.

Early enhancements will include the incorporation of Google Docs, the word-processing application, which will make collaborating on documents easier “within days”, said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering, on Wednesday.

Google+ readies new features - FT.com

Continue reading: Google+ readies new features – FT.com

Yes, Google Drive Is Coming. For Real This Time. | TechCrunch

Peter O'Kelly — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:24:00 +0000

Big challenges ahead for Dropbox, Box.net, and other players, as Google Drive, iCloud, and Windows 8 (with Windows Live sync services) flood the cloud storage/sync market; since Facebook is already handling a lot of big image files, it probably wouldn’t be a big stretch for Facebook to also start syncing other types of personal files

And it makes a lot more sense. Few people are using Google Docs for online storage beyond the files they use in Docs. Most still probably don’t even realize they can. Something as simple as changing the name to Google Drive should help with that. There will also be a new “My Google Drive” area for various folders in Google Drive. There will be other Drive-specific tools as well.

But here’s the real key: there will also be native syncing software that you install on your various computers and mobile devices. Yes, like Dropbox.

Yes, Google Drive Is Coming. For Real This Time. | TechCrunch

Google Makes Chromebooks More Useful With Offline Access [Search Engine Land]

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:31:00 +0000

More details on Google’s limited off-line support

According to the Gmail blog:

Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access . . .
Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality.

When Google Docs works without a connection that will be a giant step toward making Chromebooks truly a viable laptop replacement. All of this is generally applicable to WiFi only tablets as well.

Google Makes Chromebooks More Useful With Offline Access

Official Google Blog: Pagination comes to Google Docs

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:23:00 +0000

Updates to the increasingly tightly-coupled Google Docs/Google Chrome

Pagination also changes what’s possible with printing in modern browsers. We’ve worked closely with the Chrome team to implement a recent web standard so we can support a feature called native printing. Before, if you wanted to print your document we’d need to first convert it into a PDF, which you would then need to open and print yourself. With native printing, you can print directly from your browser and the printed document will always exactly match what you see on your screen.
For now, native printing is only available in Google Chrome, but we’re hoping other browsers will implement the same web standard so everyone can have the best possible printing experience with Docs.

Official Google Blog: Pagination comes to Google Docs

Google Takes the Mobile Shackles Off Docs: Tech News « [GigaOm]

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:15:00 +0000

A major milestone for Google Docs; also see the Official Google Blog overview for a video and other details. The GigaOm article referenced below also highlights an interesting related trend – the increasing overlap between traditional productivity application models (seamlessly sync’d across multiple device types) and services such as Evernote and OneNote (e.g., when OneNote 2010 or OneNote Web App is used in conjunction with Windows Live SkyDrive). A subtly significant competitive landscape is emerging for beyond-the-basics collaborative hypertext models, with one group of offerings (e.g., Google Docs, Office Web Apps, and Dropbox) starting with traditional file-centric concepts and another group (with Evernote and OneNote currently among the most widely-used offerings) starting with more Web-centric concepts. Perhaps Google saw this shift coming when they terminated development on Google Notebook, assuming people using the multi-device, near-real-time sync’d version of Google Docs wouldn’t have much use for Google Notebook; I suspect the same market dynamics were part of the reason why Google Wave was shut down.

[…]

Collaborating in real time loses its value when you have to wait to get to a PC to contribute. By extending editing capabilities to mobile devices, it makes Docs a viable choice for mobile users who need mobile productivity tools. For tablets, it’s almost a must-have feature, as those devices supplant laptops for many people. Mobile editing is another selling point for living our lives in the cloud, as more of our computing shifts to mobile devices. It’s a good counter move to Windows Phone 7?s Office Hub, which includes the ability to edit and review Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents.

I think this will also be very helpful for users who want to write notes to themselves and view them later, like people do with Evernote.

Google Takes the Mobile Shackles Off Docs: Tech News «

Mitigating Risk and Finding Opportunity in Software as a Service (SaaS) E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses

Karen Hobert — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:47:40 +0000

Announcing the latest CSG publication, “Mitigating Risk and Finding Opportunity in Software as a Service E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses.” You can download the white paper here or go to our Research page.

Software as a Service (SaaS) e-mail offerings provide some operational productivity benefits at lower prices, although it is not a silver bullet, and should not be considered a compromise to existing solutions. SaaS e-mail service bundles can provide capabilities not previously available with existing e-mail solutions especially with operational aspects of managing an e-mail infrastructure. Although total cost of ownership (TCO) is a leading driver for choosing SaaS e-mail, customers should approach SaaS e-mail options based on how the solution will improve the e-mail experience and increase user and operational productivity as well as mitigate risks.

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Gauging the Real Value of SaaS E-mail

Karen Hobert — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:07:06 +0000

I‘m pleased to announce the publication of “Gauging the Real Value of Software as a Service (SaaS) E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses,” a Collaborative Strategy Guild white paper on SaaS E-mail and productivity. You can download the paper here or go to our Research page.

The e-mail market is rapidly evolving as new business-grade software as a service (SaaS) e-mail options become a viable alternative to the traditional on-site e-mail by competing on price and value. Information Technology (IT) decision makers are pressured to reduce costs, so they’re considering a move to SaaS e-mail solutions, which is driving businesses to scrutinize current e-mail strategies. Making a SaaS e-mail decision depends upon the unique needs of the business and how available options not only offer cost savings, but also productivity value.

In this paper, Collaborative Strategy Guild founding member, Karen Hobert, focuses on the SaaS e-mail market, its impact on small and medium businesses (SMBs), and how to find the real value in different product offerings.

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The Fog of Cloud Computing

Karen Hobert — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:41:03 +0000

I spent a good part of the last hour following links to stories about security and privacy lapses in Google Docs. I started out with a TechCrunch article detailing additional security loopholes that a security expert had recently uncovered including:

Embedded images in protected documents that never go away and that get saved to an open server
The new diagram feature of Google Docs saves all previous versions of the diagram and makes them available to anyone who can read the doc, even if you’ve set the diagram to view only mode
Sometimes users still can access documents after their permissions have been revoked

These are pretty serious issues for customers who use Google Docs in a true collaborative fashion; where internal contributors create content, collaborate on it, and produce a final version that is shared with a new audience that is only intended to see the final product.

As I followed links in the post I found that earlier in March a Google Docs user uncovered a bug that was overzealous when setting document permissions on collections of documents. I can actually envision the flawed logic of the code behind that button. Burr. Google reacted and took steps to remedy the problem ultimately notifying customers that they created an automated fix that removed all permissions (except the authors) from the affected documents. Pretty dramatic, and having been through things like this before, not without its own risks of corruption and locking people out of documents for good; what would happen if the author is no longer available?

According to the account of the person who reported the bug, the two weeks that Google took to respond and remedy the problem was admirable, despite the fact that “ultra-secret” information was shared with people who should not have seen the information. Not only does this raise the question of how enterprise-ready Google Docs development is but also what customers come to expect of cloud service providers. I wonder if two weeks would have been admirable if this were Microsoft instead of Google. Not to harp on the customer. He was satisfied and the problem was remedied in part due to his own pro activeness.

Bottom line is the stakes are high when it comes to offering enterprise services in the cloud. Not only for the provider but also for the customer. I had considered using Google Docs for a recent project but decided against it because I did not know where the information was going to be stored. Since it was client information I was working with, and not my own, I opted for the much more cumbersome email approach to sharing files. I’m glad I did. The problems caused by posting embedded images to a separate, unprotected store that subsequently does not remove images when the document is deleted is a reminder that users of cloud services have no control over the architecture or infrastructure of the system (unlike an in-house system) and that they are trusting Google is doing the right thing. In this case Google isn’t doing the right thing; at least not right now.

To me this begs the question of whether or not Google’s developers really understand developing for enterprise requirements. Sharing and collaborating enterprise content is not new (I keep saying that around cloud services) and there are many developers who brought us products like Lotus Notes and Groove that understand the issues in creating systems to share and secure content. What is new, however, are vendors building sharing platforms in the cloud as if they were enterprise-deployed solutions. They are doomed to make the same mistakes that were made in the early days of collaborative systems if they do not tap into the knowledge that enterprise solution developers already know. And customers will fall into those traps if they aren’t careful. I recall a customer account of how an unprotected HR file that listed salaries of all employees made it into the company’s shared store only to be accidentally displayed in a searching demo to executives. Scary as it was, the problem was contained within the intranet. Imagine if that had been in the cloud?

Google Docs is a 2.5-year-old beta product, which should tip customers off to the fact that it’s all one big experiment still. It is one development model to continue to stumble along, make the same mistakes that companies like Lotus and Microsoft spent years learning, and to use its customers as guinea pigs. If the price point (free) is worth it, then customers of Google Docs can have little recourse when something goes terribly wrong. Customers need to consider all cloud services as carefully as they would consider in-house solutions. Checking out the technical facts as well as their risk tolerance before “buying” is likely to mitigate buyer’s remorse. Don’t count on users to be cautious once you bless the service. Users will not be concerned about how a system is implemented to ensure that the information they post is secure. If the tool makes their work easier you can be assured it will be used heavily. Therefore, it’s up to the people who understand IT to make sure that the cloud services that the company uses are satisfactorily implemented and is secure.

The recent Business Week article, Cloud Computing: Understand the Risks, chimes in the risks to consider when evaluating cloud services:

There are two kinds of risks in putting your data online. One is that you can never be quite sure who has access to your information once it has migrated beyond the hard drives and backup storage devices in your home. The other risk is that the information, and sometimes the applications you need to make use of it, may be available only when you are connected to the Internet and the service is up and running.

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