Wondering what happened to Google's acquisition of hosted-wiki-on-steroids-provider JotSpot? You're looking at it.
JotSpot is now Google Sites... and the lines blur
by Rob Cottingham – February 28, 2008 - 12:03pmGoogle docs: now in Safari
by Alexandra Samuel – January 31, 2008 - 2:21pmI just discovered that Google Docs finally work in the Safari web browser. (Up until now, Mac users had to access their Google Docs via Safari.) I think we may have the iPhone to thank for this; all those iPhone users wanted mobile access to their documents! I wonder what else the iPhone will finally bring to the Mac platform.
If you're not using Google Docs, this is a great time to start! Google Docs let you create, edit, store and share documents and spreadsheets; the word processor feels very much like Microsoft Word, and the spreadsheet editor like Excel, so you'll be right at home. But unlike the desktop versions of those apps, Google Docs let you collaborate with your colleagues. Here are some of the ways we've used Google docs and spreadsheets in our work:
- as part of a strategic planning process: brainstorming results in rows, participants in columns, with each participant marking their favorite ideas
- manage our docket of clients and projects (one client per row, one week per column; each week we insert a new column and add notes, current status, and upcoming actions and status
- capacity planning: clients and projects in rows, weeks/months in columns, to track upcoming hours required
- document creation: one person drafts in word and uploads, others fill in their details/examples
Google, MyYahoo! and Netvibes have a competitor: you
by Rob Cottingham – October 20, 2006 - 11:30pmFor a while now, folks like Google, MyYahoo! and Netvibes have been vying to be your home page. They've made it easy to create a custom page crammed with blog headlines, news updates, weather forecasts, the latest Hollywood gossip and more – whatever online info happens to catch your fancy.
The competition has been fierce... but every alternative has its little idiosyncrasies, tiny things that can drive you bat-spit crazy.
While all of this has been going on, the open-source community hasn't been napping. Take the folks who develop modules for Drupal, the content management system we've used (happily and enthusiastically) in several projects so far.
Last month, Ayman Hourieh posted a tutorial for creating a drag-and-drop portal interface in Drupal. And now comes a new Drupal module called MySite:
MySite pages are designed to let users create a personalized summary of the site. As such, the MySite module duplicates the functionality of tools like MyYahoo! and Google's personalized homepage.
The module allows registered site users to create a MySite page that contains content from throughout the site. For sites that use the Aggregator module, users may also add feeds from external web sites to their MySite pages.Want to build a better home page than Google... and let others do the same? The tools are out there.
First look: Google Page Creator
by Rob Cottingham – April 4, 2006 - 9:23pmLate last night, I received the e-mail from Google. No message, just a headline: "Google Page Creator: sign up!!" It's still in an invitation-only beta, but here's what I found:
- The interface is very straightforward, although a little more complicated than your average Google page. The work area (what will ultimately be your web page) takes up most of the screen, with dotted lines outlining the various areas of the page: title, subtitle, main body, sidebar (if applicable) and footer. Buttons down the left side allow formatting, linking and adding images. For the brave, the lower left-hand corner has an "Edit HTML" button.
- You can click to choose from one of nearly 50 templates, or change to a one-, two- or three-column layout. Your changes – at least for a simple, one-page site – appear very quickly, although not instantly.
- How do you create a new page? Just select some text, click the "Link" button and – when the dialog box pops up – enter the title of your new page. From now on, when you click on that link, you'll have the option of editing the link, editing the new page or testing the link.
- You don't just have to link to a new page. You can upload a file, link to a page elsewhere on the web or link to an e-mail address. This is cute: if you're creating a link on the web, some very basic help text appears discreetly under the field for the URL, explaining how to find a web address.
- If you're creating, say, a sidebar, it would be helpful if the link manager would remember what kind of link you last created and offer that to you the next time you create a link. Instead, it constantly defaults to your local web pages. If most of what you are linking to is the external web, that gets old pretty quickly.
- One nice little touch: instead of using the cryptic "H1", "H2" or "H3" tags, the interface offers users the choice between creating a heading, subheading or minor heading.
- Want to tell the world about your page? After you click publish, a link appears asking if you want to e-mail your friends. Click it, and a Gmail window appears, already filled in with an invitation to "check out this page I created using Google Page Creator." You just have to add your friends' e-mail addresses.
And that's the key lesson from Page Creator: a lot of those little things, carefully tested and applied, can add up to a much more intuitive, accessible application. For those of us aiming to broaden online participation, it's a lesson worth heeding.
Bottom line: very simple, very easy. If you can use Blogger, you can use Google Page Creator.
P.S. – One small problem: Page Creator is the wrong solution for people keeping their Gmail addresses secret. The URL that Google creates for Page Creator is (your Gmail address).googlepages.com.
