Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice

Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice | TechCrunch: "Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice

So, will Quickoffice become the long-awaited mobile frontend for Google Docs Drive? The current mobile HTML version just s.cks... So any  proper client is welcome... And Quickoffice is probably the best mobile office pack out there.

Good.

Finally, Google Drive

The long rumored Google drive is finally here.

To keep it short: it is basically DropBox, just with some Google Docs integration... or rather, Google Docs is - once you sign up for Google Drive - replaced by it.

Therefore, in addition to DropBox you will get all your Google docs mirrored to your local folder as well. And you start with 5GB free.

"Real" Google Docs (like sheet, draw, ...) are represented as their own file type, e.g. .gsheet, .gdoc, .gslides ... and are only synchronized as a link to the web application, instead of a OpenDocument or Office file.
Well, at least some integration.

All other file types from Google Docs (like .pdf etc) are fully synced in their native format.

New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

Google release a (nativeff) client of Google Docs for Android. Apart way better editing of documents than the (mobile) web version does, it now also supports OCR. (optical character recognition) images directly from the camera. This feature has been in Google docs for a while, but now it is also directly from the phone. Of course I had to try this. It gives you a kind nf James Bond feeling, when you grep you phone with a hidden camera in it[1], bend over a document and take picture of it
With a click it is uploaded to Google and convened to text. With quite impressive results. The image itself is preserved through the upload and attached to the document, so you can manually correct the results.

Naturally, this post had to be created this way.

[1] ofcourse the camera in my HTC Desire Z is not really “hidden”, but part of the 007 experience

 Ok, so here's the image:

And here's the original text:


New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

Google release a (native?) client of Google Docs for Android. Apart from way better editing of documents than the (mobile) web version does, it now also supports OCR (optical character recognition) from images … directly from the camera.

This feature has been in Google docs for a while, but now it is also available directly from the phone.

Of course I had to try this. It gives you a kind of James Bond feeling, when you grep you phone with a hidden camera in it[1], bend over a document and take picture of it.

With a click it is uploaded to Google and converted to text.

With quite impressive results.

The image itself is preserved through the upload and attached to the document, so you can manually correct the results.

Naturally, this post had to be created this way.

---

[1] of course the camera in my HTC Desire Z is not really “hidden”, but it's part of the 007 experience :)

And yes, the typo ("grep" instead of "grab") was by me, not by google.

Google docs new user interface

Just noticed that Google docs has a more advanced user interface and layout.




Seems a lot more well arranged now.

Wow - there is something Google does NOT know.

I logged into my Google Docs & Spreadsheets again this morning, and look what I found:

Well of course the hint is very helpful... my last use of Google docs it really has been a couple of weeks ago...
and it is totally nice of them to
a) hide old documents and
b) tell me where to find them again.


BUT...

How come Google does not know that it "has been more than a month"... they know everything about me, but not when I last used on of their (major) applications ?

Come on...

This should actually read: "It has been more than a month, so please check ...." and not be phrased as a question.

TechCrunch: Google PowerPoint Clone Coming

Mike Arrington reports of sightings of a Google presentation application (Powerpoint, Impress, ...).
I am using Google docs & spreadsheets occasionally, but I'm still a bit conservative regarding a presentation package "just online".

Mostly when you present - especially with a customer - you struggle with the most basic settings at their conference or meeting room.
Just yesterday a colleague of mine did not get his notebook (DELL) to work with the video beamers of two different customer's. I managed to back up with my notebook (IBM, and I'm proud of it) at one location without any problems, but not at the other ... it forced me to switch my resolution down to 800... uargh...

Image that in that situation you also have to struggle with network and internet connectivity. Many of my customers are quite paranoid when it comes to having visitor laptops in their network, and they don't usually have Wifi.
So especially when it comes to presentations I still like to have them strictly offline.

Then again, you might use just and PC provided by the customer... and there's no need to have OpenOffice/StarOffice or PowerPoint installed...
Come to think of it, this really might make sense.

So lets wait and see what Google will have to offer.
Maybe they will provide a nice little offline tool to (just) run your presentation, or save/download it as a PDF to take along...