spreadsheets

Zoho, the suite of Web-based productivity tools that's often considered the most formidable challenger to Google Apps' domination in the field, has entered the iPhone app blitzkrieg. It just announced iZoho, a version of its software that's been optimized for the iPhone's touch-screen architecture. Currently, you can only view existing Zoho documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, as well as edit the Zoho Notebook documents.

You can check out iZoho's Web site from your PC and see the neat sliding interface whenever you click on anything. No, it won't rotate if you turn your computer sideways!

The … Read more

This morning Google updated their Docs and Spreadsheets service with a new start page, one that turns the old list view into a two-pane workspace. Users can now see a larger listing of their documents and spreadsheets, as well as organize them in folders. Yes, you read that right--Google is letting users create and manage their stuff in folders. Users can even drag and drop files.

I actually asked the Docs and Spreadsheets team about a feature like this last week, and they told me the combination of tags and search worked better. The new system continues to tag items--albeit … Read more

I spent part of today at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., talking to some of the folks behind Google Docs & Spreadsheets, part of Google's Web-based office suite. I asked the product experts I met for their favorite features that often don't get the limelight or that people simply don't know about. I picked five that I thought were worth sharing:

1. Live lookup via Google and Google Finance. This is only available for Spreadsheets, but it's one of the neater advanced tidbits that makes use of Internet connectivity. Using two special formulas, users … Read more

Category: Productivity

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free, Web-based collaborative office suite. Users can make and share documents and spreadsheets with anyone who has a Google account. What makes the service really interesting is that multiple users can be working on the same document at the same time. All files are stored for free on Google's servers, and they can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

While you need to be hooked up to the Internet to use these apps, you're also able to export Google Docs & Spreadsheets files to work with Microsoft … Read more

Google has added a new option to Google Docs and Spreadsheets to make files open for others to look at without the need to register or sign in with a Google account. To make any doc or spreadsheet open, users can click option for "invitations may be used by anyone" in the "Share" tab. Once enabled, any invite to view the spreadsheet will take users right to it, bypassing any annoying log-in screens. Users will still need to log in and be on the collaborators list to make any editing changes, but this should open things … Read more

Tomorrow, ThinkFree is announcing a partnership with EditGrid to integrate EditGrid's spreadsheet service into ThinkFree's Web-based office suite. EditGrid's free, Web-based spreadsheet service will take the place of ThinkFree's Quick Edit Calc application. Both services are Webware 100 nominees in the Productivity category.

With the partnership comes a profit-sharing agreement between the two companies; however, the real icing on the cake is for ThinkFree users who will get to use EditGrid without having to sign up to another service.

While it's not a merger or an acquisition, the last memorable integration of two popular online … Read more

Google on Thursday at its Developer Day announced Google Gears, a browser plug-in that lets people run Web applications offline. The first application to use Google Gears is Google Reader, its Web-based RSS feed reading application.

The download for the Google Gears beta is quick--the files are less than 1MB in size. Once you have it installed, the Web application you're connecting to asks you whether you want to allow it to store data locally.

Here's a news story with more details, including the technology architecture of Google Gears.

Although it stayed away from making specific commitments, we … Read more

We realize not everyone uses Firefox to browse the Web, but for those who do, there's a really great extension that's been getting a lot of buzz lately. It's called Customize Google and it does just that. You can customize every service Google offers, from basic tasks such as automatically redirecting to the secure versions of Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets, to actually adding links to other search services such as MSN, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Social bookmarking nuts can also add links to services such as Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us, right … Read more

Last week, Google quietly upgraded its online spreadsheet application, Docs and Spreadsheets with a charting function. Like almost everything else about Google's online apps suite, the charting tool is barebones yet useful, and benefits from being part of a suite in which collaboration is easy.

Creating a chart is easy. Just select a range of data, click on the little chart icon, and choose your chart type and a few options. You can't change colors or typefaces, or modify most of things people take for granted in a typical spreadsheet like Excel.

The new charting function is useful … Read more