Google Spreadsheets has an interesting advantage over Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications: you can publish a spreadsheet and always have the latest version on the web without manually republishing it. Because Google Spreadsheets has an API, you can use the spreadsheet as an easy-to-update structured file always available on the web, as an input for web applications.Pamela Fox wrote a post on Google Maps Blog that details how to create

Google Spreadsheets has released a new version: 1.2.0i (even though you don’t see them, every Google service has versions. In Google Spreadsheets you can actually see the current version in the bottom right corner of the window). The changes are mostly performance-related. They fixed some problems that caused some spreadsheets to not load or to not load fast enough. Google Spreadsheets added a new export format: txt for tab-separated values.But t

One unlucky Google Docs user received an error message while using the service that some think could suggest an offline client is coming — something that I definitely believe will happen sooner or later.  Instead of a standalone desktop client though, I lean towards the idea of a website or firefox addon that can be [...]

Yesterday I posted an article about a bunch of hidden code I found inside Google Spreadsheets — and just tonight, Michael Arrington has some information about a possible "major announcement" from Google tomorrow.
Well, to add fuel to this fire, I can guarantee this file didn't exist yesterday (I specifically looked for it) — it clearly [...]

According to Nielsen/NetRatings (PDF), Google Docs & Spreadsheets had:Unique visitorsMonth445,762October 2006424,785November 2006432,156December 2006People spent an average of 10 minutes in October, and 14 minutes in December. “Users of Google Docs and Spreadsheets skew toward higher incomes, with 28 percent of users earning upwards of $100,000 annually

With the launch of Google Docs & Spreadsheets for Google Apps around the corner, I figured it was about time I dug around the source code to see what I could find.  I decided "charts" would be a good place to start in Google Spreadsheets — and boy did I find them.  Many brand new [...]

Google Spreadsheets lets you change the timezone and the locale settings for each spreadsheet. How to do that? Open a spreadsheet, click on File / Settings and change your timezone and locale settings. Then click “save settings.” The changes will propagate to all the collaborators that can edit the spreadsheet. The timezone affects timestamps, revision history dates, and time-related functions like NOW() or TODAY(), while the local settings change the currency or the way numbers are displayed.

Google Toolbar for Firefox, that now has all the features from the IE version is now out of beta and seemed to be fixed the bugs related to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The toolbar can open any file from the web or from your computer in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, although the feature is not enabled by default.Google’s online office suite has been localized in 12 languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian) as Google Blog announces

If you dig around the language files in Google Docs, you will find what appears to be traces of a new service preparing for launch soon. Meet Google Presently — an online presentation creator that will likely read and write the most common formats like Microsoft PowerPoint and Open Office Impress.
Here is a snippet from [...]

I’m sure many people wondered if Google will release a presentation tool, after building Google Docs&Spreadsheets. Well, the answer is yes, and the code-name of the tool is Presently (a play on Writely, the name of the online word processor bought by Google).You will be able to convert a document into a presentation, create slides and view the presentation in full-screen

Instead of downloading that attached Word document, especially if it's "a keeper", you should try opening it with the brand new Gmail feature available today.  It lets you import any attached Microsoft Word document directly into Google Docs with a single click.  The "View as HTML" option still exists, but should probably only be used [...]

If you receive Microsoft Word files, Rich Text files or documents from OpenOffice and StarOffice, you can open them directly in Google Docs. Gmail has already had this option for Excel attachments.It’s a good idea to use it if you want to see more than just the text of the document (you can do this by choosing “View as HTML”) or if you want to edit it, but you don’t have an Office suite

Google had an exciting year in 2006 — stealing headlines with almost everything they did, even if the news wasn't particularly exciting.  Many of the more important things that happened are summarized by Google Operating System in an article titled "Google 2006 in 12 Pictures".
Will the excitement carry forward in 2007?  Like most of you, [...]

The new version of Google Toolbar for Firefox, available here, has very tight integration with Google Docs and Spreadsheets.  It's not enabled by default, but for people who want to keep a copy of their documents online it's as easy as enabling a few options.
 
There are three levels of integration:

Drag file into browser window
Open a [...]

Have you ever received a Microsoft Word attachment in your Gmail with image content?  If so, you probably know the "Show as HTML" feature wasn't particularly useful.  You might be happy to know that this feature, although still needing a lot of work, finally supports embedded images.
The obvious next step will be for Gmail to [...]

Google Spreadsheets is the newest application to use a GData API — a library that allows programs to use Google products outside of the Google environment.  Philipp explains that you cannot use the API to create or delete spreadsheets yet, but you can do pretty much anything else you would want.
"According to Google, with the [...]

Posted by Lilly Irani & Jens Riegelsberger, User Experience team 9am Mountain View, California. 6pm Zurich, Switzerland. The two of us sit separated by thousands miles, telephones tucked under our ears, talking about this blog post and typing words and edits into Google Docs. As we talk about the title, we start typing into the same paragraph — and Lilly gets a warning: “You’ve edited a paragraph that Jens has been editing!” Lilly stops typing so she doesn’t lose her thoughts and coordinates with Jens over the phone