Google Docs

This time, i would like to do some quick review on Google Docs. As office applications has becoming more and more common even for home user, Google came out with the idea of building it into a web application and published it online for public use. The general idea behind this is to allow its user to create and store documents, spreadsheet and presentation online in such a way to make sharing of files easy and accessible anywhere with internet connection.

However, to make things available online, there are always threats on compromising of privacy and confidential data, thus i believe Google had gone through tough time in fighting this. But, in this post, i will only be concentrating on the exploration of the Google Doc's features and capability rather than the security issue.

Google Docs comes with support on different file types, namely Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation. Another additional type which i find it useful within Google Doc is the Form. Here i will be going through each of everyone of this one by one.

System Requirement:

Google Doc OS Requirement

Note: There's a chance that other browsers will work with Google Docs. However, we can't guarantee that features will work as expected.

* Google Gears only works with OSX 10.4 and higher. Offline support is not offered for Safari when using Mac OS X 10.6.

No matter what browser you use, here's what you need to do:

• Enable cookies.
• Enable JavaScript.

To use Google Gears, you'll need one of the following:

• Microsoft Windows XP or Vista with Firefox 1.5+ or Internet Explorer 6+
• Apple Mac OS X (10.4+) with Firefox 1.5+

General:
In general, Google Doc provide common text and file formatting capability, alignment, printing, undo & redo which cover for all its document, spreadsheet as well as presentation files.

Beside common formatting features, Google Doc comes together with a document list which is shown upon login to allow easy navigation of all files in storage. The list can be further customized with your own folder structure and choose to move, copy or to perform other file operations for your selected files.

To add on to the application, Google Doc allows upload of your local file from your local disk onto the web via automatic file conversion from supported format into Google Doc's format. However, user are required to understand the upload and storage constraint introduced by Google, or otherwise your uploaded file may be missing some important content, or the file will not be successfully uploaded. I have add in a summary of it are as following:

• Docs: Each doc can have a maximum size of 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image.
• Spreadsheets: Each can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, or 100 sheets--whichever is reached first. There's no limit on rows.
• Presentations: Files in .ppt and .pps formats can have a maximum size of 10MB or 200 slides; files uploaded from the Web can be up to 2MB; emailed files can be up to 500K.
• PDFs: You can store up to 10MB per PDF from your computer and 2MB from the Web in your Docs list, up to 100 PDFs.

A more detail view on the constraint can be view from Google Doc's Getting to know Google Doc page.

Another convenience which Google Doc provide is the Email-to-upload feature where user may choose to upload their file by sending email to their unique Google Doc's email address which is linked directly into their account.

To add on and complete the application, Google Doc also come with an locally installed application named Google Gears which allows synchronization of files from online to your local drive.

Document:
Google Doc's Document is very similar to Microsoft Word from the Microsoft Office. It comes with common features of content indent, hyperlink, text highlighting, bullet numbering, word count, inserting of image, drawing, link table, comment, footnote, special char, horizontal line, page break, header & footer, find & replace capability and table insertion. You may basically find all the basic and necessary word processing features in Google Doc's document.

Inserting a hyperlink

A few of additional capabilities which i find it useful are the online word look-up and the integrated Google Search using highlighted words. The online word look-up is using the Merriam-Webmaster's Online Dictionary for the selected word's definition, synonym. User may also choose to search the selected words with the Britannica.com encyclopedia using the look-up feature as well. On the other site, user may directly Google Search the selected word by simple highlighting them and activate the search feature and you will be directly brought to the Google's search result page of your selection of words.

Edit HTML menu and HTML Editor appearance

Apart from the normal word processing feature, it also gives the user the ability to treat their document as html pages. You may choose to edit your document in html mode using their very own integrated html editor. Further more, as an add on to the html mode editing, user who is familiar with CSS may have their own style sheet defined and applied to the document, just like how you make it for your very own personal web or blog site. This is made available due to Google Doc's attempt to treat the document as a web page for their display and storage.

The Google Doc's document may be downloaded from their online storage into user's local disk in several formats (html, open office, pdf, rtf, txt and word). This makes the document created online to be available in almost every viewable format after downloaded into local copy.

Spell Check function

However, i did find some of the short coming as compared to features on what i normally use. One of them including the spell check functionality. Unlike in Ms Word, the spelling check can be configured to run real-time as you type. In Google Doc, it works in such a way that a single click activation is required everytime you required the spell check. Everytime the user activate the feature, the entire document will be checked and incorrect spelled word will be highlighted in yellow, and the yellow marking will still remain even thought the user had corrected the spelling of the word. The highlighting will only be gone after user had turned off the spell check feature. Without turning off the spell check feature, continue typing of words following the highlighted word will caused the subsequently typed word to be highlighted as well, which i think is improper cause it confuse user as thought it is another miss-spelled word even though it is being spelled correctly.

Inserting a comment and the comment appearance

Another weird behavior of this application is the comment feature. I believe the intention of this capability is to allow something similar to Ms Excel's cell comment where comment content will be shown when user hover the mouse across the commented text. However, it does not work the way i expected. Whenever a comment is added to a selected text, the comments will all be shown inline with the content of your document, as thought it is part of the content, except it is highlighted in a user selected color. For this, i would still prefer the comment is only shown when user hover on the text or all comments are shown only at a particular region, like the reviewer's comment in Ms Word.

Spreadsheet:
Google Doc's spreadsheet application is claimed to be an equivalent of Ms Excel, thus some common features such as cell formatting, function insertion, numbering format, charting, inserting of comment, image and drawing, column or row insertion, freezing of columns and rows and sheet concept.

Apart of these, Google Doc's spreadsheet application provide easy sorting of column using the always-visible separation border between your rows. Another impressive feature is the gadget insertion into your spreadsheet. The gadget window allow user to choose among the various widget for your data representation (example: Gauge)

Spreadsheet view with Gauge gadget

Other than that, Google Doc's spreadsheet provide an integrated way of hooking up with a form (also can be designed and create using the spreadsheet application) to automatically record and update with the responded result from the form. Thus, this make it extremely easy for user to create their own survey or questionnaire using the form whereby the form can be distributed to their friends just entirely through a simple web url, and the responded result will be automatically stored into the respective spreadsheet for easier analysis and data retrieval.

Sample Spreadsheet form

This spreadsheet application also comes together with a summary page when is linked with the form to display the summary view of all the responses.

Response summary

Apart from all the mentioned capability, i do find that changing of data source after inserting a graph or chart is difficult. User will need to manually check and enter the columns and rows of the data which they would like to link with the chart. Unlike Ms Excel, user may just directly change the source of range by simple highlighting the desired cells by using mouse clicks and drags.

Presentation:
Lastly, the Google Doc's presentation application is very much similar with Ms Power Point, whereby all the content is organized in slide shows type for easy browsing during a presentation.

For the content of your presentation, user is allowed to choose from a few of the readily built-in template or layout, or user may start from a totally blank slide and add in their desired content (such as image, text, video, shape, drawing or table) one at a time.

Just as other presentation applications, a speaker's note section is available for each slide created, and user is able to make changes to the theme of the entire presentation as well as making change to the background of every slide according to their preference.A great convenience of allowing images to be directly drag and drop into the presentation from any web pages make inserting of an image into my presentation file easy.

Due to the nature that the purpose of the presentation created are meant to be share across multiple user, Google Doc's presentation application had take into this into consideration and make the online real-time discussion feature available within the presentation, so that multiple user who are viewing the same presentation can exchange idea, provide feedback and start discussion real-time, all within the application itself through the chatting panel located at the right hand side of the shared presentation when the presentation is started.

Starting of presentation and discussion

However, i think that Google Doc's presentation application is missing one of a very important feature, the animation and slide transition. I used to make a lot of presentation in my company and i notice that animations is very useful to keep my audience focus on the points i am explaining on, by delay the show-up of the coming up points using animated text. Thus i was expecting at least some similar function was there, but it wasn't.

Conclusion:
To conclude my review on the Google Doc, i would say that if you are only looking for some basic office application capability to suit your personal use, Google Doc might be the right one for you as you may easily create and store your files all online, and making retrieval and reading of your file easy as long as you have internet connectivity.

However, i am not sure if there are any company out there would like to use Google Doc as their official office application, mainly due to it's limitation on storage, as well as the conversion of all their local file (created in Ms Office or Open Office application) into Google Doc's format. I believe it might gives Google a better chance if the conversion of file is able to take in full compatibility with those supported file and reduce storage constraints.

As for me, i think i would definitely give Google Doc continuous trying for my personal use, as i sometime really have some documents where i really want to make it portable for me to read and use in multiple environment (office, home, etc), and my previous solution was to make duplicated copy into my thumb drive and bring along with me all the time, until Google Docs existence, it solve my hassle of being extra gadget with me all the time.

So to my dear readers, have you tried using Google Doc? Do you have any findings or comments which you would like to share with my other readers? Please feel free to comment and feedback through my comment page. I am most happy to see you responding to this.. Thanks ya!!!

Online photo sharing: Facebook Vs Flickr Vs Picasa Web‏

Photo sharing has becoming one of the major activities which online community are using so heavily, until one will never feel complete should there be any online services like social networking site without such capability. I myself have been using web services as way to share some details of my life with my friends and family, and one of the most common way is of cause photo sharing. That is why I am coming out with the idea of doing some comparison between some famous free photo sharing service available on the web as of today – Facebook, Flickr and Picasa Web. By the end of this post, you should be able to know what are the capabilities and features provided by each of the mentioned service provides.

Facebook:
Facebook is the most popular social networking site which ramp up just within these few years. It become so popular that its number of users had exceeded all other similar social networking sites. And according to some data collected by a third party company, the average number of photo uploaded Facebook had exceeded all its rivals and even other photo hosting website. But how far do you know what Facebook’s can and can’t do on your uploaded photo?

Facebook does provide some must have basic feature as I listed at the beginning of this section. First of all, user is able to add in description to individual photo as caption.

Secondly, rotating your photo is never easier than just clicking a simple button, but Facebook gives you options of rotating it either before you upload (during selection of your photo to be uploaded) or rotate directly from your album after they have been uploaded. And Of coz, user will be able to organize their photo and albums and set privacy setting for their album

Great job done:
- Thumbnail view of photo on upload selection page
- Tag the people in your photo
- Relatively fast upload speed
- Virtually unlimited number of photo (only restrictions is max of 200 photo per album)

What I must praise about Facebook upload tool is that it allows on-time thumbnail preview of your all photo right in the selection view, making it easier for the user to clearly see and choose the photo they want, simply just by marking the check box respective to each of the photo. User may select multiple photo and try to upload all of them at once with single click on the upload button

A brilliant idea from the Facebook is on its capability to allow user to “Tag” the person in your photo with their name, or even link it to their Facebook profile (if they are Facebook users). That will allow easy identification of all the person by just pointing your mouse cursor near to their face, especially for your friends whom you have not seen for X number of years when sometimes you could hardly recognized them in the photo.

And what surprised me is the uploading speed of Facebook. Despite the huge number of users and the traffic load to their Facebook servers, the photo uploading speed is the fastest among the 3 services which I had done benchmarking on (Facebook, Picasa Web and Flikr). It took only ~16 seconds to upload one 1.42MB photo on my machine.

Another good about Facebook is that virtually there is no restriction on how many photo you may upload to your account, but the only restriction is that it is limited to maximum of 200 photo per album. But you may have as many album as you like within your account (please correct me if I am wrong). I am really amazed by how daring the Facebook is on this for not restricting the capacity for each user. :)

What I think Facebook should improved:
- Direct sharing with Facebook friends only
- Privacy setting is per album only
- No photo editing feature at all

One thing I believe Facebook may improve is the sharing of the uploaded photo. Currently, it only allows sharing among Facebook users who are within your friends list. However, I would be more appreciate if I am allowed to share the photo (or album) with non-facebook user as well (example: just a simple external link to the album with view-only access on the album).

The next thing I would like to see will be the privacy setting to allow per photo privacy setting. For me, I would prefer to group/categorized my photo according to events. Some sometime, there will be some photo which I would really like to keep it hidden from some of my friends while allowing only others to view. But since that the privacy setting applies only on the album level, this cannot be done unless I move those photo to another album and mark the privacy setting as what I desired. However, this result in my photo on single events were scattered around in multiple album, and that make it difficult for me to manage them.

Another thing which I found is lacking in Facebook is the photo editing features. I myself would like to add some watermark text to my photo before sharing it publically. However, whenever I want to do such work for my facebook’s photo, I need to launch a third party application just to add in the watermark and then upload the watermarked copy to my Facebook account. What I am thinking is not a professional photo editing features, maybe just a few simple editing feature like watermarking, adjusting of contrast and white balance will be fine.

Flickr:
Flickr is another online service which target mostly on photo hosting and sharing than other features like facebook. Some basic feature which Flickr provides include the adding of note to photo, sharing of the photo to multiple group, organizing the photo into set (similar concept with album), allowing viewing of the photo in different size, allow print order via Flickr service and etc.

Great job done:
- Advance photo editing features
- Privacy setting for each photo
- Allow direct photo blog entry to various blogging service

Since that I had mentioned that Flickr’s is targeting mostly on photo hosting and sharing than all other services. Thus, I would be expecting photo editing features on it, and Flickr did it quite a good job. Other than the watermarking and constrast as well as white balance adjustment on your uploaded photo, Flickr do also provide lots of other advance editing features such as exposure adjustment, colors sharpen, red-eye, touch-up tool, adding of frames and stickers, sandbox, and other build-in effects such as blurry and oil-painting effects. With all these effects and advance tool, one can make adjustment on what they need on their uploaded copy of the photo, all in the Flickr website (but you will need to download a plugin in order to have it run on your browser)

Apart from the editing tool, I like the feature of Flickr to allow direct blog entry into famous blogging service such as Blogger, WordPress and etc. By simple click from your photo, you will be brought to a page for your blog entry with the photo you have just selected, and once completed, only a few simple steps are needed for your new photo blog to appear in your favorite blogging site.

And of coz, not to mentioned one of my favorite features, the privacy setting per photo. Since I had mentioned what I prefer in Facebook section, I will not elaborate further for the same thing here. :)

What I think Flickr should improved:
- Photo uploading speed
- Capacity (100MB Max per user)

I have tried uploading the same photo as I did in Facebook using Flickr, but it turn uot to be unexpectedly slow. It took me 1 min and 10 seconds to upload the 1.42MB photo to their server. I believe there should be something that can be done to ensure a better upload speed. And related to photo uploading, Although you don’t get to see the preview of the photo as what it does in Facebook, but you may still add multiple files and upload them all at once to your Flickr account.

However, what concern me the most will be the capacity allocated for each users. A merely 100MB of storage space for each user is simply too small, especially with todays DLSR image quality up to few MB per photo, it does need long for the 100MB to be all filled up. For me I do sometimes use the web photo hosting service as my backup copy of all my precious photos, thus there is no way I would want to resize my photo from its original quality to a lower one before uploading it. Who know one day I might just want to download the original quality and size image from the web again, just in case my local copy had gone missing or corrupted?

Picasa Web:
Picasa is another service which only do photo hosting. As in Flickr, Picasa Web do provide basic functionality such as rotating your photo, viewing in different size (via magnifying features), printing and adding of caption for your photo.

Great job done:
- Photo editing features
- Useful client Picasa application
- Photo & camera information available
- Copy or move between album
- Fast upload speed
- Easy sharing

What had been done by PicasaWeb is smart enough to offload their server with all kinds of editing feature, by transferring them to your local PC. PicasaWeb did that by deploying an offline Picasa client application (which has to be installed on your machine as an application) and have the online photo downloaded temporarily to your local PC and edit the copy locally. Picasa did it smart also by providing features to sync your local copy of the photo back to their server once you have done editing on it. Using the Picasa client, you may do editing on your photo by adjusting different levels of contrast, white balance, lighting and adding special effects.

Another good thing about this Picasa client is that you can also use it to edit any of your photo stored within your local hard drive, and have the option to upload them all to your picasa web account directly from the client application with a pretty good upload speed as well (~19 seconds to upload the same photo). This client application also comes with a nice build-in image viewer to allow you to easily browse through all the photo stored within your offline storage.

Back to the Picasa Web, it also provide information on your camera and camera setting used to take the picture. For people (especially photographer) who would like peek into these details, Picasa Web is the only web service among the three of my comparison to provide this capability. I do also like the service from Picasa Web to allow simple move or copy of the uploaded photo from one album to another, and it is done so fast, without you noticing it, it would have done moving or copying hundreds of already uploaded photo to your new album

Picasa web also allow the sharing of the uploaded photo to anyone (even not Picasa Web user), what you need is just to send them the external link of your album, and you friends will be able to go to the link to view all your pictures. As long as you have set your album’s privacy setting to public. You may also set your album to unlisted should you choose to make it only your private collection without sharing it out.

What I think Picasa Web should improved:
- Picasa web upload tool
- Capacity (1GB Max per user)

What I think can be improved on Picasa Web, is that although the Picasa client done a good job in uploading photo, but they will still need to consider for people who are using shared computer to upload their photo whereby installation of application are restricted. As of today, Picasa Web’s online uploading tool only allows selection of up to 5 photo per upload. Meaning if I have more than 5 photo to upload, I’ll need to repeat the upload process (5 at a time) until I complete upload of all my photo. Yet, not to mention that during the upload, there is no progress bar or any kind of indication that how is the upload progressing. The only way you will know is the automatic refresh of the page upon completion of the upload.

Although 1GB per user seems to be far better than Flickr, but I am not sure whether this is really enough for all types of users. :) but at least for me I would think that the more the merrier, isn’t it? :)

Conclusion:
If you are sharing picture only among your friends and family, without hesitating to even editing them, go for Facebook as it is more concentrating on sharing among your own online community.

If you are a photographer and looking for some photo hosting site to showcase your work and profile, go for Picasa Web, as it has more storage capacity and it provide rather full photo hosting and editing features with both its online and offline client version.

If you are a person just simply want to share your numerous amount of self-taken cute (or acting cute) photo of yourself, go for Flickr, because you got lots of effect and frames to be added in to your online photo just to make yourself or your picture looks more “artistic” or “cute”

Please do not hesitate to comment if you have a different thought on this.. :)

Comparison Chart: