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Google has broadened the number of online applications that people can use offline, adding spreadsheets and presentations to the mix.

However, unlike with word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations can only be viewed, not edited, according to a post by marketing manager Andrew Chang on the Google Docs blog Friday. That's still useful, though. Chang gives the example of giving a slide presentation without having to worry about network access.

The offline access uses the Google Gears technology the search engine giant introduced in 2007 as an open-source project.

Google is trying to take on Microsoft with its online software, but Gartner believes Microsoft poses a greater competitive threat to Google with online ads than Google does to Microsoft with online office suites.

Google on Wednesday unveiled Gadgets for Spreadsheets in Google Docs, allowing people to create graphical representations of data in spreadsheets and publish them on Web sites.

Google Docs lets you turn your data into a Motion Chart in a spreadsheet via a Google Gadget.

(Credit: Google)

These visuals can also be pushed out to appear on an iGoogle home page or any other site and they will be dynamically updated as changes are made to the spreadsheet.

Gadgets will soon be coming to other apps in Google Docs and eventually search, to help people find relevant content and links, says Jonathan Rochelle, senior product manager for Google Docs.

Google has also added new features that make using Spreadsheets easier. For one, there is a notification system that will e-mail you when somebody has made a change to a spreadsheet that is being collaborated on. You can set it to alert you once a day or after each new change is made. The changes are highlighted so you can easily detect what is new.

There is also a column-based auto-complete function that looks for cues from adjacent cells to try to guess what you are typing, an updated color palette and function editing capability that uses the arrow keys, as well as an auto-complete function for typing long formulas.

In addition, spreadsheet creators now have access to historical stock market data through a Google Finance function and new functions to automatically sort and filter data.

Google is doing something interesting with its Gadgets platform, making gadgets a data source for spreadsheets as well as a data distribution method for developers.

"If I'm collecting census data and putting it into a spreadsheet, I can also make that data available to statisticians," through the Visualization API, says Rochelle. "It doesn't have to be in a spreadsheet form" to distribute.

Spreadsheets is just the first data source that can be handled this way.

"We're making the spreadsheet almost a platform for simple development and delivery," he says.

With the enhancements, Google is ratcheting up the competition its free Web-hosted apps are giving Microsoft's desktop productivity suite, which companies pay for.

Google Docs lets you publish graphical data to your iGoogle page as a Gadget.

(Credit: Google)

For the next three weeks, office workers across the country will have visions of buzzer-beaters dancing in their heads.

It's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament time, and that means brackets will be zipping through e-mail systems in organizations large and small. There are dozens of sites that let you make your tournament choices online, whether to test your basketball-prediction acumen against the masses, or to recruit friends and coworkers in a private pool.

You can even use Google's Basketball Bracket Battle gadget to place your choices on your iGoogle page. After you select the "Create a bracket on iGoogle" link, the gadget is added to your iGoogle page, and you're invited to join a league, or to form a league of your own. Clicking the first option leads to a window where you give your bracket a name, or enter an existing league, which requires a password. The gadget lets you complete as many as five separate brackets, which you can share with friends and coworkers. The brackets weren't available as of 9 p.m. PDT last night, so I can't tell you anything about the selecting your winners, but you're also asked to predict the score of the championship game. You have to complete your picks by the start of the first game this Thursday.

DIY approach to basketball brackets
I got the fever early and spent part of my weekend creating my own brackets on Google Docs. First, I added rows for the first and second rounds, Regionals, Semifinals, and Championship. Since I followed the standard custom of putting two regional brackets side by side, I made mirror images, with the Midwest and West regions on one side, and the East and South regions on the other. Then I created the "brackets" themselves by adding lines to the bottom and sides of the appropriate cells by clicking the Borders icon on the toolbar and selecting one of the eight options.

Create your 'brackets' by choosing the appropriate border option from the Google Docs toolbar.

(Credit: Google)

After I entered the seeds in each of the four brackets, the worksheet was ready to share with everyone, or a select few. I made it available to everyone by clicking the Publish button in the top-right corner of the window, which generates a URL you can send to anyone. I can also limit who has access to the brackets by clicking Share and choosing "to fill out a form" under Invite people on the left, and then the Start editing your form button.

Share your NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets with friends and coworkers by converting it into a form.

(Credit: Google)

The only problem with the form approach is that you have to create a separate question for each game, and since you don't know who'll be playing after the first round, you have to use text fields rather than checkboxes or a two-item list; the other choices--paragraph text and multiple choice--aren't suitable in this instance. Still, the form approach simplifies management by making it easy to collect everyone's choices. It's also an effective alternative to the Microsoft Word approach to conducting surveys that I described last week. (My thanks to the readers who pointed out the online-survey technique).

After you complete the form questions, or if you share the worksheet as is, you add the e-mail addresses of your "collaborators", and decide whether they can invite others. You're also given the options to make the file read-only, or include its URL.

Now that you've set up your pool and made your picks, you can get back to work--at least until tipoff on Thursday.

Tomorrow: reduce your PC's power consumption.

(Credit: IBM)

Microsoft Office is not just overpriced--for most users, it's overkill. That's why I've been increasingly recommending IBM Lotus Symphony, a well-rounded office suite that just so happens to be free. It's built on open-source favorite OpenOffice, but sports a sleeker, friendlier interface.

Symphony (available for Windows and Linux) offers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It supports Office 2003 file formats as well as OpenDocument and others. And it relies on an ingenious tabbed interface that keeps all your documents under the same roof--no switching between apps like with most other suites. I particularly like the sidebars, which keep frequently used settings close at hand while reducing toolbar clutter.

What's the bad news? Symphony is still in beta, and it has the bugs to prove it. It's kind of slow, too. But you can't argue with the price. Why spend upwards of $400 on Office when you can get most of the same features (and a less intimidating interface) for nothing?