Webware

Google Docs has a new validation option that spreadsheet jockeys are going to appreciate. You can now give cells prerequisites, so that you or other users must fill them in with a certain type of data. It can also be set up to provide instructions that pop up as soon as someone starts entering data--similar to what's available in Google Docs' form tool and in Microsoft Excel. Both options can be set inside of the data validator that shows up once you've selected a cell or range of cells.

The Google Docs blog has suggested this as a great way to make sure people who are collaborating on a spreadsheet don't start inputting data the wrong way. The example given is e-mail addresses, where you can set it to validate an e-mail to make sure it's got the .com and the @ in the correct places, keeping you or someone else from having to go in and re-enter it later.

Another good use is the date checker, which will keep everyone who is working on a spreadsheet from entering different time and date formats. This is immensely helpful if you're working on something with people from different countries who may use various formatting localizations.

There are unfortunately a few shortcomings with the new feature. For instance, you can only apply one validation rule per cell, and the editor does not allow you to add multiple validation elements at the same time. Likewise, if you've entered data that does not meet the cell's validation rules, Docs will simply erase your entry unless whoever set up the validation ticked the option to allow users to enter data that does not meet the requirements--something that's not the default.

Google spreadsheets now lets you add validation to any bits of data, letting you keep those who are collaborating on a spreadsheet from entering data they shouldn't be.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Google's Documents and Spreadsheets service went down for approximately 45 minutes earlier this morning.

The service, Google's online productivity suite, went from having some features not working, like the log-out button and the document creation drop-down menu, to coming up with a 404 page.

The downtime calls into question the importance that online Web applications play in business use, as well as how Google's free document services have come to replace software solutions such as Microsoft Office for some users or teams that use Google's real-time collaboration features.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

As a reminder, outages for Google Results should not result in data loss. Google's GFS (Google File System) backup method is one of the most rigorous systems used by any data host. As I mentioned in a post from last year, a lost copy of your data on one server is backed up in a dozen other places, so you won't even notice.

Update: Google has responded to The Register's query about this morning's outage with this statement:

"For a short period this morning, our users had difficulty accessing Google Docs. Some Google Apps users were also affected ... We have now resolved the problem. We know how important Google Docs is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously."

The Official Google Docs blog has not been updated with any additional notes, or an explanation of what exactly went wrong, although Google Docs' help section has some small notes first acknowledging the problem, along with a note to say it was fixed.

Update 2: Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds tells us the problem stemmed from the servers that control the view of the document workspace as well as the home document listing. The data where your documents were stored suffered no down time.

Interestingly enough, of the three services offered in Google Docs, only the word processor and presentation tool were truly down. If you had a link to a spreadsheet you could apparently view and edit it just fine.

As for any reimbursement or discounts to paying enterprise class Google Apps users (who were also affected), we're waiting to hear back if any such thing will be offered. Freidenfelds says Google is serious about keeping all of its services, both free and paid running at all times and that the problem in question should not happen again. If anything, this blip should give any business using these Web-only tools some idea of having a backup solution on hand in case the service goes down again.

Remember gDocsBar (download), that handy Firefox extension we checked out a few months back? It got a pretty neat update today that lets you do things that might not have been originally intended for Google's Documents and Spreadsheets service. The first is called Webclips, which is a fancy way of saying automatic copy and paste. If you find a big chunk of content you like, you can simple copy it, then drag it into the toolbar. gDocsBar will create a new document out of whatever you've highlighted, and preserve, as much as possible, the formatting and links.

The other new feature that power users are going to enjoy is templates. You can take any document you've made, or create a new one, and set it up to be a template in Google Docs. This will likely come in handy to spreadsheet junkies who repeatedly use a particular form or document with formulas built in. Using templates would save you some of the hassle of copying and pasting over the data from an existing spreadsheet and doing it again.

In addition to these two updates, creator Sandosh Vasudevan has fixed some of the problems that plagued it when we first took a look. For instance, you can now create new documents right from the toolbar, as well as see and search through all of your docs without having to visit the Docs and Spreadsheets home.

You can read more about the update on the gDocsBar blog. If you've got an earlier version of the extension installed, click on Tools > Add-ons then click the "check for updates" button.

Make and re-use templates in Google Documents and Spreadsheets with the gDocsToolbar.

(Credit: gDocsBar.com)

Box.net added a really cool, and useful collaboration feature to its online storage service yesterday. Any user can right click a folder and choose a new collaboration option that lets them invite anyone to gain access to those files, either as an editor or viewer. Box.net has always had the option of linking to the file, or sharing a grouping of files with everyone, or a just a small group of people via its premium service and snazzy widgets; however, this new addition is more advanced.

Shared folders on Box.net show up in a Box.net file space.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Once a user becomes a collaborator, the shared folder will show up in their Box.net storage area. To keep user sanity, the service now includes versioning. This lets users know when the file was last edited, and by which user. If a file that been edited, users will see right away how many times it has been changed. They can go back and either download the old version, or revert it over its current state. This is going to be hugely helpful with image files for which there have been editing tools using Picnik and Snipshot since the launch of OpenBox, Box.net's API platform back in November.

There are few small caveats to the service. One being that collaborators need to have a box account, and the other that free members can only have up to three shared folders at a time, and don't get access to the versioning records like premium users do. I don't think either is a deal breaker (Google approaches collaboration with Docs and Spreadsheets in the same manner).

(Click on the form to try it for real.)

The spreadsheet in Google Docs now supports independent form entry. That means that if someone wants to use a Google spreadsheet as a database, they can ask others to fill in data by putting information into a nice, compact form, instead of into the spreadsheet itself.

As is typical in Google Docs, this feature is simple, easy to use, but somewhat underpowered. For example, the form cannot be easily embedded in a Web page, and there's no data validation on form entries. I still recommend WuFoo for online data collection, and there are other good online databases allow embed forms (and export data to a spreadsheet for quick processing).

A pretty sweet feature is that users can easily e-mail the Google form, if all they want to do is collect a bit of data from people they know. Also, if the spreadsheet is open on a computer, the data coming in via the form can be monitored in real-time, which is, frankly, bad-ass. Try entering data in a form here.

I do expect this feature to evolve over time. Because of this evolution, I do not give good odds to the long-term survival of the other online databases. In fact, I fully expect Google to release a database application into Google Docs to go along with this bare-bones data-entry function.

Via: Official Google Docs blog.

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.

Products mentioned:

• FolderShare
• LogMeIn
• SimplifyMedia
• Orb
• FoxMarks
• Del.icio.us
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets
.


If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

Real Deal subscription links:

• For RSS readers: http://www.cnet.com/i/pod/realdeal.xml
• iTunes: Subscribe

Scribd, the document sharing and hosting service, has rebranded and tweaked its Facebook application this morning. Its new name is Share Homework, and the goal, according to Scribd, is to use it as a go-between for students and teachers to share documents with each other, and to help students do something about the documents that have been sitting unused for years on their hard drives.

Share your documents with other Facebook users with Scribd's Facebook application.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

There's no real changes, besides a tweaked user interface and a new name (from the previous moniker of "Facebook Apps"). The tool is still a super-simple way to share documents and little more social than what Google Docs and Spreadsheets can offer, short of making the files public and sharing the link on your profile page. If you've seen or used Zoho's Facebook application (review), the idea is similar--everyone can see and read the documents you've shared without leaving Facebook, although unlike Zoho, you can't go in and make edits.

Scribd throws in a handful of nice features, like download links for multiple formats and a button to hear a document spoken aloud (although I couldn't get this to work within Facebook). There are helpful features, like tagging and categories, and everyone else can sort your documents in the community document pool. Users can comment on your documents as well. Best of all, uploading a document through the Facebook application will put it in the same public document pool found on Scribd.com.

I'd like to see Scribd add a way to link up several documents, to show thematic connections. For example, if you had a group of twenty documents about Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. It would be handy to be able to sort documents by theme, course, and school. The current presumption is that the user will enable this by tagging documents properly. A far easier solution would be to pull the person's school information and some other key details from the document's metadata, and then convert it into tags for grouping. This would make for some fascinating visualizations and browsing tools, and less work for users.

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 per the folder in which they're located. Any pre-existing tags today have been turned into their own folders.

There have also been a few other changes under the hood. Besides the bluer, smoother exterior, Google Suggest is now built into the file search bar. This means that when you're looking for a certain file, you can just begin typing and the engine will start to bring up search results before you've even hit the search button.

There's still no support for Google Gears, which is the one thing I'm waiting for. For people who use Docs and Spreadsheets on a daily basis and for Google Apps subscribers--this is a big change. The question on my mind, however, is how long before we see this slick blue interface in Gmail?

Google's new look uses a two-pane interface, complete with folders--a first for Google.

(Credit: Google.com)

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 can create cells that will update constantly with data or information gleaned from Web searches or Google's finance service. This works for things such as stock symbols, sports statistics, or any other piece of information you want to source and keep up to date automatically. Spreadsheets users can have up to 250 of these live-updating cells per spreadsheet. You can read more about this here and here.

To do a Web search for any item in a spreadsheet cell, just right click it.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

2. Google search inside a spreadsheet. If you come across a word or phrase that's unfamiliar, or you want to find out more about it, you can search for it without leaving the page. Just highlight it, right click and choose "Search the Web." The results will open in a new browser window (Note: This doesn't work in Google Docs, just Spreadsheets.)

3. Color-coded live comments. Microsoft Word junkies are probably well in tune with the program's pop-up commenting system. Google's approach in Documents is similar, allowing users to annotate wherever they please, as well as color-code comments. If the author or another contributor finds a comment useful, they can add it into the document by right clicking on it and then choosing that option from the contextual menu. Collaborators can also change their comment coloring on the fly, or create their own custom coloring scheme to denote things such as priority.

You can compare two versions of the same document at different edit points.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

4. Revisioning. Like an entry on Wikipedia, both Google Docs and Spreadsheets offer the option to keep track of changes that have been made over the course of a document's or spreadsheet's lifespan. You can jump back and forth between edits you or your collaborators have made on a drop-down timeline menu, or by clicking the "older" and "newer" buttons. The slightly more advanced version of this that's only available in Google Docs (not Spreadsheets) is the ability to look at two versions of the same document side by side. The application will highlight the differences, and each revision gets its own color code. In any case, if there's been a snag somewhere, or you find an addition you don't like, you can nix it on the spot.

5. There are many copies. And they have a plan. The first thought in most people's minds when they're working with online apps is, "Where is this file being stored, and what if something bad happens?" Any document or spreadsheet created on the service is constantly being backed up in several places at once. Google uses the same file system for all of their Web apps, called GFS (Google File System), that's been designed so even if the server in which your file is hosted bursts into flames, the system will automatically switch over to the backup copy. The team says if this were to happen, users wouldn't even notice. Don't try this with your computer at home--that is, unless it's not your fault.