Webware

If you store street addresses in a spreadsheet, you can now plot those addresses on Google Maps in just seconds, with no programming required. And doing so won't cost you a cent--unless you volunteer a contribution to the people behind the Map A List beta service that makes it all possible.

Start by pasting your addresses into a Google Docs spreadsheet. (If you don't already have a Google account, you'll have to create one, but doing so is also free.) Give the spreadsheet separate columns for the location name, street address, city, state, and ZIP code. Make sure you don't leave any blank columns at the top of the spreadsheet.

Next, browse to the Map A List site and create an account by entering an ID, password, e-mail address, security question, and ZIP code. Once your account is in place, choose Maps > Create on the site's home page.

The first step in the map-creation process is to choose a source. At present, the only option is Google Spreadsheet. After you grant the service access to your Google Docs account, you'll see your spreadsheets listed in a drop-down menu. Select the one that contains the addresses you want to map. If the spreadsheet has only one worksheet, it will be chosen automatically. Otherwise, you'll be prompted to select the worksheet with the addresses. Map A List will display the fields it will show on the map.

The free Map A List service lists the spreadsheet fields it will include in your custom Google map.

(Credit: Map A List)

If you're happy with the fields Map A List presents, click Next to view and confirm the fields containing the address information to be shown on the map. You can change the order of the fields and set the field that will be displayed in the balloon pop-up for each map pinpoint.

Change the order of the map fields and set the row that will be displayed in the map's pop-up balloons.

(Credit: Map A List)

Once the field settings are in order, click Next. The service will generate the geocodes for the addresses. If the addresses are in order, you'll see the "Total Success!" message. Click Next to open the Configure Map settings. Make your selections in the two drop-down menus and go with the default pin or change the icon that will denote each address. You can get a peak at the resulting map by clicking Preview Map, or click Next to open a page with additional settings.

Here you can change the name of your map, choose the view (Satellite, Hybrid, Physical, or Normal), select the default zoom, and set the content to be shown in the footer. You can also make the map public or private and alter its appearance in other ways. When you're done, click Save & View Map.

View the map displaying your spreadsheet's addresses, complete with all the Google Maps trimmings.

(Credit: Map A List)

Hover over a pinpoint to view whichever field you selected as your Title in Step 2 of the map-creation process. Click the pinpoint to view whichever fields you chose to display in Step 4, use the zoom controls to move the view in or out, and switch views between normal, satellite, hybrid, and terrain, just as you would with any Google map.

It's that time of year again: days are getting longer, the weather's warming up (a bit), and 65 college basketball teams are hoping to be the last ones standing when the buzzer sounds, ending the last of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament's 64 games.

For last year's March Madness, I created a version of the tournament brackets on Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and invited readers to download it to make and share their picks. This year's version of the brackets spreadsheet includes a form you can use to make your picks and post them to the public version of the spreadsheets.

Use the "Choose from a list" option to create simple drop-down menus for making your NCAA basketball picks.

(Credit: Google Docs and Spreadsheets)

(Note that a bug in the form moves the 1 vs. 16 and 3 vs. 14 games of the South region's first round to the finals and regional sections, respectively. I couldn't figure out why those two games kept jumping to the end of the queue, so I left them there for now. I'll try to get them back in line prior to Thursday's tip-off.)

You won't win a major prize, if your selections are the most accurate; I'm just a poor blogger, after all, not a multimillion-dollar sports network. If it's fame and fortune you're after, you'll find no shortage of sites that let you compete with thousands or millions of other b-ball prognosticators.

The online files I created are just for fun, as you'll probably discern after you get a load of my off-the-wall selections. The form that accompanies the brackets uses simple two-item drop-down menus for recording your winners in the first round and text boxes for entering your selections in subsequent rounds.

You may notice that in my picks, I stuck with the chalk most of the time. Last year, I was picking upsets left and right, only to have the four No. 1 seeds make it to the the Final Four. I don't see all the top seeds making it to Detroit this year, though I did pick two No. 1s and two No. 2s.

And who do I think is going to win it all this year? None other than Oklahoma over Connecticut in the final. You heard it here first.

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)

Over the weekend, Google rolled out a brand-new look for its Spreadsheets tool by adding a simplified toolbar to the top of the page, much like the one Google Docs received back in late March. The change is twofold: one to better organize all the various bits and pieces that had turned the tool into something resembling an airplane cockpit, as well as ready it for additional features.

All this isn't just cosmetic ,though; Google says overall speed has been improved, too. One of the things that's kept me away from using it all these years is that Excel absolutely kills it on larger spreadsheets. In a quick test on some older, large spreadsheets I really did notice a big difference, although it still has to stream in all your cells, whereas Excel is ready to go as soon as you open it.

Google Spreadsheets users now have a similar menu to the one in Google Docs, which compacts many of the options into menus for the sake of organization.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Something small, but really important is the inclusion of a full screen mode. Hitting Ctrl+Shift+F lets you cycle through two additional views, one that gets rid of the menu bar, and another that gets rid of both the menu bar and toolbar. If you're working on a laptop with a small vertical resolution this gives you an additional seven rows(!).

Google has also more deeply integrated its Calendaring tool and handling of URLs within its forms tool. You can now plan a meeting with people you're collaborating on a spreadsheet with right from the share menu. This simply opens up a Google Calendar event with the participants, subject, and link to the spreadsheet automatically filled in for you. Likewise, any URL you drop in forms or the form confirmation messages will get converted into links automatically. Previously users would have to copy and paste it into their address bar.

All these changes may be small, but like the change to Docs back in March, it's a fascinating shift. Considering Google's Chrome browser lets you run tools like Docs and Spreadsheets as standalone Web applications, the closer it gets to feeling like software people are used to, the more willing they'll be to try it out. The big question is how far Google is willing to go with this new interface to make it better.

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.

The underappreciated Web spreadsheet EditGrid is getting a useful and cool new feature: built-in lookups to online resources. For example, if you want your online spreadsheet to display the current stock price of a company, or maybe its site's Alexa rank, you can now easily code that into your formulas.

Other functions give you data from the CIA World Factbook (natural gas reserves in Thailand, anyone?), baseball stats via Strikeiron, TechCrunch's Crunchbase company database, and other interesting info. If you want to get fancy, there are also functions to pull data straight from Web pages.

EditGrid has a new collection of functions that pull live data from various online sources.

All the data you pull in from these functions can serve as input to other formulas, which opens up interesting analysis possibilities. Say you're trying to get a read on a start-up you're thinking of investing in, and efficiency in getting eyeballs to the site matters to you. A simple formula of monthly page views (from Compete) and number of employees (from Crunchbase) might do that for you. Assuming you trust those data sources, of course.

I did find the menu of data sources a bit limiting outside the realms of financial information and Web analytics, but the concept of adding online data sources directly into a spreadsheet's function library is spot on, and EditGrid spokespeople confirm that more sources will added to the lineup shortly. I hope EditGrid also opens up the application programming interface so people at other sites can mash their online data into the EditGrid libraries.

Google Docs has a subset of these functions, but not the breadth of data that EditGrid now offers.

Previous review: EditGrid: A nice competitor to Google Spreadsheets.

SocialCalc is coming to the enterprise wiki, SocialText.

(Credit: SocialText)

Corporate Wiki software company SocialText is adding a spreadsheet to its wiki product. The new feature, SocialCalc, allows users to collaborate on spreadsheets the same way they do in the company's text-based Wikis. The product is based on Dan Bricklin's open-source Wikicalc.

For spreadsheet jockeys this is both good and bad news. On the positive side, SocialCalc spreadsheets inherit wiki-style revision tracking, which is an automatic audit trail that will arguably be even more important on spreadsheets with financial and other hard data on them than it is on text-based wiki pages. "There's no inherent audit trail in Excel," SocialText chairman Ross Mayfield reminded me.

Users can also easily embed data from other SocialCalc sheets in their spreadsheets, or for that matter data from any SocialText wiki page or Web URL. This could make building workgroup-wide, or even company-wide spreadsheets possible. Assuming, that is, everyone in said workgroup or company is comfortable using SocialCalc instead of Excel.

Which brings us to the negatives of this new product. The biggest is that it is not Excel, and it will require the most re-learning from exactly those people who would find its collaboration functions the most helpful: heavy spreadsheet users. And it's not just the interface that's different, it's the features. Like many Web-based productivity tools, SocialCalc doesn't have all the analytic or presentation features of its mature standalone counterparts. I predict this will frustrate people who want to use SocialCalc to build complex company-wide models on it.

Mayfield told me that coordinating work is "at least eight times as important" as providing a complete Excel-caliber feature set on SocialCalc, and I agree in principle, but I can still see a few heavy Excel users in a company raising a very loud stink if they are forced to use a tool that doesn't do everything they are accustomed to.

The other downside to SocialCalc is that it doesn't allow real-time collaboration like the spreadsheet in Google Docs does. While some people see live multi-person spreadsheet editing as a gimmick, in fact the more people who need to contribute to a worksheet the more important that feature becomes. It removes the awkward need for users to wait in line to edit a document if someone else has it open.

SocialText will provide professional services to make the adoption easier by its customers, and the tool will no doubt be welcomed by infrequent spreadsheet users. It's a good addition to the SocialText lineup; I just don't expect it to be an easy transition for everyone.

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.

Security researcher Bill Rios reported Monday that a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack against Google Spreadsheet could have exposed all of Google's services. XSS can occur whenever a legitimate site accepts input from the user but does not filter that input properly and could allow the injection of potentially malicious instructions. In this case, however, once an attacker gained access to any xxxx.google.com site, they would have access to other Google services, such as Gmail, Docs, and Code.

In an e-mail to CNET News.com, a Google representative confirmed that the flaw as described by Rios has been fixed. "Google takes the security of our users' information very seriously," said a Google spokesperson. "We worked quickly to address the vulnerability and rolled out a fix before it was reported publicly. We have not received any reports of this vulnerability being exploited."

According to Rios, he was able to use Internet Explorer to change the content type of the HTTP response being returned to the server while using Google Spreadsheets. At issue here is whether or not the browser will ignore the content-type header in certain circumstances. Rios points out that all browsers have the potential to do this under certain circumstances, thus the problem isn't entirely with Google.

In his blog, Rios created a spreadsheet, placing an alert (document.cookie) script string surrounded by HTML tags in the first cell. When that string content is saved and downloaded as a comma-separated value or CSV, the content type should be text/plain. However, since Rios added HTML to the string, Internet Explorer will see that first and render it as HTML instead.

Whenever a victim is lured to this CSV URL, an Alert dialog box will pop up on the attacker's desktop containing the victim's current Google session information. The session cookie would be valid on other Google services used by the victim such as Gmail, Docs, etc.

Rios offers this XSS flaw as a cautionary tale, and recommends that security-minded readers check out a paper by Blake Frantz of Leviathan Security. In "Flirting with MIME types," Frantz found that, while other browsers were also indiscriminate about rendering file types as HTML, IE did so on 696 file types out of 735 tested. To give perspective, the next closest was Opera at 14, with Firefox at 8, and Safari at 7.