Google Docs in Hebrew and Arabic

Posted by: Dov Pearl, International Testing Specialist

Google Docs is now available in Hebrew and Arabic, bringing our total number of languages to 40. We're particularly excited about this launch because composing and editing right-to-left online documents has been difficult. This project was technically very challenging, so it's particularly satisfying to be able to welcome native Hebrew and Arabic speakers to Google Docs.

Holiday dressing debrief

Posted by: Jen Mazzon, Google Docs Product Manager

The Valentine's Day-lovefest dressing on Google Docs gave me an extra spring in my step all day yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the user group comments, blog posts and emails about people's reactions to our "pinked up" Docs Home.

Two repeated questions I saw were: "How can I keep my pinkified Docs Home?" and "How can I get rid of my pinkified Docs Home?"

Answer#1: You can get that Google Docs lovin' feeling all year round (or at least for a while) at http://docs.google.com/?holiday=vday

Answer#2: Well it's gone now. It went away on its own after a mere 24 hours of pinkification (sigh!)

But I have some questions for YOU. For example:

• What was your first reaction on seeing the pink Docs Home?
• Did you laugh aloud hysterically (that's what I did, actually) or cry out in alarm?
• Did you feel a warm, loving feeling wash over you, or did it leave you cold?
• Do you think we should celebrate more holidays via creative Docs Home dressing?
• If so, how frequently and which holidays?
  
• If not, would you be cool with a simple "bah humbug" option to switch off the celebration?

So I've put some of my burning questions into an informal user survey, which, of course, leverages our new forms feature. Please take 3 minutes to tell us about your reaction to our first ever holiday celebration in Google Docs.

Google Docs, will you be my valentine?

Posted by: Steven Saviano, valentine-o-rific Google Docs Engineer

Dear Google Docs,

It's (almost) Valentine's Day and I have something to ask you.

Lately, I can't get you out of my mind, let alone off my computer screen. The way you allow me to edit my documents from anywhere, and even share them with a friend or two, has amazed my heart. I think I have fallen in love.

Your recent summer makeover has made you even more gorgeous — revamping your Docs Home and adding presentation support.

Not only do you have beauty, you have brains as well. You recently launched Forms, allowing me to quickly gather and analyze data, thanks to the genius of all your spreadsheet formulas and charts. You are multilingual, available in more than 38 languages. You are even great with my friends, especially when we need to collaborate on our plans for an upcoming weekend trip.

You have everything that I would ever look for in a document collaboration suite.

Google Docs, will you be my valentine?

Love,
-- Steven

P.S. Just for February 14th, enjoy our Valentine's Day themed Docs Home. Everyone deserves a little love on that special day — even your docs.

P.P.S. This dressing doesn't appear by default for some countries and for Google Apps domains. If for whatever reason your Docs Home isn't dressed up, go log into Google Docs and then click here.

Google Docs now for teams

Posted by: Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

You already know that Google Docs is built to make sharing and collaborating on documents easy for everyone. And of course the people we collaborate with the most are those around us in the workplace or at school. Being part of the same organization can make for special cases of sharing – like wanting to allow anyone at your company to view or edit a document, but not wanting to share with the world at large.

Because we're always looking for ways to make collaboration better, we're launching a new way to use Google Docs, along with other collaboration tools like Google Calendar and Talk, that optimizes all of those tools for members of the same organization. It's called Google Apps Team Edition, and anyone with an email address from their work or school can sign up right now. There’s no hardware, software or setup involved, and no burden for IT administrators.
After confirming that you belong to a company or school, you can start collaborating with your group and invite others from your organization who haven't joined yet. You can then start creating and sharing documents with your team members. Give it a try at www.google.com/apps.

Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information

Posted by: Andrew Bonventre, Spreadsheets engineer and Michelle Lee, Spreadsheets designer

Today we're asking you to do something new: stop sharing spreadsheets.

Well... only sometimes, and only in certain situations. See, we've noticed that, in some cases, you want to collect just a tiny bit of information from dozens, scores, or even hundreds of users or more. Some of them are Google Docs users. Some of them are not. Either way, you don't always want them all mucking around with the whole spreadsheet and you're tired of telling those new to Google Docs that they don't need to switch to Gmail just to use Docs (huh? you didn't know that either?).

We're really excited to bring you forms! Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you'll get the spreadsheet automatically.

Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet. You can even keep a closer eye on them by adding the Google Docs forms gadget to your iGoogle homepage, created by software engineers Valerie Blechar and Sarah Beth Eisinger (in her first month at Google!). It lists your recent active forms, with new responses highlighted. Add this gadget to your iGoogle page:

At Google, we've already been using it for signups, surveys, and miscellaneous mischief. And we can't wait to see what you do with forms in Google Docs.

P.S. Navigate all the extra data you're collecting with the new freeze columns feature. It's been our most requested feature for twelve months, but we hope you'll cut software engineer Eric Bogs a break since he's only been here for a few!

Spreadsheet chart publishing gets political

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager

We've seen plenty of examples of how Google spreadsheets are published on other sites - either with simple links or with embedded sheets and charts. In fact, I even created another blog just to keep a list of some interesting ones, since people are always pinging me to either say "Hey JR, give me some examples of how people are using spreadsheets to share information", or, "Hey JR, check this one out!".

Well, today we saw another example worth blogging about. It's topical, it's professional, it's useful, it's fast - it's political... In covering Super Tuesday Poll results, Reuters used Google spreadsheets to generate and publish result charts for their web site. The image included here is a screen shot from their main 2008 Elections Page, which actually had 8 embedded charts last time I looked. We didn't do anything special to help Reuters do this, in fact, we came across this by chance just watching the results on their site.

If you've got interesting data you want to share, check out the publishing options in Google Docs, and even learn how to publish charts.

[update 6 Feb 2008 - Now that the voting is over, the charts as originally published have been swapped out of Reuter's Politics pages for more relevant, timely stories...sorry if you missed it.]