Slashdot Log In
Google Office To Get an API
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Oct 13, 2006 04:32 PM
from the don't-say-the-O-word dept.
from the don't-say-the-O-word dept.
Orange Crush writes, "Google's new office applications, Docs & Spreadsheets, will provide APIs for custom apps. Johnathan Rochelle, project manager: 'We definitely want to build out APIs, especially for the spreadsheets side, as spreadsheets are more data-oriented, but maybe also for the word processor. People will be able to do mashups with our tools for other things, and not be stuck behind our dev cycle for everything they want. If I've already got data somewhere you can't really rely on manual cut-and-paste to make it collaborative. Imagine pulling data from any application you've already got in use... you get that data over to the hosted app, make it collaborative, then bring it back... that's what we'd like to enable at some point.'" Eating their own dogfood: Rochelle said that "Everybody in [Google] is using the tool" already.
Related Stories
[+]
What it Means to be a Mashup 57 comments
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DevWorks has provided us with an introductory article that helps define what it means to be a mashup. In addition to just defining what a mashup really is the author also delves into what they do for the community at large and where they may take us in the near future. From the article: 'Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services. They are a hallmark of the second generation of Web applications informally known as Web 2.0.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Editing (Score:2, Funny)
Repeat after me... Spellcheck does not replace good editing. Spellcheck does not replace good editing.
Re:Editing (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Repeat after me... A spell checker would not find this error, but a good grammar checker would. A spell checker would not find this error, but a good grammar checker would.
Re:Editing (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
api (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:api (Score:5, Informative)
Application Programmer Interface [wikipedia.org]
Basically, a programatic way of accessing the functionality of Google's software.
Parent
Why are you people helping this maroon? (Score:5, Funny)
Take a look at the top of the screen. See where it says "news for nerds"? Do you want that to be true, or don't you?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My friend, *you* are the odd type around here : true nerds don't know what an API is, they stick their entire program in one giant file called "spaghetti code".
Re: (Score:2)
I thought that was a true hacker... did a new version of the Jargon File come out or something?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really, you can't do much on Unix without files.
So a true non-file using hacker would have to do crazier stuff than that.
Another Look at Google Spreadsheet (Score:5, Informative)
1. Cell borders have been added.
Umm... that's all I've got.
Everything else still appears to be an issue, including the calculation errors I spotted. And while Cell Borders have been added, there is no way to apply different styles. I'm pleased to see that Google is adding a new API for their "Office Suite", but they really need to fix some of these issues before they can be taken seriously.
Also, the continuing lack of charting is really sticking out. Data visualization is an important feature in a spreadsheet, whether you're preparing a market analysis or just balancing your household budget. The fact that plenty of web technologies exist to accomplish charting (SVG, round trip images, Flash, Java, etc.) only makes it stick out that much more. Now the API might allow external coders to help in this area, but so far I'm still not impressed.
Re:Another Look at Google Spreadsheet (Score:5, Informative)
1. Formulas are edited in the cell rather than having a text field on top. This is REALLY annoying to anyone who uses a spreadsheet program regularly. There is an uneditable text field at the top (doesn't work right in Mozilla 1.7.12), but it's not useful for anything other than ogleing at.
Let's not mock Google for trying something different. Because they use "ribbons," that bar up top is only visible when the formatting ribon is selected. I know that you've got Excel muscle memory and you want to go up to that function bar, but why should you have to click on a cell and then click up on the formatting bar when you can just edit by double clicking a cell and staying there. Open your mind and try something different. It might be better.
2. Auto-resizing by double-clicking doesn't work. This is a core feature that I should think that everyone uses.
You're right, double-clicking a column header's edge doesn't auto resize, but since cells auto word wrap based on their contents, you can just resize a column until rows no longer wrap. This feature should be added -- it would be nice. It should also be easier to grab the column header's edge.
3. No size indicator when changing cell sizes.
This is a nice luxury feature I'd like to have (when resizing similar sheets to have the same column widths). Regardless, I don't really NEED it to do my work. That's just me though.
4. You're limited to 100 x T cells. If you're one of those people with a lot of data, good luck. It doesn't look like Google will let you store it without manually inserting enough rows or columns to hold it all.
If you highlight all the rows and then go to insert, you'll see that you can insert however many rows you have selected. For instance, if you select 100 rows, you'll get an option to add 100 rows up or 100 rows down. You can also right click on the row headers to get this option. Works the same for columns, too.
5. The formatting menu is useless. It's got a few data types, and that is IT. If you need a custom style, or a date in one of the billion other formats, you're SOL.
You're not SOL, but you do have to do some work: You need to use the TEXT() function. Check this out [google.com] to see what you can do with that function.
6. No cell borders. Raise your hand if you tend to mark headers with a cell border. (/Me raises hand.)
It's simple, but it works. Frustratingly, it seems that the common solution to most problems are to download, and open it in excel then update online. Maybe that'll change as the project matures.
7. The "Freeze Rows" command makes no sense. Why are you choosing the number of rows from a menu, when a multiple row-select exists?
I don't know if you don't understand what it's supposed to be doing, but it emulates the pane feature in excel, where you can keep one or more header rows frozen as you scroll down. This works well for my financial stuff that I do. It'd be nice if they had the first couple of columns freezable too.
There are some downpoints, noticably the speed, especially when you've got lots of data and you do lots of calculations on it, or when slashdot covers it on the front page. When typing things, they stay up on the page while the server gets updated and that works for random text being added, but if the data you are changing changes other data, you'll have to wait for the server to catch up. Like I said, the column dividers could be easier to select. And the autofill feature could be smarter. That really hurts my productivity.
In excel, you could have two cells with values of 2 and 4 and then autofill the next couple of cells and you'd get 6 and 8. In Google, you'll get 3 and 5, then 4 and 6, and so on.
Tho
Parent
Offline Office at last (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Offline Office at last (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I know. But I was saying I hope someone invents something that will sync your files to your hard drive in a specified format. I'm assuming that one of the things Googles API will allow is to upload/export files. If so, you should be able to write something that syncs all the OOo/MSO documents between a given folder and your Google account, which would allow you to keep a local copy in case you wanted to edit your documents offline.
The reason I bring this up is, I probably won't use any of this onli
Re:Offline Office at last (Score:4, Informative)
(Plug: I wrote that...)
At the moment it's more like a backup tool than a fully operational sync tool (it doesn't automatically upload locally modified files). But it's open source, so if you find it somewhat useful but not powerful enough, feel free to check out the code and change things.
And it runs Linux too. (wxPython)
Parent
Good, but not usable if you need formatting. (Score:5, Informative)
Without those features, it's still OK, but no writer will use it as their word processor of choice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(blah blah blah karma whoring blah blah blah)
As people have been mentioning off and on since this thing was announced, it's not for everyone, and it never will be. Even after all the features everyone wants have been implemented it'll still store your data someplace else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm really not sure what you mean by a "professional writer," but in the publishing industry, a professional wouldn't use a word processor. Second, he most definitely wouldn't use 1" margins on 8-1/2x11 paper!
Yeah,
Re: (Score:2)
Want a guaranteed method the editor will skip yours? Send them a
Re: (Score:2)
yay mashups! (Score:5, Funny)
But will it make coffee? (Score:2)
The API I want is (Score:2, Insightful)
Think: all open standard word procesors could instantly have the best collaboration system on the planet (i.e. real time co-editing, with backups
The Dogfood Tastes Bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just an aerospace engineer and not a programmer/scientist....but I thought Google hired the best of the best brightest minds in the country. True I use Matlab for most analysis and Fortran and C for most simulations, but when I want to "play" with a snippet of data a bit and do some simple plots, Excel kicks butt. I feel sorry for them if all those PhDs can't even graph with their spreadsheets anymore. I can understand them not wanting to pay Microsoft but geeze, at least throw them oocalc.
Valuation (Score:5, Funny)
Now I understand why the CFO paid 1.6bn for GooTube!
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why was this a story? (Score:2)
What is clear is we need a better platform for developing these sorts of applications, but AJAX and DHTML fails to impress me.
Re:Why was this a story? (Score:4, Insightful)
think you wouldn't see a story about a no-name application for various reasons. First, mass audiences might be hesitant to upload files to random companies they aren't familiar with and don't trust. For better or worse, people do trust Google well enough.
I know my big concern with no-named companies making web apps is that, even if they're kind of cool, little companies trying something innovative often fizzle out. You spend some time uploading your documents and playing with things. You tell people that they can access your documents there. Next thing you know, right when you're coming to depend on it-- the site is gone. Or sometimes you might think, "This has potential, but they still need to work on it," but the company doesn't really have the money to work on it.
So I think that's part of the reason why this is getting hype: people expect that Google will make it work. Google isn't running out of money anytime soon, and they aren't going out of business. These apps are pretty snappy, and we all know that Google has the servers and bandwidth to run it, so there isn't a big fear of things being overloaded.
I'm not a huge fan of this stuff. Word processors and spreadsheets in web browsers? I take my laptop with me most everywhere, and I'd rather work locally. Still, maybe if Google works on it and other people can find clever things to do with the API, maybe there will be some use for it. I guess it'd be nice to send a simple spreadsheet to someone, and trust that they'll be able to view it with only a web browser, so it's not all useless. But I think the real thing is the promise that Google will figure out how to make it work.
Parent
It's about time (Score:2)
The API is Google's Intel inside (Score:2, Interesting)
To hell with expensive collaboration tools that require my own server. First there was eroom [emc.com], then the much cheaper 37 signals [37signals.com], and now the free google [google.com]. Long live google.
what happens when (Score:2)
If they really want this to take off... (Score:3, Interesting)
The key is to bundle them all together in an easy to use interface. Perhaps even a desktop client. Heck, with their resources, they could probably wrap it all up into that Google Operating System everyone was all giddy about a while back. Right now, everything (with the exception of the existing Google Apps for Your Domain suite) is pretty spread out as separate products. If they could tie all of these together and make collaboration and integration a little better, it would be the ultimate groupware suite. Just throw in an accounting program (Google Financials?) and you're all set. Charge monthly/yearly fees for companies/domains that go over the maximum storage (perhaps offer a combined storage limit for all of the products put together?) or need more users/groups.
Version control for collaborative spreadsheets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with ownership... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Good luck with ownership... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, among other things, I work at Google. And everything about Google's culture of data-handling is that privacy is taken very seriously, even internally. Even as an employee here, I couldn't just go and read your gmail (or search logs, or writely docs, or anything else) myself; I don't have access to it, and would need to make a very strong case for a legitimate need in order to get access to it. Selling it to an outside party would be completely antithetical to the entire way I've seen the company behave.
But let's focus on the "among other things", so you don't have to take my word for it. I think that even if you assume Google to be evil, the logistics of them being malicious here wouldn't really work out.
It's pretty hard to both 1) try to sell a product to outside entities and 2) keep the availability of that product secret. How exactly would Google go about offering your data up for sale without disclosing that it's doing so? And if such deals were somehow arranged, for how long exactly do you think that every advertiser would keep it secret? As with most conspiracy theories, I think this just involves too many moving parts to really be stable.
And even if we assume that Google has both the willingness and the means to make such sales in secret, I don't really see the motive for doing so. Why would advertisers want your email? To extract relevant information to run ads against it... the way that Google already does for them, to the best of their considerable ability, without any human eyes being involved? And why would Google risk the damage to their reputation associated with doing this? They're not exactly hurting for above-board income, you know.
I'm fairly paranoid about the privacy of my own data, so I can see why you'd have hesitation about handing yours over to anyone else. But I don't think that the particular threat being described is especially realistic.
(If it wasn't obvious, I'm not speaking for Google in any official capacity, I'm just talking about how their culture looks from the inside. The "do no evil" thing is not just marketing schtick, it really is something that people talk about and take seriously all the time.)
Parent
Re:Good luck with ownership... (Score:4, Insightful)
While I wouldn't be surprised if Google eventually sells the platform, at substantial cost, for enterprise clients, right now they aren't selling you anything, their offering to give you the service.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't jump to any conclusions there. Google and Apple seem to get along, but Apple and Google aren't that close. There isn't even an office Google Talk client for OSX. Yes, Google has been filling out their support for OSX lately, but Docs still doesn't have support for Pages documents.
I would add, also, that this seems to me to be the sort of thing Apple would like to do themselves. It's only my opinion, but even if it were a fairly open solution (the Pages and Keynote document formats are both r
Re: (Score:2)
Guilty as charged!