Box.net and Google Docs share love in the cloud

Jake Smith

Box has added today the ability to create and edit Google Docs inside of their service. The popular cloud storage solution favored by six million people would previously require folks to create documents at the Google Docs website or using a desktop program before uploading them to the Box cloud. Being Google Docs, other users can also collaborate with you right inside the Box service. Once done,  you can share files with your other computers and those you are working with. Check out these new features in a short clip after the break.
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Some spot Offline mode in Google Docs

9to5 Staff

After Google pulled life support on its free and open source browser extension called Gears, many road warriors were left scratching their head because by doing so Google had also killed the useful offline mode in Google Docs. The company relied on Gears to add features to web apps that were not possible in HTML at the time, like the ability for web apps to cache data and maintain operation without continuous network connectivity. Google has been promising to re-write the offline functionality in HTML5 ever since. While no announcement has been made yet, the Google Operating System blog spotted a black status bar in Google Docs labeled “Offline Docs” and links to switch manually between online and offline modes. This means that the search company is internally testing the feature and will probably make an announcement soon.

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Up next for Google Docs: Cloud Print, Cloud Connect improvements, .TXT previews, native Android editing

9to5 Staff


Native editing is coming to the Google Docs app for Android, in addition to “lots and lots of improvements”

Members of the Google Docs team have revealed some interesting new features slated for an upcoming revision of Google’s online office suite which is due soon. Product managers Scott Johnston, Jeff Harris and Ronald Ho plus engineer DJ Lee and community manager Teresa Wu described some of the new features in a Q&A session with Reddit readers (via Business Insider). For starters, .txt previews are coming back to Google Docs. Next, cloud printing via Cloud Print will be supported across platforms and through browsers other than Google’s own Chrome. Go past the break for more new stuff, including Cloud Connect, offline editing and Android app improvements.
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It is now OK to throw out Excel, Google Spreadsheets has pivot tables

Seth Weintraub

One thing that keeps people on Excel is the ability to use Pivot tables.  Google today eliminated one more barrier to migrating to apps by implementing pivot tables today in Google Spreadsheets.

In essence, a pivot table does just that — it allows you to “pivot” or rotate data, thus looking at it from different angles and seeing a variety of patterns which may not be immediately obvious. Let’s take a very simple example of a list of students. This list includes a number of students and some information about them, including gender, class level, and major.

Updates to Spreadsheets are rolling out now. Read more