GWT Blog – GlobalWorldTech

Earlier this year, Google has launched new editors for documents and spreadsheets on Google Docs, built on a code base designed to improve collaboration and take advantage of the latest advances in the technology. These improvements to Google Docs are designed to help businesses to move to the cloud faster and be more productive than ever before. If you’ve never tried web-based documents, spreadsheets and presentations, you can instantly take a test drive at docs.google.com/demo.

In this post, we will describes how Google Docs uses an algorithm called operational transformation to merge edits in real time.

In documents, basically, there are three types of changes: inserting text, deleting text, and applying styles to a range of text. When someone edits a document, they’re not modifying the underlying characters that represents the document. Instead they are appending their change to the end of the revision log. To display a document, Google replay the revision log from the beginning.

To see what these changes look like, suppose that a document edited by John and Luiz initially reads; EASY AS 123 and if John changes the document to EASY AS ABC, then he is making four changes:

Collaboration is not quite as simple as sending these changes to the other editors because people get out of sync. Suppose as John is typing, Luiz (represented by yellow) begins to change his document to IT’S EASY AS 123. He first inserts the I and the T at the beginning of the document:

Suppose Luiz naively applies John’s first change {DeleteText @9-11}:

He deleted the wrong characters! Luiz had two characters at the beginning of the doc that John was never aware of. So the location of John’s change was wrong relative to Luiz’s version of the document. To avoid this problem, Luiz must transform John’s changes and make them relative to his local document. In this case, when Luiz receives changes from John he needs to know to shift the changes over by two characters to adjust for the IT that Luiz added. Once he does this transformation and applies John’s first change, he gets:

The algorithm that Google use to handle these shifts is called operational transformation (OT). If OT is implemented correctly, it guarantees that once all editors have received all changes, everyone will be looking at the same version of the document.

The OT logic in documents must handle all of the different ways that InsertText, DeleteText, and ApplyStyle changes can be paired and transformed against each other. The example above showed DeleteText being transformed against InsertText.

Collaboration in Google Docs consists of sending changes from one editor to the server, and then to the other editors. Each editor transforms incoming changes so that they make sense relative to the local version of the document. Google Docs can support up to 50 simultaneous editors, and documents let you see other people’s changes character-by-character as they type.

Source: Google Docs

Google has added some nice features in Google Docs and introduced a collaborative drawings editor that makes it easy to build organizational charts, flow charts, design diagrams.

Documents – New features will be:

• Setting the Margins & Tabs
• Drag & Drop of the images within the document.
• Huge improvement while uploading & importing documents from your laptop/PC.
• Chat with the collaborators while editing the document.

Spreadsheets – New Features will be:

• Formula highlighting
• Sheet dragging & Sheet Menu
• Editable formula bar
• Autocomplete in cells
• Copy sheet from one spreadsheet to another
• Range sorting

One of the features that Google’s online office program Google Docs lacks is a cloud-based version of Microsoft Office’s “clipboard” feature. Although you can copy and paste when using Docs, it’s a much simpler procedure. The keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + C” copies and “Ctrl + V” pastes, but it’s a one-time process. You can’t accumulate a collection of copied items for later pasting as you can with the Office clipboard.

Some may argue that’s by design – Google likes to keep things simple. However, it appears that may not be the case, after all. As spotted by the Google Operating System blog, a new server-side clipboard looks like it may be close to launch.

A Real Clipboard! Google Docs Business Users Will Rejoice

Considering Google’s continuing advances in the enterprise space, it’s not surprising that the company is interested in implementing a cloud-based clipboard to rival the one in Office. Although this may not be the sort of feature that everyday consumers and users of the free version of Docs care much about, it’s a perfect example of the sort of feature that a business user needs. When crafting long documents, the ability to store a collection of text, images and other media for re-use throughout a particular file is a time-saving feature that many cannot live without. It’s arguably even one of the top reasons why some feel they can’t make a complete switch from their desktop office software, be that Microsoft Office or Open Office or something else, to an online service like Google Docs.

Beyond Docs: A Clipboard for YouTube, Picasa and More?

According to the blog post that uncovered this feature (still in testing it appears), the Google Docs clipboard looks like an implementation of a service called Google Cloudboard, revealed back in fall of last year via an accidentally publicized internal feedback form. Cloudboard was described as a “server-side clipboard for Google Apps.” Like Cloudboard, the new clipboard works within Google Docs and other Google services including Gmail and Calendar – at least that’s what has been spotted so far. However, when the Cloudboard feature was discovered, it was described as working with services outside of Google Apps, too. For example, copying from Picasa, YouTube, Maps and even Google Image Search were cited as use cases for the Cloudboard.

The Cloudboard/clipboard Google has in mind could be handy for heavy Gmail users, especially if it became a feature of the Gmail service itself. It also somewhat brings to mind the Windows Live Mail Quick Add feature which integrates Bing searches, images and video into the online webmail program via a sidebar panel. Google’s clipboard could easily do the same and more.

30-Day Retention Policy: This Clipboard Stays with You

In Google’s case, clipboard content wouldn’t just remain in the program while your Docs/Apps session was active – it would actually remain on Google’s Servers for an entire month. According to a now-public Google Help Article:

Content you copy to the server clipboard is stored on Google’s servers and remains there until 30 days have passed since you last took action on (for example, copied) a given content selection. Even if a document is deleted, anything you copied from that document to the server clipboard will still exist on Google’s servers for that 30-day period. You can delete all items stored on the server clipboard by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting Clear all items.

The article also reveals how the Clipboard content is tied to your Google Account as opposed to one particular computer. “That means you can copy more than one selection and then choose which one to paste later, the page reads. “It also means you can copy something on one computer and then paste it on another.”

Although the Google Docs blog hasn’t formally announced this feature (as of the time of writing), we’re confident that it’s more than a rumor at this point. Usually when Google gets around to creating Help documentation, the feature is near launch…sometimes even hours away. We hope that’s the case here, too.

Here’s why your business needs to have a Google account:

Google Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc): The LBC is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content of their business listings as they appear in Google Search and Google Maps. All you have to do is claim your listing in the LBC and go through a quick verification process to get access to the following kinds of data:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
• Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/): Google Analytics is a web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.

Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Google Docs (docs.google.com): is a free, Web-based word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form application offered by Google. You can import your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or create new ones from scratch. You can invite people to your documents and make changes together, at the same time.

Google Calendar (calendar.google.com):

• Share your schedule- web based
• Get your calendar on the go
• Never forget another event again with built in reminders via email or text
• Send invitations and track RSVPs
• Sync with your desktop applications(Outlook, iCal and Sunbird)
• Work offline

Google Mail or GMail (mail.google.com): Gmail is the Google approach to email and chat. Practically unlimited free online storage allows you to collect all your messages, and Gmail’s simple but very smart interface lets you find them precisely and see them in context without effort. POP and powerful IMAP access bring Gmail to any email program or device.

And I’m not even going to get into Google Wave, AdWords, or AdSense. If you want to read more about ALL of Google’s tools, check out their Google Business Solutions page.

Bottom line — no business but especially no small or local business can afford not to take advantage of Google’s free tools. Don’t miss out.

Drew McLellan, The Marketing Minute, Oct 2009