One of my grandmother's sayings used to be "the greatest thing since sliced bread." This applied to any stellar achievement.Google continues to earn that saying, and then some! Although it once was a simple search engine, it quickly outdistanced the others through superior service. As it grew, it created gmail. Although I pay good money for a private service, my primary account is actually a gmail account, which is free and online and easier to use than anything I've encountered.
Gmail then started it's own IM service, so that while I have it open all day (and it updates itself constantly, with no prompting from me) my friend Susie can get online and IM me with important messages like "I'm waiting" and "lalalalalala" and "where are you?" and generally cheer me up as I'm slogging through mounds of paperwork.
But today Google is launching an online spreadsheet that will let you load Excel files and share documents online. Up to 10 people can work on the spreadsheet at the same time - the names of people editing and reading it will appear in a chat window.
How amazingly cool is that? For small businesses such as mine, this is one of the most valuable tools we could get, and it's free! Think of how important this could be for sales teams, or company inventory, or other data!
At one time, everyone either had to share a common computer drive or send each other an update every time they added or subtracted something. But this unwieldy manipulation of data is about to become obsolete.
Although this is still in its test phase, if you click on the link above, you can add your name to the hopefuls on the waiting list. Who said that 6/6/06 was so bad?
15 comments:
That is cool. Google has been coming up with some cool things lately!
TAG!
I've been tagged by Lee Ann!
HERE ARE MY ANSWERS TO HER MEME:
FIVE ITEMS
Five Items in my Fridge:
1. Drinks ~ 2% milk, diet pepsi or coke (I can't really tell the diff), regular coke (everyone else can), bottled water (I'm so Gen-X) and assorted V-8 Smoothies (have you ever tried these? They're awesome!)
2. eggs (of dubious quality)
3. all sorts of cheese, ranging from brie to shredded cheddar. (I'm a cheese addict. Help me before I cheese again!)
4. Take out food (which never gets touched again until I throw it out)
5. butter (real and glorious in it's saturated fatness)
Five Items in my Closet (jam-packed, as all Divas are required to keep their closets):
1. pant suits (I avoid wearing dresses most of the time)
2. shoes (What is that I hear? My Antonio Melanis are calling me)
3. purses (Antonio Melani or Wilson Leather need only apply)
4. board games (These have become somewhat obsolete, since we have a PS2, XBox and Computer systems)
5. shelves (Ha! Fooled you! OK, maybe this is cheating.)
Five Items in my Car: (Warning: what you are about to see may shock you.)
1. Umbrella (Well duh! This is Florida!)
2. Bolle sunglasses (they really are exceptional for the Florida sun)
3. litter. (Basically my nice car is a trashcan-on-wheels. Oh I mean to reform, but it's so hard!)
4. Car smelly (To combat the garbage. Just kidding! Well, maybe. Currently a vanilla lizard)
5. Coins
Five Items in my Purse (it's a mammoth purse which has to be regularly cleaned out or others make snide comments asking you if it's a bowling ball bag):
1. Wallet
2. checkbook
3. cell phone
4. lipgloss (I wear the all-day lipstick so I rarely need to refresh it)
5. a Smith & Wesson .38. Just kidding! Ha! How about pens?
Google is great. I expect that some day they will offer a google OS for free! Just wait!
Google is certainly keeping busy huh?
super duper cool!
Does that mean you can get twice the work and hire me?
We need to have a trash off. My truck cah hold A LOT of the stuff.
To be fair, I will not count the trash in the open bed or the tool box. Only the trash in the area where humans are supposed to sit count.
Oh yea - the truck has 4 doors.
As for Google - there IS for launching the spreadsheet thing on 6-6-06. While we were all paranoid about the "mark of the beast" being "Windows Compatible" or "Microsoft Approved" Google was there. Silent. Plotting. Acting all innocent and stuff.
But I know. I am like a giant squid, lurking in the darkness of the abyss, using my tentacles to gather information. My spy network is vast.
But I thought Google was responsible for repressing the Chinese. :p
Happy Evilus (06/06/06). >=)
And... if I'm not mistaken, Google owns Blogger - a service most of us should be somewhat familiar with.
I have a gmail account, but haven't really used it yet. I like my .mac account and, although it does cost about 100 bucks a year, it's the best email service I've yet to experience.
I remember when Google was just a little start-up just down the road from me. Stock was going for... Ah, yes - what's that they always say about hindsight?
~Mike
Google is everywhere, be careful, they do like to snoop.
I've been coming back to the computer all day trying to leave comments at people's blogs. I think our current thunderstorms & rain are messing things up.
I don't own or manage a business like you do, but I sure like what technologly brings us. It makes life easier!
Even we hicks in AR use Google!!! :)
I was also told to use dogpile as a search engine, but have been used to google for so long. When I can't find something on google, I have already uploaded dogpile into the favorites list as a back-up.
Also.... Daniel beat me to the comment about google, and just about any search-engine. Although it does have shades of "conspiracy theory" written all over it, it does pay to be careful for all the hacks and snoops out there.
Google... what a company, they really are visionaries.
Scott
Scares the heck out of me. I done got too old too fast.
about google spreadsheets ... great, now not only do they know where you surf online, chat with via im, blog about, and store all your email, they also know intimate details about your finances and whatever else you upload on a spreadsheet. remember, there corporate goal is to collect the world's information and make it accessible. still, i'd rather have them do it than microsoft.
I didn't know that blogger was owned by Google. That's a little scary. The only advice I would give is try not to get too dependent on Google, or any other single entity for that matter.
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