docs

Update 10:30 p.m. PT: I corrected the description of the old favicon.

Overnight, Google got a new face on the Web--one measuring 16x16 pixels.

The search giant updated its favicon, the eensy little 256-pixel logo that appears in browser locations such as bookmarks, URL location bar, and window tabs. The old icon, a capital G in a multicolored box, has been supplanted by a cuddlier-looking blue lower-case g.

It's a minor change, to be sure. But coming from a company obsessed not only with design choices but also the effect those choices have, I can't help … Read more

Spammers will do just about anything to get their e-mail through corporate and desktop filters. According to MessageLabs, they're now using Google Docs, a perfectly legitimate way to publish to the Web. Only what they're publishing is the same old wares--this time, it's enhancement pills. This week I talked with Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs, who told me how they they've tracking one Google Doc since May 8, 2008.

Later in the conversation, Sergeant talks about the resurgence of Storm. Only a few weeks ago, MessageLabs reported a notable decrease in computers infected with the Storm botnet. … Read more

One of my pet peeves with Google Docs has just been remedied. The company quietly released a new view that users can see when editing documents. It's called "fixed width page view," which is a somewhat verbose way of saying print preview.

The view gets rid of the often annoying occurence of writing and editing documents in Google Docs that would stretch the writing canvas across the maximum width of your browser window. On wide-screen displays, this often meant viewing entire paragraphs on just a line or two of the display--something that wouldn't be noticed until … Read more

Online-productivity suite Zoho announced on Wednesday that it now accepts Google and Yahoo logins. An executive from Zoho parent company AdventNet announced last month that Google login compatibility was on the way.

"For Google and Yahoo users who are curious about Zoho but don't want to set up another account, we've removed that hurdle," Zoho 'evangelist' Raju Vegsna said in a release Wednesday. "Users don't have to create a Zoho account to use Zoho applications. We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to try our online apps."

In addition … Read more

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free, Web-based collaborative office suite. Users can make and share documents and spreadsheets with anyone who has a Google account. What makes the service really interesting is that multiple users can be concurrently working on the same document. All files are stored for free on Google's servers, and they can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

While you need to be connected to the Internet to use these applications, you're also able to export Google Docs & Spreadsheets files to work with Microsoft Office and several other formats. Google … Read more

Microsoft confirmed that it is planning a subscription service that combines the consumer version of Office with its OneCare security suite.

Code-named Albany, the product has a single installer that puts Office Home and Student, OneCare, as well as a host of Windows Live services, onto a user's PC. As long as users keep paying for the subscription, they are entitled to the latest versions of the products. Once they stop paying, they lose the right to use any version.

The product is aimed at consumers that want a simple way to have access to Microsoft's productivity suite … Read more

OK, Google watchers, you can slow down your pulse. That to-do list posting on the Google Docs blog appears to have been an innocent mix-up.

Google marketing manager Andrew Chang inadvertently published his to-do list on a blog while testing his posting software. It wasn't a hastily removed preview of a new Google online to-do list application, a possibility some raised.

"I was testing out a feature that allows you to create and edit blog posts in Docs and publish them directly to your blog," Chang said in a follow-up post afterward. "One button click later, … Read more

Correction: the original article misattributed comments to the two Google executives I interviewed. The attributions have been changed.

Google's move on Wednesday to open up an online shop for third-party Google Apps add-ons, called Google Solutions Marketplace, may make more people take Web widgets more seriously--even enterprise developers.

Widgets, or gadgets, allow people to embed small applets within a Web page for things like displaying the weather, or set alarms on a PC or other Web device.

But Google Gadgets is also one way that Google encourages software developers to customize Google Apps.

In March, Google launched a visualization API (… Read more

I finally got access to Google Docs offline, the launch of which I covered yesterday. I understand why Google is pitching it as a safety net for a flaky online connection, as opposed to an honest-to-goodness offline application. As we noted yesterday, you cannot yet create a new document when offline. And something we weren't told: when working offline, you can't insert a picture into a file nor review its revision history.

Furthermore, offline edit reconciliation isn't quite what I was told it would be. I fired up a shared Docs file, pulled the Ethernet plug on … Read more