Google Sites Gets Horizontal Navigation

This is good to see. Sites is now becoming something more than a casual site design tool. With the addition of this navigation layout and some of the previous update,s including gadgets and templates, Sites can now be used to build a pretty good looking web presence.

Giving up on Google Wave

Some time ago I said I'd post here about my experiences with Google Wave. Well I didn't really have much experience! I just couldn't find a way of using it that suited me and I couldn't find any advantage of it over other collaboration methods. I use Google Apps and the shared documents, email and chat features easily satisfy my needs.

Now Google has announced that they're not going to be developing Wave as a separate product any more, so I guess that's that. I'm sure some of the technology will make it's way into other Google products but in the meantime I'm laying my use of Wave to rest.

New saving buttons in Google Docs and Presentations

New improved saving buttons have been launched in documents and spreadsheets to make it easier to know when a document needs to be saved, is in the process of saving or has been saved. They'll be coming to spreadsheets soon.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
- A clickable save button "Save now" means your document has edits which haven't been saved yet and the timestamp lets you know when it was last saved. You can either wait for autosave to happen after a few seconds, or you can manually save at any time using the keyboard (ctrl S on PC, cmd S on Macs), save button, or by going to through the file menu.

- A disabled button reading “Saving” means your document is currently being saved, and should complete in a second or two.

-A disabled button reading “Saved” means all data in this document is now saved, and the timestamp tells you when the last change happened. You can safely exit the application or continue editing the document.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/save-safely-with-new-saving-buttons.html

New web clipboard for Google Docs that improves copy and paste

This new clipboard temporarily stores items you’ve copied in the cloud, then allows you to paste them with proper formatting into documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Editions included: Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions Languages included: All languages supported by Google Docs How to access what's new: While editing in Google Docs, select the item that you want to copy. Use the new clipboard menu to copy the item in question. Then, go to your other document, spreadsheet or presentation, and use the clipboard menu there to paste the item into the document. Please note that while items in your web clipboard are available across browsers and across sessions, they do expire after a month. For more information: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/web-clipboard-for-google-docs.html

My Google Wave Experience

So the first stumbling block I've hit is to do with my use of Google accounts. My primary email, calendar and contacts are through a Google Apps account so I can have everything under my own domain name. Wave is not currently available under Google Apps so I have to use my normal Google account to access it. This means that my contacts are not available to me. I suppose I could export all contacts from Apps and import them into Gmail but they'd get out of sync quite quickly.

This is going to be a persistent problem with many of Google's services until they're all fully integrated and available using an Apps account. Picasa is another example which would benefit greatly from integration with Google Apps.

Google Wave Invitation

I received my invitation to try out Google Wave at the weekend. I haven't had time to try it much yet but I'll post my experiences and findings here as I learn more.