Hack 2. Collaborate with Others Through Google Docs

With Google Docs, you can collaborate with others on the same document at the same time, and make documents accessible to the world within seconds by publishing them on the Web.

Online applications are born to be collaborative—the program and the data it works on are already potentially accessible from all over the world. Plus, every user will see the same version of that program without having to worry about whether they've installed all the latest patches, because the software runs on Google's servers, which automatically pick up the latest bug fixes and new features.

This collaborative approach requires you to do a bit of rethinking if you're used to desktop office tools. Instead of sending someone an attachment, invite them to a Google document. Instead of discussing a spreadsheet via the phone, email, or instant messenger, use the chat function that's built into Google Spreadsheets (see "Sharing a Spreadsheet," later in this hack). Instead of setting up third-party screen sharing software, you can invite others to your presentation URL and flip the slides for them.

Ironically, by being centralized, the data acts more as if it's decentralized; as the files are stored on Google's servers, which are already accessible to others who provide the needed credentials (their Google Account), Google ensures that you don't need to create a copy of a file to have someone else see it. So instead of dozens of Microsoft Word files scattered around your team's PCs (or in different folders on your intranet), the Google document exists only in that virtual "computing cloud." And Google Docs tracks who edits it, can alert you of changes, and allows you to compare document revisions.

Get Feedback on a Document You're Working On

One common use of collaboration is to ask for feedback on a document you're editing. Your friend, colleague, editor, or boss can add comments to your document, which you can work with in turn. All your collaborator needs for this is a Google Account, as discussed in the beginning of this chapter. (Without a Google Account, others can only view your documents—they cannot modify them.)

Let's start by creating a Google Docs document at http://docs.google.com. Name it "Thai Chicken Recipe." To get the initial recipe, you can go to Google Base at http://base.google.com and click the Recipes link; next, select the cuisine, main ingredient, and more from the drop-down menus, as pictured in Figure 1-6, and choose your preferred dish. You can highlight, copy, then paste the full page content directly into your empty Docs document as shown in Figure 1-7.

If you like to eat but you're no master cook, you can now invite your master cook friend to the document to proofread it. (None of your friends can cook Thai? Visit Google's social network at http://orkut.com and join the 6,500+ member-strong "Thai food lovers" community.) To invite your friend, click Share"Share with others" on top of the editor. Enter your friend's email address—preferably their Gmail address—into the invitation box. (And uncheck the "Invitations may be used by anyone" box, just in case someone else manages to get their hands on the invitation.) When you click the "Invite collaborators" button, your friend gets an email message, shown in Figure 1-8, and can start to edit along.

 

When you have a document open, you can see if someone else is editing it at the same time, thanks to the orange "Also editing now . . ." message at the bottom. Almost instantly, when someone else updates the document, the document you're viewing will change as well, as shown in Figure 1-9. If you're not happy with a revision, you can switch to File"Revision history" and click the link of the last revision you agreed with; that revision will come up in the Google Docs editor for you to review, and you can click the "Revert to this one" button if you'd like.

You can also remove collaborators at any time, using the Share settings.

NOTE

Although you cannot directly chat with your collaborators within the Google Docs document editor, you can visit http://talk.google.com to open a separate, browser-based chat window for background discussions.

A NOTE OF CAUTION By using the Revision history, collaborators with whom you share a document will also be able to see versions of the document made before you shared it. If you want to avoid this, you can make a copy of your document, and then only share the copy.

Publishing a Document for All to See

Instead of granting some people permission to modify your document, you can also publish a document for the whole world to see by clicking SharePublish as web pagePublish document. You will then be provided with a URL like the following:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfp37tn_2g8xrtz

Depending on what you choose, this web page will now either host a static version of the document from the time you published it, or it will be up-to-date to reflect your latest changes (see the "Automatically re-publish . . ." checkbox in the "Share" settings). Readers don't need a Google account to view this plain web page.

Sharing a Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet sharing is even more powerful than sharing a document, because not only will others be able to edit the data with you simultaneously, there's also a chat box attached to the right side of the spreadsheet. To share the document, you first invite collaborators from your contacts via the Share button; after they've clicked on the link in the invitation email that they received, you can switch to the Discuss tab on top to chat with them, as shown in Figure 1-10.

Also, the cell your collaborator is working on at the moment is highlighted in a different color. It's almost as if your spreadsheet turned into a wiki—though even wikis (like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org) usually don't show this much real-time information regarding what others are doing!

For another Google tool supporting real-time group collaboration, give Google Notebook [Hack #14] a try.

Presenting to a Group

Google Presentations has a chat feature similar to the one that Spreadsheets offers. Plus, with Presentations you can take control of the document and move from one slide to the next, so people can follow along in their own browser in real-time.

To share a Presentation with a group, first save the file. Now click SharePublish as web pagePublish document. Or, if you want to share the document with only a select few, pick "Share with others" instead, and invite the other members. If you decide to publish, you will end up with a document URL like the following:

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dfx37tn_24fxbtdz&fs=true

Going to this address will show the presentation on the left side and a group chat on the right. As owner of the document, you'll see a button labeled "Take control of the presentation." Click it, and you can move the slides for others once they choose to follow you, as shown in Figure 1-11.