GoogleOffice?

Today Google and Sun are having a press conference in which they are rumoured to announce an Office Suite based on StarOffice/OpenOffice, and accessible via a web browser. If you don’t know what that would look like, you should have a look at Writley, a web based word processor.
I believe this to be a really interesting step. Imagine being able to write things with the same word processor at home, at a friend’s place, at some internet cafe,… no more messing with an other version/software then the one you’re used too.
Google could also give you free space like Gmail’s 2.6GB to store your documents, so you could access them at any time/any place. No need to sort them or delete them: just archive and use Google Search to retrieve them… Looks like Google is taking over… though I really hope this rumour to be true. It all sounds very useful, and I’m sure Google could make something good out of it.

Definitely to be continued…

links:
Dirson’s blog (rumour source)
PC World article

PS: GMail was again updated with a few new features:

Auto-save
We spent 20 minutes writing this entry, and then the browser crashed. Good thing there’s auto-save. It saves. Automatically.

Export contacts
Export your Gmail Contacts and save them in a file for back-up or to use in another account or service–great if you’re using Gmail’s free POP access. Learn more

and in case you hadn’t noticed, you now have 100 invites, instead of 50.

1. Usayd Says:
   October 4th, 2005 at 6:09 pm

   Sounds prettey damn amazing actually! :thumbup:
   Thanks for the link to Writely I hadn’t actually tried that out, prettey useful if you don’t have word (who doesn’t have word?!). It certainly looks like google are pwning after all. :alert:

2. Usayd Says:
   October 4th, 2005 at 6:15 pm

   Funny google problem here: Taiwan to Google: We’re not a China province

3. Sean C. Says:
   October 11th, 2005 at 5:46 am

   N.B: The export contacts feature — I’ll hazard a guess that the exported contacts would work with KDE’s Kaddressebook (also interfaced with KDE’s Kontact), and GNOME/Ximian Evolution, and (not to neglect) the (common) MS Outlook. So, you could integrate your GMail contacts with the contact lists of your desktop address-book/scheduling apps.

   Anyone is welcome to correct me about it, and please do, if I am wrong.

   In what I can conjecture about it: It should be that GMail would export vCard files.

   vCard files can be imported , even into PDA and cel-phone address books, in addition to those of the address books of the aforementioned, named software applications.

   FYI: In the domains of Linux, OS-X, and (presumably) Qtopia(r) — regarding contacts, scheduling, and synchronization between devices:
   KDE PIM works
   GNOME Evolution homepage

   Like as footnotes:

   I’ve heard that KDE and GNOME can work with MS-Windows. I’d guess it wouldn’t be as snazzy as with Linux, but I’ve heard it could work. Cygwin might be required, for such. though I haven’t checked it for this.

   I suggest Ubuntu as a first desktop Linux OS. Their LiveCD might be right cozy to use.

   I use Debian myself; Ubuntu is based on Debian, is updated more frequently (In the Debian release process, Debian developers take a while to ensure that the whole OS works right, but I trust that it would work fine in Ubuntu, regardless of this difference in policy) and Ubuntu may seem (speaking of sofware and sites) to have a kinder face to it.

   There is, also, KUbuntu, such that is based on Ubuntu and uses KDE in preference to (perhaps in exlcusion to) GNOME.

   (I have heard that Ubuntu developers prefer GNOME in exclusion to KDE — not that I would, honestly, but they do. Debian includes both, comprehensively. )

   Of course, It is up to the user (or the admin) ultimately, to decide on the window-manager/desktop-environment and the OS

   KDE is well-liked by people. The KDE window manager, specifically, has a comfortable, common appearance/look-and-feel to it. KDE seems to aways run pretty efficiently on older boxes, also. (GNOME’s flashy pixmap and SVG-based themes will lag older boxes, though not all GNOME themes use pixmaps as such)

   Some might still prefer GNOME (e.g. gnome-panel and Nautlius, which are some nice stand-alone applications, however, not requiring an explicit adoption of any one “desktop system”)

   I use Sawfish as a window-manager — neither KDE’s desktop nor Metacity (favorite of GNOME) and not Enlightement (a.k.a E), Icewm, WindowMaker, GNUStep, … — and some KDE apps and some GNOME apps, and maybe some using neither GNOME nor KDE ‘libraries’ and not using QT (KDE) or GTK (GNOME) as the GUI toolkit; gratefully, when you’re familiar with it, it works out pretty nicely.