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Product Description
Can Google applications really become an alternative to the venerable Microsoft Office suite? Conventional wisdom may say no, but practical wisdom says otherwise. Right now, 100,000 small businesses are currently running trials of Google office applications. So are large corporations such as General Electric and Proctor & Gamble. Google Apps Hacks gets you in on the action with several ingenious ways to push Google's web, mobile, and desktop apps to the limit.
The scores of clever hacks and workarounds in this book help you get more than the obvious out of a whole host of Google's web-based applications for word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint-style presentations, email, calendar, and more by giving you ways to exploit the suite's unique network functionality. You get plenty of ways to tinker with:
- Google Documents -- Share and edit documents with others in real time, view them on the run with Google Docs mobile service, and use Google Notebook for web research
- Google Spreadsheets -- Add real-time data to spreadsheets, and generate charts and tables you can embed in web pages
- Google Presentations -- View them on a mobile phone and save them as video
- Gmail -- Send email to and from a mobile phone, adjust Gmail's layout with a style sheet, and a lot more
- iGoogle -- Create your own gadgets, program a screenscraper, add Flash games, and more
- Google Calendar -- Add web content events, public calendars, and your Outlook Calendar to this application
- Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google SketchUp: the new 3D modeling software tool
- Picasa, YouTube, and Google Video -- discover new ways to customize and use these media management apps
In addition, Google Apps Hacks outlines ways you can create a simple web site with nothing but Google tools, including Page Creator, Blogger, Google Analytics, and content from other Google apps. This amazing collection just might convince you that Microsoft Office is not the last word in business applications. The price is certainly right.
About the Author
Born in 1977, Philipp Lenssen is a web developer, blogger and author from Germany. Since 2003, Philipp runs Google Blogoscoped at blogoscoped.com, a daily news source started in Malaysia covering all things Google, from Gmail, Orkut and web search to Google Docs, usability issues, YouTube and everything in-between. The blog also spawned a book called 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Philipp likes to tinker with programming, drawing, writing and game design, and has a special interest in the intersections among those areas.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I should confess that this book wasn't what I thought it was. I was interested in reading it because I misread the title. I thought it was about the Google App Engine - which is a technology that I really want to spend some time investigating. But it wasn't about the Google App engine, it was about Google Apps - the set of online applications that Google have been introducing over the last few years.
That misunderstanding meant that I had to adjust my expectations of the book somewhat. Instead of a book aimed at developers explaining the inner detail of a technology, I got a book which was firmly aimed at end users.
I don't often read computer books aimed at end users. I find that I'm not in the target audience. Unless an application is very complex then I like to think that I can work out how to use it without resorting to manuals. Of course that means that I often end up using only a small fraction of the functionality of an application.
The Google application set is no exception to this rule. I've been using many of the Google applications for some time. In particular I've started to write a lot of documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs, the online office suite which is intended as a replacement for Microsoft Office. I tend to work on several different computers so having my documents available on a web site means that the latest version is available to me on any computer.
Google Docs is one of the most widely-used parts of the Google application set and it's a good place for this book to start. The first four chapters present an over view of the applications and then one chapter each concentrating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As expected I found that I already knew most of what was described in the early parts of the chapters, but I found myself saying "oh, that's useful" quite a lot towards the ends of the chapters as I read about features that I hadn't come across before. For example, I had no idea that the spreadsheet application was able to access data from external web sites and extract information which can be used in your calculations. I'm sure I'll find that useful in the future.
The next chapter talks about what is probably the best-known Google application - Gmail (or, as it's known in the UK, GoogleMail). I have a Gmail account, but currently I only use it for a couple of high-volume mailing lists. I certainly learned a lot about Gmail and I'll probably start using it a bit more now. This chapter, however, demonstrated the obvious problem about using a book to learn about this products - improvements to the Google applications appear frequently and some of the information in the book is already slightly out of date.
Subsequent chapters go into other parts of the Google application set in a similar level of detail. Google Calendar, iGoogle (the customisable Google homepage) and Google Reader all get a chapter to themselves. Then we have a few chapters that cover multiple projects. There's a chapter on Picassa and YouTube, one on Google Maps, Google Earth and SketchUp (the last of which I had never heard of) and one on Blogger. The final chapter is about tracking the success of your sites using Google Analytics. In just about every chapter I learned something that will be useful to be.
All in all, I found this book well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in making better use of the Google applications. There are only two caveats that you should consider. Firstly, there's the fact that it's a very wide-ranging book and I think that few people would use all of the applications and therefore find all of the chapters useful. Secondly, as I mentioned above, all of the Google applications are being updated and improved at an incredible rate, so this is definitely going to be a book with a rather short shelf life.
That misunderstanding meant that I had to adjust my expectations of the book somewhat. Instead of a book aimed at developers explaining the inner detail of a technology, I got a book which was firmly aimed at end users.
I don't often read computer books aimed at end users. I find that I'm not in the target audience. Unless an application is very complex then I like to think that I can work out how to use it without resorting to manuals. Of course that means that I often end up using only a small fraction of the functionality of an application.
The Google application set is no exception to this rule. I've been using many of the Google applications for some time. In particular I've started to write a lot of documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs, the online office suite which is intended as a replacement for Microsoft Office. I tend to work on several different computers so having my documents available on a web site means that the latest version is available to me on any computer.
Google Docs is one of the most widely-used parts of the Google application set and it's a good place for this book to start. The first four chapters present an over view of the applications and then one chapter each concentrating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As expected I found that I already knew most of what was described in the early parts of the chapters, but I found myself saying "oh, that's useful" quite a lot towards the ends of the chapters as I read about features that I hadn't come across before. For example, I had no idea that the spreadsheet application was able to access data from external web sites and extract information which can be used in your calculations. I'm sure I'll find that useful in the future.
The next chapter talks about what is probably the best-known Google application - Gmail (or, as it's known in the UK, GoogleMail). I have a Gmail account, but currently I only use it for a couple of high-volume mailing lists. I certainly learned a lot about Gmail and I'll probably start using it a bit more now. This chapter, however, demonstrated the obvious problem about using a book to learn about this products - improvements to the Google applications appear frequently and some of the information in the book is already slightly out of date.
Subsequent chapters go into other parts of the Google application set in a similar level of detail. Google Calendar, iGoogle (the customisable Google homepage) and Google Reader all get a chapter to themselves. Then we have a few chapters that cover multiple projects. There's a chapter on Picassa and YouTube, one on Google Maps, Google Earth and SketchUp (the last of which I had never heard of) and one on Blogger. The final chapter is about tracking the success of your sites using Google Analytics. In just about every chapter I learned something that will be useful to be.
All in all, I found this book well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in making better use of the Google applications. There are only two caveats that you should consider. Firstly, there's the fact that it's a very wide-ranging book and I think that few people would use all of the applications and therefore find all of the chapters useful. Secondly, as I mentioned above, all of the Google applications are being updated and improved at an incredible rate, so this is definitely going to be a book with a rather short shelf life.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Life in the Age of Google Web Apps
30 April 2008
Format:Paperback
§
Sometimes I wonder how Microsoft can presume to compete with Google in the Web world. So much depends on search nowadays -- the Internet is one big store of valuable information. Yet I have to use an unsupported freeware utility to search my little Windows XP hard drive because the search feature that comes with the operating system is so slow and inflexible.
**Google Apps Hacks** introduced me to a Google universe that was even bigger than I had expected. I expected --and got-- lots of material on plugging into Google maps (lots of people are taking advantage of the possibilities here) and lots of tips on using GMail, gadgets, calendars and news feeds.
The biggest surprises for me were contained in the chapters on Google Docs. Part of the material was basic "how-to" and "did you know that..." information to help get acquainted with the features of Google word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. In fact, it appears that this book itself was collaboratively composed by Philipp Lenssen along with O'Reilly staff with Google Docs.
I was most impressed by how easy and flexible the spreadsheet application is to use. The author provides a pile of tricks and tips useful for both the ordinary user and the programmer.
This book should attract programmers (and other Web citizens) who want to investigate and test drive the latest cool things that many people are having fun with -- and a bunch more are making money from.
§
Sometimes I wonder how Microsoft can presume to compete with Google in the Web world. So much depends on search nowadays -- the Internet is one big store of valuable information. Yet I have to use an unsupported freeware utility to search my little Windows XP hard drive because the search feature that comes with the operating system is so slow and inflexible.
**Google Apps Hacks** introduced me to a Google universe that was even bigger than I had expected. I expected --and got-- lots of material on plugging into Google maps (lots of people are taking advantage of the possibilities here) and lots of tips on using GMail, gadgets, calendars and news feeds.
The biggest surprises for me were contained in the chapters on Google Docs. Part of the material was basic "how-to" and "did you know that..." information to help get acquainted with the features of Google word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. In fact, it appears that this book itself was collaboratively composed by Philipp Lenssen along with O'Reilly staff with Google Docs.
I was most impressed by how easy and flexible the spreadsheet application is to use. The author provides a pile of tricks and tips useful for both the ordinary user and the programmer.
This book should attract programmers (and other Web citizens) who want to investigate and test drive the latest cool things that many people are having fun with -- and a bunch more are making money from.
§
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Not what I expected
29 July 2008
Format:Paperback
The word 'Hacks' implied secrets, insider information, or the ability to do something others cannot. I checked the index before I bought it. I wanted some insight on how to program my own Google Apps. I thought this book had some. But there was really nothing useful for a programmer here. The book gave little more than what you can find online in tutorials. Nice book in terms of explaining what Google Apps are and how to use them in a Google domain, but no insider information here.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Opened my eyes to quite a few new Google tricks I haven't tried...
21 July 2008
Format:Paperback
I happily take advantage of a number of Google applications such as Gmail, iGoogle, Google Calendar, and a few other things. But there's more to the Google Apps family than that, and I know I'm not getting all I can out of the offerings. After going through Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen, I have a number of new tricks to try out both on stuff I already use as well as a few other apps. Fun stuff!
Contents:
Meet The Google Docs Family; The Google Docs Family - Google Documents; The Google Docs Family - Google Spreadsheets; The Google Docs Family - Google Presentation; Become a Gmail Power User; Customize Your Google Home Page; Manage Your Events With Google Calendar; Keep Up On News With Google Reader; Manage Your Photos And Videos With Picasa and YouTube; Create Your Own Home Page, Blog, or Group; Dive Into Google Maps, Google Earth, and Sketchup 3D; Google Analytics And Beyond - Market Your Site, Track Visitors
Credits; Index
This book follows the same format as other O'Reilly Hack titles. For each of the chapters, you get a number of tricks, or "hacks", that show you how to do things that may not be intuitively obvious. There's a difficulty meter after each hack title that gives you a clue as to whether its something that is easy to pull off or something that takes a degree of technical skill. The first couple of hacks in each chapter tend to be introductory in nature. They explain the package and get you started. For instance, the first hack in the first chapter is "How to Get Your Google Account". Likewise, the first hack in the iGoogle chapter has you adding Google tools to your iGoogle home page. The hacks get more in-depth after that, such as "Backing Up Your Email" or "Create Google Maps Overlays On the Fly". I personally was intrigued by some of the possibilities in the Google Spreadsheets area. "Add Live Data to Your Spreadsheet" was interesting, as was "Automatically Complete Lists of Related Items". That one is completely unexpected, and shows the power of integration with the Google search engine results. There's also a way to import data from web sites into a Google spreadsheet. That has some particular interest for a project I'd like to do. Finally, there was a *really* cool hack to show how to track packages via RSS using Google Reader. That one will be getting some significant use with my next Amazon order...
As with all Hacks titles, some items will be absolute gems for you, while others will hold no interest. That's OK, and it's to be expected. All it takes is one or two hacks to make a radical change in the way you do things. In terms of usefulness, Google Apps Hacks ranks up there with the best of the Hacks titles.
Contents:
Meet The Google Docs Family; The Google Docs Family - Google Documents; The Google Docs Family - Google Spreadsheets; The Google Docs Family - Google Presentation; Become a Gmail Power User; Customize Your Google Home Page; Manage Your Events With Google Calendar; Keep Up On News With Google Reader; Manage Your Photos And Videos With Picasa and YouTube; Create Your Own Home Page, Blog, or Group; Dive Into Google Maps, Google Earth, and Sketchup 3D; Google Analytics And Beyond - Market Your Site, Track Visitors
Credits; Index
This book follows the same format as other O'Reilly Hack titles. For each of the chapters, you get a number of tricks, or "hacks", that show you how to do things that may not be intuitively obvious. There's a difficulty meter after each hack title that gives you a clue as to whether its something that is easy to pull off or something that takes a degree of technical skill. The first couple of hacks in each chapter tend to be introductory in nature. They explain the package and get you started. For instance, the first hack in the first chapter is "How to Get Your Google Account". Likewise, the first hack in the iGoogle chapter has you adding Google tools to your iGoogle home page. The hacks get more in-depth after that, such as "Backing Up Your Email" or "Create Google Maps Overlays On the Fly". I personally was intrigued by some of the possibilities in the Google Spreadsheets area. "Add Live Data to Your Spreadsheet" was interesting, as was "Automatically Complete Lists of Related Items". That one is completely unexpected, and shows the power of integration with the Google search engine results. There's also a way to import data from web sites into a Google spreadsheet. That has some particular interest for a project I'd like to do. Finally, there was a *really* cool hack to show how to track packages via RSS using Google Reader. That one will be getting some significant use with my next Amazon order...
As with all Hacks titles, some items will be absolute gems for you, while others will hold no interest. That's OK, and it's to be expected. All it takes is one or two hacks to make a radical change in the way you do things. In terms of usefulness, Google Apps Hacks ranks up there with the best of the Hacks titles.
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