docs

Google launched a mobile Google Docs update recently, enabling the writing and editing of text and spreadsheet documents, but a newly-enabled desktop mode now lets any iPad user get Google Docs on the go, for real.

It's not intuitive, but clicking on "Desktop" mode on the bottom of any document you're editing opens up a Google Docs viewer/editor that matches what you'd see in any normal computer web browser. The interface is a bit slow and reacts oddly to the iPad's on-screen keyboard (text was shifted out of the window's viewing range), … Read more

Though it's not as blasphemous as talk of Justin Bieber supposedly playing Marty McFly in some ill-conceived "Back to the Future" remake, the fully licensed video game does seem like a promising extension to the classic story of Marty and Doc Brown.

Developer Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island) plans to episodically release five chapters of Back to the Future: The Game, the first of which is titled "It's About Time." Not much regarding the game's actual gameplay has been disclosed, but the debut trailer does hint that Marty will … Read more

Google has won a major contract to provide Google Apps for an entire federal government agency.

Teaming up with Unisys and two other companies, Google will deploy Google Apps for Government to all 17,000 employees and contractors at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). The GSA handles business for the entire federal government by providing real estate and building management services along with buying assistance to other agencies, according to a Google blog post.

Awarding the $6.7 million contract to Google and its partners, the GSA becomes the first federal agency to migrate all its e-mail to the cloud, … Read more

The FCC is looking into letting people report emergencies over SMS and streaming video

Netflix launches a streaming-only plan, letting people ditch the DVDs

Amazon launches a Black Friday shopping page

Yelp introduces Check-In Offers, giving people discounts for location check-ins

Google TV serves up almost no TV now that Viacom joins the networks that block the service from playing their online content

Amazon allows you to give someone an MP3 as a gift

Google Docs has a Microsoft Office plug-in that lets you sync your desktop documents to Google Docs

Amazon launches … Read more

Google is putting its DocVerse team to use, unleashing a new plug-in for Google Docs that lets offline Microsoft Word documents talk to Web-based Google Docs files.

DocVerse, acquired by Google earlier this year, has ported its software onto Google's network and is ready to let early testers get a crack at Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The software lets Microsoft Office users who also have Google Apps accounts sync their documents with Google without having to work within the Google Docs Web interface, creating a Web-based copy of that native document for sharing and collaboration.

Google's been trying for several years … Read more

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

The makers of FarmVille are set to launch CityVille

Apple had to battle Amazon and Google for rights to The Beatles' music

AT&T has a MiFi wireless router now too, catching up to the other major carriers

You can now edit Google Docs on a mobile device

Google makes peace with book publisher Hachette Livre in France with an agreement to scan and sell digital books

A Japanese vending machine uses facial recognition to recommend a drink based on demographics

With a single new feature added to its online word processor yesterday, Google has diminished many concerns I had about taking the cloud-computing plunge a few months ago.

That feature, autocorrect in Google Docs, fixes common typos such as converting "teh" into "the." In and of itself, it's not a game-changer.

But it carried outsized importance for me because it was one of the things I missed most about Microsoft Word and because it gives me faith that Google Docs is headed in the right direction.

As if to validate my new optimism, Google today announced an improvement that's much larger than a single feature: the ability to edit Google Docs from Android phones, iPhones, and iPads. Google Spreadsheets already were editable with some mobile phone browsers.

Google Docs, which has grown considerably since Google's 2006 acquisition of Writely, consists mainly of word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation modules that compete with Microsoft Office's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It's become a standard-bearer for the Web applications movement and, with Google selling it in premium form along with Gmail for $50 per user per year in the form of Google Apps, Google's next billion-dollar revenue stream after advertising. … Read more

Facebook is holding an event next week as part of the Web 2.0 Summit taking place in San Francisco, and, according to ZDNet, the topic du jour will be deeper integration between the 500 million user-strong social network and Microsoft's Office Web Apps service.

Facebook and Microsoft already collaborate on a variant of the Web-based Office suite called Docs, which the two companies launched together in late April. However, ZDNet says that this new version will be more closely integrated into Facebook's in-box experience, which is said to be getting an overhaul that builds in Microsoft's … Read more

A peek at the source code behind Google Docs by a third-party blog site offers a tantalizing hint of some features that may be around the corner.

The Web site Google Operating System (no relation to Google itself) revealed yesterday that it dug into the source code of Google Docs to find a message that said simply: "Coming soon: Third party applications, cloud printers, and sync devices."

Cloud printing, which lets you print to any local or shared printer without the need for a print driver, is a feature that Google has teased for awhile. The company has … Read more