Google Apps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Unlocking the Power of Google Applications

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.

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.