Google's Office Suite for Web finally gets a new Material designed Homescreen.

About a month back at Google I/O, we were promised to get new Homescreens for Google's Office suite products. Now if you visit Google Docs, Sheets or Slides, you'll be presented with the all new Material design Homescreen.

Previously when you opened those web apps, you were directly presented to the editor. But If you wanted to see your documents, you'd have to browse through all your Google Drive folders. But now with these new homescreens, whenever you open any of these web apps, you'll be presented with all your recent documents, or spreadsheets or presentations in one place. But you can still easily create new documents by hitting that big + button on the bottom right of any page.

These new Homescreens also allow to quickly switch to other apps. Just hit it and choose from Docs, Sheets or Slides. You can go to your Drive too. These resembles very much with Android counterparts. There's also an overflow menu button just like in Android that'll allow you to rename, remove or open in a new tab.

But on a sad note, these new changes brought new bugs. I was trying to get my documents to these new Homescreens but I'm out of luck. Trying to open them from Drive also was no good. Also when I go to Google Drive, I just get a glimpse of my files and folders and then they all disappear and are replaced by a drawing showing different devices and a text saying I can access my stuff on every device.

Hope this is just a minor bug that hasn't affected more people. Because more and more people have started relying on Google's free and evolving Office Suite. And throwing a major bug on professionals' faces wouldn't be a good for Google.

Update: The files disappearing bug seems to be already resolved.

Google donated $100,000 to help people take shower on a Bus.

Google Impact Challenge is a Google Venture that help non-profits pursue their goals. The Impact Challenge helps non-profits invent technology that can help tackle and transform lives around the world.

While on one hand, Google's commute buses have been stopped or Google has pay for using those commute buses on San Francisco streets, while on the other side Google invested about $100,000 in a Google Bus project.

A San Francisco non-profit Lava Mae, just showed a trial version of its Bus that aims to give showers to those homeless people who live by the Bay Area. This project was funded as a part of Google Impact Challenge.

Lava Mae founder Doniece Sandoval, a marketing veteran said such a mobile sanitary station was essential for the Human Rights of the city's homeless.

"You're living on the streets and you're filthy, you're trying to improve your circumstances," she told The Assiciated Press. "But you can't interview for a job, you can't apply for housing and get disconnected from the sense of humanity."

The non-profit bought a bus and refurbished it at a cost of about $75,000. The bus has 2 bathrooms with hot showers, shampoo, soap and towels. Watch this video to get into details about how this venture will really help homeless people of the Bay Area.

Project Athena finally predicts some L flavour for Chrome.

About a couple months back, Google unveiled Project Athena that is intended to bring a new User Interface and Window Manager to Chrome OS. After then we seldom heard about advancement in the project. Only till now.

"Athena is a brand new project the Chromium OS team is experimenting with in order to bring a new kind of user experience."

Today +François Beaufort  unveiled on a Google+ post the new look for window manager in the Chrome OS.

Window Manager on Athena build

What can be made out from the look is that it bears much resemblance to the Android L's recent apps view. Windows stacked over each other. The look sure makes us think of more resemblance of Android L to be ported to Chrome OS like the notifications. Syncing your Android's notifications on your Chromebook with the new Android L notification bar UI would be so cool. That's just a personal preference though but looking at this UI forces me to think if it would be more difficult now to navigate through windows in Athena when you'll first have to go to Window Manager and then select the window than what we already use and are accustomed to. Changing tabs is much more easier by just clicking the desired tab instead of this approach (If ever this approach is undertaken).

Recent Apps screen on Android L

We still can't be so sure as to what Google's Chromium OS team has planned for Athena but I personally think Google will surely come up with a totally different method of interacting with your browser. After all its the same company that has showed the potential of a browser to be used as an entire OS.

Chrome OS team is hiring.

Chrome OS is essentially a full blown chrome browser designed on the Linux kernel to work as an OS for cheap hardware running web applications.

Chrome OS unlike other full OSes gets regular updates from Google even for smallest change and the best thing is that you don't have to do anything. Chrome OS has evolved greatly since it was first announced like getting offline document editing, saving media for offline access and a lot other stuff.

Evolution reminds me of the post I saw on Google+ by +Albert Bodenhamer. Google is hiring more employees for its Chrome OS team.

In the time when companies like Microsoft and others are cutting jobs, Google is hiring more people to develop its rival platform to Microsoft. Chrome OS has taken a significant market share of laptops chiefly because its super affordable. And with the rumours of MediaTek working to provide its chips for Chromebooks, prices getting even lower, it's be interesting to see what Google has for us cooking in their kitchen.

With Google wanting to hire more employees, we'll be seeing more Chromebooks, a better Chrome OS and cheaper ones too, if Mediatek is successful enough to provide chips to Chromebooks.

You can see the original post here.

And if you think of yourself as eligible enough for this job, you can also submit your resume to this email id.

Google I/O is around the corner. What are the expectations.?

For those non-techies reading this post, Google I/O is an annual developer-focused conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. Last year at Google I/O, we expected a lot of new announcements like new Android version, new Nexus 10 and what not. But we learned that last year's was a more developer focused conference. They announced more software features than hardware. But is this going to happen again in 2014.?   Last year Google announced a slew of new software features like the PlayStore beta testing program, Android Studio, an IDE specially made for Android developers, Play Games and also did improvements to Google Cloud Messaging. They didn't announce a new full size tablet, a new Android version, or the Moto X that everyone thought Google would do.. But this year, we do expect Google to announce more hardware products unlike last time.

A refreshed Full Size Tablet.... The last full size that we got from Google was announced back in October, 2012.. That a lot of time for one product to retain the badge of flagship... So a revision to Google's Nexus 10 is really expected this time. If this time we are kept from a refreshed Nexus 10, We may start to believe that Google has lost faith in 10 inch tablets.   We'd also be happy if Google shows us a Nexus 8 that's been pegged for long.

Chromebook Pixel 2 I do agree that the original Chromebook pixel had a pretty hefty price tag but such a high resolution screen doesn't come in cheap.. Its also redundant for a tablet that's based solely on the cloud to have such a hefty price tag, but the Pixel did set a benchmark for other Chromebooks. But that was then. Time's changed, we need better specs under the hood let alone the display. Maybe beefed up RAM and solid state storage for storing more movies offline... And how can we forget battery life. Getting better battery life won't do any bad.

Android Wear When Google announced Android Wear, Moto and LG were the first to jump the ship. Both have their smartwatches running Android Wear under development for quite sometime. Some online retailer did accidently reveal specs of both the smart watches but thats to be taken with a grain of salt. The tech community expects that the LG G Watch will be given away at Google I/O this year. I can't swear to it unless Google actually does it...

Google Glass NOT going public. Google Glass has been a controversial topic all year long after several incident of people getting beaten up to banning Glass in various Public places. So we can't expect Google to put up Glass for consumers to buy just yet.

Android in Car. Google announced the Open Automotive Alliance this January but nothing has come to fruition yet. With Apple already working with CarPlay, We expect Google to work fast with the OAA (Open Automotive Alliance) and show us some its rival to CarPlay..

Project ARA We did see a lot of development here. They partnered with several companies like 3D Systems and Sennheiser for making modular parts. Now we want to see the ARA devices in hands of developers to tinker.

New Version of Android We're not sure what it'll be called or even if its going to be announced here at I/O but the hope goes on. With all the leaks of Google's redesign to Android and unifying UIs across all platforms with the Quantum Paper, we expect the new Version of Android to be a major UI overhaul after IceCream Sandwich.

DART
Dart is an open-source Web programming language developed by Google. It was unveiled at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, October 10–12, 2011. The goal of Dart is "ultimately to replace JavaScript for of web development on the open web platform". There are quite a few sessions dedicated to Dart this year. So after seeing Apple announce Swift, Google should move fast with Dart in hands..  

What are you expecting from Google this year.? Hit up in the comments.

Google releases standalone apps for Docs and Sheets.

We all know Google has been trying to give a tough competition to Microsoft's one of the most important revenue source with its online Docs, Sheets and Slides web apps. And it has been quite successful with its approach as Students and various organisations have been moving to Google's productivity suite in wake of trying to reduce expenses by not buying Microsoft Office. Also a part of its increasing popularity is due to rise in sales of ChromeBooks and Android devices that bode well with Google's services.





For Android Google already has Quick Office for editing Microsoft Office compatible documents while Google Drive did a pretty good job with Google's office formats.

 

But today, Google has launched the standalone apps for Google Docs and Google Sheets for Android and iOS. Now this raises the question as to why Google need 3 different apps to deal with productivity.? Why is Google so confused as to what to do properly.?

For the tech geek customers, this may not be that much of a concern, but for an average consumer, this is creating too much of confusion as they couldn't figure out the purpose of each services. Google should now either combine all of these services in QuickOffice or better, separate productivity aspect of the Google Drive app for Android and iOS and combine all Google's productivity suite in one app rather than 2 different apps: Docs and Sheets and keep QuickOffice for editing Microsoft compatible documents.





 

With the 30 minute testing of both the apps (Android versions) that I've done, I could find no remarkable difference in functionality of the Docs and Sheets compared to the the functionality Google Drive app gives. Although if you yourself want to try out the apps, here's the link to the Android and iOS apps.

Update: Google has now updated its Drive app and removed document editing support from the app. Instead, it'll prompt you to download the standalone apps.

Google Docs Android.

Google Sheets Android

 

Google Docs iOS

Google Sheets iOS