Drag and Drop Upload in Google Docs

Drag and Drop Upload in Google Docs: "Google Docs added support for drag and drop uploads, a feature that's already available in Gmail. The main advantage is that the new feature doesn't use Flash or another plug-in, so it should be more reliable.

'If you're using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you'll be able to quickly drag files into the drop area and shoot them up to the cloud,' informs the Google Docs blog.


In the near future, this option could be used to upload folders, not just multiple files. Google Chrome already supports directory upload using the input tag.

Google Docs also added a menu option that lets you hide the title bar: View > Compact Controls. It's only available in the new document editor and it's probably more useful than the 'hide controls' feature from the previous version of the editor.

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Google Hotpot: Local Recommendations from Friends

Google Hotpot: Local Recommendations from Friends: "Google launched a new service called Hotpot that promises to improve local search results using recommendations from your friends. 'With Hotpot, we're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy,' explains Google.

To get useful recommendations, you first need to share your ratings with your friends, but Hotpot's main problem is that it's not connected to any social network. When you first visit the service, Google asks you to enter a nickname for Google Places and to send invitations to some of your Gmail contacts. You're creating a new contacts group in a standalone application, instead of using an existing list of friends.



Google Hotpot is mostly useful when you try to find a place using Google's local search engine. Google personalizes the results by promoting the local businesses recommended by your friends.


Unfortunately, Hotpot is a completely unnecessary service, considering that you could already review places and that the reviews were already public. Google Maps was one of the first Google services that integrated with Google Profiles, so sharing your ratings with your friends was the obvious next step. Google Reader did that in 2007, but many users were unhappy because their favorite posts were automatically shared with Google Talk contacts and some of those contacts were automatically added by Google. Two years later, Google Buzz made the same mistake by automatically subscribing users to the list of Google Talk friends.

Google will never develop successful social services until users are able to create a list of friends that could be used in multiple services. To avoid the backslash from the Google Buzz launch, Google Hotpot asks you to manually add friends, but maintaining separate lists of friends is cumbersome.

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Google Docs AutoCorrect

Google Docs AutoCorrect: "If you frequently make a mistake when you type a word in Google Docs, you can now ask Google to automatically correct the mistake for you. Right-click on the word, select 'AutoCorrect' and pick the most appropriate correction.


By default, Google Docs automatically converts (c) to the copyright sign ©, 1/2 to ½, but you can add other rules to the 'Text substitution' section of the preferences dialog.


Google Docs also added LaTeX shortcuts to the equation editor and you can now insert images inside of a cell in a spreadsheet.

{ via Google Docs Blog }

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