Cloud Computing with Google Docs

If you fancy creating quick and simple web based forms for collecting data online, then nothing could be easier than with ‘Forms’, a great feature in Google Docs that I love and often use with great results.

As such, I want to share the idea with you in this post.

For the uninitiated, Google Docs is an example of cloud computing that allows you to create, edit, store and share, word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the web aka ‘the cloud’.

You don’t need any software on your computer to create these documents, it’s all done through your web browser. Documents that have been created offline using MS Office or OpenOffice, may be easily uploaded and edited within the Google Docs framework.

To get going, you’ll need a free Google Docs account. Create one at http://docs.google.com if you don’t already have one.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Google Docs idea, then the following video will bring you up to speed.

Forms in Google Docs

Once you have your Google Docs account, creating forms is easy and may be done in a few clicks.

Follow the instructions in Google’s help article or watch the walk through video below.

Okay I Understand, So What?

What Google Docs Forms does in essence, is present you with a feature that allows you to create a web based form which can then be used to collect data from any group of individuals whom have access to the Internet.

For example an online booking form can be created for a specific event or perhaps an enquiry form can be created to collect responses from an advertising campaign. By way of another example, a form could be created to harvest people’s opinions in a survey. The uses are endless.

The data collected from the form is automatically dumped into a spreadsheet in Google Docs that was created when the form was created. This data can then be manipulated online through a web browser in Google Docs itself or it may be downloaded into MS Excel for offline working.

Forms may be shared with others by email in the form of a link which is generated when the form is created; admittedly using a very lengthy URL (so a URL shortening service such as Tiny URL maybe useful here) or it can be embedded into a web page using the supplied HTML embed code (which uses an iFrame to display the form on a web page).

Either way, Forms in Google Docs are a great little feature and offer an easy to use method for people to build their own customized web forms without knowing an ounce of HTML.

A recent example of a simple form I’ve created for myself may be seen at http://tinyurl.com/inetworkshops

This form which I’ve shared on Facebook and Twitter is being used to gauge people’s requirements when it comes to our workshops.

Give it a go for yourself.

It’s been snowing

Unless you live in a cave without a TV, internet connection or even a window; then you’ll have noticed that the UK is currently covered in a blanket of snow which is causing major disruption to the working populous and economic damage to the tune of £600 million a day according to the FSB (video clip below).

Airports are shut, schools are taking “snow days”, cars are being abandoned left, right and centre and millions of commuters are staying at home rather than brave the elements to get into work. Who can blame them?

Work from Home

Working from Home

I work from home as a matter of course; my daily commute takes me up the stairs into my office at the back of the house and as such, I’m little affected by the current atmospheric behaviour. To be honest, my car hasn’t moved off the drive since before New Year’s Eve and if the present weather continues, it’s unlikely to.

As you’d expect, I’m all tooled up when it comes to working from home. I have a decent broadband internet connection which allows me to connect seamlessly with my remotely placed associates, I’m mobile courtesy of my Blackberry and I can share and access files amongst my peers and clients thanks to the delights of cloud computing.

Remote Working

However, many of my clients don’t have this luxury as they are tied to their office. So if they can’t get in, they can’t work (a luxury in itself some would say!).

But it doesn’t have to be this way; and if there’s one thing the current conditions have conveniently demonstrated is that more and more companies are grabbing and using the available technology such as VPN’s, cloud computing and IP telephony to deploy an infrastructure that allows their employees to work remotely from the office.

Great for snow days!

Evidence of this can be seen from the public Twitter stream. People are talking about the weather yes (as we Brits like to do anyway), but people are also proudly boasting that the commuting adversity is not an issue for them as they are “working from home”.

Get Tooled Up

So if you’re in business for yourself working out of an office or if you run an office based business that employs people; how badly are you affected by the snow? Is their scope for yourself or your employees to work remotely from home in the event of continuing snow days?

If you’re not already tooled up to cope then perhaps you should be. Think of all that productive time being lost because of a few flakes of snow!

Drop me an email if you’re interested in talking to someone who can get your people all tooled up with the right IT infrastructure that allows them to take guilt free snow days.

So much global warming huh?

Why be tied down with POP3 Email?

If you are a small business that finds its reliance upon the use of a single computer for the management of its POP3 email a bit of a pain then read on for a solution?

Perhaps you use Microsoft’s Outlook™ in the office for your day-to-day emailing needs but also want to access all your email features from home or from another computer whilst on the move, but can’t? Simple you may think, simply log into your account’s webmail facility when you’re not in the office.

Hang on though! This works in principal, but are you finding a few limitations to this method?

Some of the issues you may experiencing might include;

• Mails that are sent from your webmail account do not appear in your “Sent” folder in your office computer’s Outlook.
• Similarly, mails sent from your office computer’s Outlook can’t be accessed from your webmail.
• The mail folders you carefully created in Outlook to file your emails away are not replicated in your webmail.
• Email drafts saved in your Outlook can’t be accessed via webmail and vice versa.

Sound a familiar problem? If so then you’ve hit some of the limitations of POP3 email!

Get Your Head in the Clouds

Get Your Head in the Clouds with Cloud Computing

For the larger business with perhaps 5 or more Users on their network, there’s the Microsoft Exchange Server option which offers some great collaboration and email features which will overcome the above obstacles. But what about those businesses that don’t have the budget for such a solution? How can single Users and small company’s, benefit from better email management and some great document sharing tools?

Get into Google Apps™

The answer is Google Apps. Google Apps is a suite of products that are based in the “cloud” I.e. are an example of Cloud Computing. If you’re familiar with Google’s GMail then you’ll start to understand how Google Apps works as GMail, is one of the products that forms part of the suite. Over the last few weeks we’ve moved a number of our client’s over to the benefits of using Google Apps for their company email.

Here’s Why…

In my business my colleagues and I have successfully used Google Apps for the management of our email for the last 18 months. Here’s how we and those clients’ whom we’ve recently converted, are finding the service beneficial;

• We can access all our emails and email folders from any web connected computer.
• The service seamlessly and simply integrates with our Blackberry phones
• We can still use Outlook as our primary email client in the office or at home or on another computer, whilst still gaining access to all our mails and folders etc. (This is done using the IMAP mail protocol as opposed to POP3 which is built into Google Apps Mail and is supported by Outlook).
• In addition there’s some great document and calendar and collaboration tools that mean we can share word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations with each other and between computers without the need for a complex VPN or separate online document storage service.
• The in built SPAM filtering service is highly efficient which helps keep the rubbish out.

Standard or Premier Edition?

Google Apps offers two versions for the business user, namely;

1. The Standard Edition is free but does have a few feature restrictions and shows adverts on its pages in the same manner as the free GMail service.
2. The Premier Edition which costs $50 (around £32) per User per year offers additional features including more space, advanced Outlook and Blackberry synchronization and is advert free.

Keep Your Domain

Both versions may be used with your existing email domain name (i.e. yourname@yourdomain.co.uk) which means you don’t have to change any of your current email addresses. The mail login and subsequent pages may be customised with your corporate logo and brand colours as can be seen with this example and this one.

An Overview of Gmail in Google Apps

I’m Convinced, Convert Our Mail

If you feel your organisation would benefit from Google Apps email over its current email arrangement, then get in touch.

Either version of Google Apps can be set-up for your organisation* for a one off fee of £50 + vat. We can also offer Google Apps coaching sessions on a one-to-one or group basis for your company.

Click Here to Request a Call Back About Google Apps

* Note: We will need administrative access to your domain name so that some aspects of its DNS can be changed. Your domain administrator will be able to help with this.

I don’t know about you but I am finding that I am turning more and more to web based applications and data storage in the “cloud” rather than desktop software applications and a hard drive that resides on a single machine, for my day-to-day computing needs.

Huh?

Let me explain.

Traditionally the standard approach to running software on a computer is to install a copy of it on the machine that it was to be used on. The User then works with that software as needed at that particular computer. A cost per User in the form of a ‘license fee’, payable to the software issuer is needed to keep things nice and legal and any bugs or problems with the software are solved by installing ‘patches’ or ‘updates’ either from a floppy disk (as was), CD or as now; from the software vendor’s website over the Net. In time the software becomes outdated and the User is pushed into purchasing an ‘upgrade’ which they then re-install into their individual computer.

Think of Microsoft Word™. That’s a piece of word processing software that as a User, you buy a license for, install onto your PC from a CD, download updates from the Microsoft website and in time, purchase an upgrade to the next version. It’s how Microsoft and most other software vendors such as Sage™, Adobe™, Norton™ etc, make their money and is serious business on a global scale. If a second User in your office also needs a copy of Word on their PC, then the whole license purchase, install and update process has to be replicated for each additional machine that requires the software on it.

Times are a Changing

However there’s a new kid on the block when it comes to computing that is really putting the wind-up the major software houses such as Microsoft as it’s hitting them hard where it hurts, namely in the license fee revenue department.

The new kid is called Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing allows Users to access and work with software applications centrally, over the web through their web browser and without the need to purchase and install a piece of software on their computer.

The big benefits of this as far as the User is concerned are:

• The same application can be used on any number of computers so long as they each have a web browser and an Internet connection. There’s no need to install the software on to each machine.
• Updates and upgrades are done centrally by the application host (the company that maintains the software on the web). No need to download updates, install patches etc.
• There are no large licensing fees needed each time an upgrade is needed. Applications in the “Cloud” are paid for by subscription which depending upon the level of subscription, allows any number of Users to access the application.
• Data is stored centrally on remote servers in the ‘Cloud’. This makes the working environment totally portable and independent of any single machine. Imagine, you work on a document in the office using a web based application. Save it. When you get home or move to another office during the day, so long as you can access the web, you can continue working on the same document even if it’s someone else’s computer.

It’s Already Here

Computer applications that are based on Cloud Computing concepts are already here and are being used by people like you and me, half the time without us even realising it.

For example, if you use any of the applications that come with Google Apps, you’re already into Cloud Computing. Similarly if you use one of the web based business accountancy applications that are starting to spring up, then again you’re into Cloud Computing. Similarly Facebook, Flickr and many other social networking sites that store their data online and offer interactivity are a form of Cloud Computing it can be said.

I myself use Google Apps, our online project management tool is based in the Cloud and I manage my Twitter account using a web application called Twithive having switched from a software based one called TweetDeck (which is also very good by the way).

So if you want to free yourself from your PC start to look at Cloud Computing applications. Admittedly I haven’t come across Cloud based equivalents of Microsoft’s Office™ range that are as powerful (that’s the key phrase here) however, no doubt in time some will arrive on the scene.

The modern wonders of mobile internet computing, my BlackBerry and cloud computing mean that even though I was camped up in the middle of a forest, I was able to keep in touch with my associates, monitor e-mails and access files as I needed them in order to keep my business ticking along until I got back.

Who Needs an Office?

Thanks to an internet dongle plugged into my laptop’s USB socket and a suitable airtime subscription, I enjoyed an internet connection of up to 3G speeds. In practice during this break, it was a lot slower than this being in the middle of some trees and all that; but hey, work with me here! This handy device allows me to access files such as word processing documents and presentations across the web that I have stored in the “cloud” using my Google Docs account as well as a spot of web surfing where needed. This together with access to our online project management application which allowed to keep up to speed with current live development projects my team of developers were working on I was still connected, yet back to nature.

My BlackBerry™ allowed me to send and receive emails as though I was in the office, keep up to date with Twitter and my Facebook friends and keep in touch with my associates using Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger: all in real time! Not to mention the ability to make calls (I don’t do texting in case you’re wondering).

I tell ya! Who needs an office?

I Know What You’re Thinking

Now I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking “what’s the point of going on holiday if I’m still going to be tooled up as if I was in the office?”

I can subscribe to this view. However, if you’re a small business owner you’ll know that the cord between you and your business is thick and strong. Business and social lives become blurred at the edges and without regular contact with your ‘baby’ you start to twitch and scratch! Having good connectivity whilst you’re away alleviates the itch and keeps the twitching at bay whilst preventing your business from becoming neglected.

So if you’re in the lucky position of not having to fill in a holiday chit, get yourself mobile web-connected, leave your office behind for a while and take a well deserved break.