For as long as I have been using Google Docs you have been able to play videos from within it. But, now, according to Google, “you can now insert your videos into Google Sites, embed them anywhere on the web, and caption them for your viewers.”
Google Sites has added “Google Docs Video” to it’s insert menu, to go along with Google Video and YouTube. From within Google Docs you will now be able to get an embed code, just as you can on a YouTube page. The code will work exactly the same embed code does from other video services. Finally, you can caption videos to make them more accessible for the hearing impaired. This has the added bonus of creating a transcript of your video, which will make it available from within search. According to the Google announcement you can “give it a try, choose Manage caption tracks from the Actions menu for your video, then click Upload caption track… Anyone who has edit access can upload a track.”
There is mention of a gradual roll-out, as these Google releases frequently have. So, it should be available for everyone right now. To check it out you can just visit the Google Docs site.
I was going through the Chrome Web Store to see what cool apps are out there. One thing most don’t know: You can do a lot without paying anything for it. Case in point – Wave Accounting: the online accounting site.
Wave Accounting
I was set back – an accounting program that is FREE? Not a “lite” version, nor a trial, but absolutely, positively nothing but free, FREE.
It looks like the company makes money by working with other banks to help people clean up the “shoebox”. After all, if you get your accounts in order, you can pay your bills on time. If you pay your bills on time, you can get loans. If you get loans, you can make money. Etc, etc, etc.
Wave Accounting came on the scene in November 2010. They have raised $1 Million in funding. The Toronto Canada based business employs 10 people.
Setting up Wave was very straightforward. You sign up for the account, then go straight to a page to enter invoices, expenses and more. You can connect your bank account to the site (which I didn’t do). You can also connect your credit cards and other loans into the system so you have one place to do your accounting.
For a brief time I had Microsoft Money installed on my computer. It was nice to corral all my bills into one system. I guess that this free service is just like Money. Now I know why Microsoft killed the product…
Is Wave Accounting Software Safe?
They boast 256-bit encryption. It does have the Verisign seal. When you log in, you are using an encrypted site, just like you would with your online bank account.
Wave also will back up your data. Since your accounting information is in the cloud, you can access on any machine. Therefore, if something fails, you can still get to your data.
Invoicing at your fingertips.
I hate to write invoices. Before, it was Microsoft Word, emailing each invoice separately. This system seems pretty straightforward, sending the invoice to the customer via email.
This was the main reason I wanted to try the site out. If invoicing was the only thing I used this site for, I would be happy. But the additional option to moderate my expenses and tell me when a bill is due is pretty sweet. I can even set permissions for someone else to view or edit an invoice.
wave invoice via email
What Wave cannot do (just yet)
I don’t see any time tracking. Import features are in beta right now, but I never used Google Docs or FreshBooks for accounting.
The big thing it doesn’t do is give you access when you are not on the internet. Of course, that is always the issue when you are working in the cloud.
I have just started using this software. With any cloud accounting software, you should try to back up your data as much as possible. Nonetheless, if I can get invoices out easier, then I am all for this program. If I can do it for free, well, let me get to work!
Today Google finally released a Docs app for Android. It surprising that it took this long but the fact it’s finally here has been met with a lot of fanfare. The app allows users to create, edit, upload and share their documents. Edits appear the almost instantly for other collaborators. In addition to documents, users can view PDF’s and images. You can even upload new documents or take pictures of text and use Docs’ OCR to convert it.
To get started you will need to search for and download the new app from the Android Market. Surprisingly it’s not a featured page 1 app. In fact, it’s not even the first result for a search of Google Docs – it’s the second.
After it’s installed and you launch the app you will be greeted with the terms of service and some brief instructions about how to use your new app. You will need to click OK to continue, but first you may want to give a quick read-through of the tips for using Google Docs for Android.
Once you are past that then you will be greeted with main Docs screen that allows you to choose from All Items, Collections, Starred, Documents, Images, and More. More consists of Test, Spreadsheets, and Presentations.
There’s a lot to play around with here and I will be doing so over the next few days. It’s not a whole lot different from Docs on your PC, but there is likely to be some minor differences and stumbling blocks. Over the coming days we will be going more in-depth with the various features and letting you know what we find and how it works. In the meantime, if you are using it, tell us what you think in the comments.
For two days in a row the Google Docs team has announced an update to their online office suite offering. Yesterday they enhanced the printing ability of Spreadsheets and today they have added pagination.
The enhancement to Spreadsheets printing in two-fold. The first the addition of of spreadsheets support for Google Cloud Print. When viewing your spreadsheet on a mobile device you will now find a “Print” option just below the document title. You will first need to set up your printer for “the cloud”. Google Cloud Print is supported for Android 2.1+ and iOS 3+.
The second part of the Spreadsheets printer update involved the desktop version of Docs. Google added more print options such as spreadsheet titles, sheet names and page numbers. You can now control which of these you want to print.
Today’s Google Docs update is the addition of pagination. Google claims that it is “another first for web browsers by adding a classic word processing feature—pagination, the ability to see visual pages on your screen.” It is rolling out throughout the days and will be available to all users before tomorrow. For users, this means you will be able to see page-breaks so that you can see how many pages are in a document and change your layout to get the look you want. According to Google “Because we’re able to show you individual pages, we can improve the way other features work too: headers now show up at the top of each page instead of just at the top of your doc, manual page breaks actually move text onto a new page and footnotes appear at the bottom of the pages themselves.” You can also hide page breaks if you prefer a continuous view. Simply click View – Documents View and choose between Paginated and Compact.
Google Docs continues to excel forward as it becomes the best online office suite available. Microsoft may want to get moving on their offering, which is still in private beta.
We knew this was coming, Ivi is in a battle for their survival. I am going to do my best to do a interview with their CEO this week to have available on the The Morning Tech Show. I am at a turning point with the Podcast Awards, info in todays show, plus how your host is operating with a scratched eyeball all that and more in the show.
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