exertia

Google has launched Google Shakespeare - a site that allows readers to browse / read all 37 of the Bard's plays. Readers can even plug in words, such as "to be or not to be" from Hamlet, and immediately be taken to that part of the play.

Google Book Search, the Google product which houses the Shakespeare site, allows users to view books or parts of books through their Web browsers if the copyright has expired or a publisher has given permission to do so.

The newest addition to Google Labs - Google Browser Sync - allows you to sync your browser favorites, cookies, passwords and more between different machines. This is one tool I personally have been looking forward to for a long time…

Unfortunately for IE users, GBS currently works only on Firefox. It offers various options to restrict the data you want to share and can also encrypt it if needed. Go check it out and while you're there, check out the other cool stuff they have for Mozilla Firefox users!

After offering an online alternative to Word by acquiring the online word processor Writely, Google has now launched Google Spreadsheets as an online rival to Excel. NYTimes reports:

• It would make it possible for as many as 10 people to simultaneously edit a spreadsheet document online and chat about it using Google’s instant messaging program.
• The new service will be able to handle several hundred formulas used to manipulate data in Excel, but not more complex functions like macros.
• The ability for many people to collaborate was quite different from the standard method of e-mailing files back and forth.

It allows uploads of existing Excel or Comma-separated values (CSV) files and your work can be exported into Excel, CSV or HTML formats. The service currently lacks charts functionality but one can imagine a creative mind at Google linking up the Spreadsheets with Google Gapminder (covered in an earlier post) to create professional charts.

These tools can really open up the vistas for online collaborative working especially between people in different locations / countries. Also, the startup costs and installation efforts are minimal (zero!) enabling mass adoption in developing economies.