David Notik

Seems Google Spreadsheet is to launch tomorrow.

Rochelle [Google product manager] said the program's main goal is to make it easier for family, friends or co-workers to gain access to the same spreadsheet from different computers at different times, enabling a group of authorized users to add and edit data without having to e-mail attachments back and forth.

"We are totally focused on the sharing aspect," he said.

With this product, Google will have best-in-class e-mail (Gmail), calendaring (Google Calendar), and now spreadsheets (Google Spreadsheet) -- all web-based, nothing to install, accessible from anywhere, and with killer sharing features. Easy to see why the Microsoft empire is being challenged, eh? And that's just looking at the obvious front.

At 15 years old, I was missing alot of school. I was spending many a late night on my computer, and failing to get up at 6AM (if I had even gone to sleep) and be on my way. I was online, by way of a phone wire I had pulled through the heating vent in the ceiling of the basement in my parent's home. I was savoring the relative peace and tranquility of the nights (I have 6 siblings), not to mention the superior connectivity (we shared one phone line at the time).

School, when I made it, paled in comparison to my little world on the computer. Mind you, I went to a great school by most measures, and I regard many of my teachers very highly. Yet, I found most of it uninspiring and unchallenging, and my classmates even more so. (My terrible teens weren't a help either.) I felt like I was somewhere else. And I was.

Google's done it again. Masked in yesterday's seemingly mediocre announcements during Google's Press Day 2006, came what I consider to be major news: Google knows what the future of search looks like, and is well on the way to implementing it.

Then again, maybe Google did in fact let us in on the bigger news, though I'd venture to say most did not understand the enormity of what was being said. Take this quote from Google's press release:

The products all incorporate new capabilities that leverage user communities, enabling users to either share more information with others or benefit from other users' expertise to improve the accuracy of search results.

There are reasons Google is revered, not the least amongst the web development types. Google has really demonstrated powerful web applications, and brought to the forefront an existing web application technique that has since come to be known as Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). It's how you get the effect of dragging through the whole globe on Google Maps, spellchecking and autosave on Gmail (not to mention its speediness), and other slick functionality previously rarely seen on the web.

So, in classic Google style, their latest unveiling is a web-based web page creator (go figure) called the Google Page Creator, with all the great Ajax goodness. Now, even my Dad can figure out how to put up a simple little web page, using an intuitive, responsive tool. More here.

Shalom can mean either hello or goodbye in Hebrew.

In this case it means hello. Today, Google announced the official launch of its operations in Israel.

From one article:

Woodside added that Google would “convert” most of its products to Hebrew within the next 18 months.

From another article:

"Israelis are chronic searchers. The search is the main use they make of Internet, while for Americans, the main use of Internet is e-mail. The Israeli surfer adopts technologies faster," TheMarker quoted Brand as saying.

and:

And then there was snow. By Sunday, New York City was blanketed in it, and I eventually set out from my city apartment with no plan or purpose.

East 73rd Street.

A pleasant calm, a magical serenity, and yet the air abuzz with an almost electric positive energy. Smiling faces, a child's shriek and a burst of his father's laughter from afar.

2nd Avenue bus lines still running.

Warm bundles of people, a dazzling array of colors and clothing. Dapper doormen scraping concrete with their shovels as they work to be the first to clear the front of their building.

So Seattle didn't win the Super Bowl. Bummer for us Seattelites, thrilled to even just see the Hawks make it to the Bowl for their first time. Next year, perhaps.

But hey, the commercials were great. And this year, all the commercials are being made available after the game, including on Google Video.

While checking them out, I noticed Google Video now lets me embed videos in my own pages. Yet another small step for Web kind.

So, here are my two favorites:

Hummer commercial. And no, I don't endorse huge gas-guzzling personal vehicles.

The United States government asked that leading search engines give over information on what their users search for. It said it wanted this information as part of the Bush administration's appeal over COPPA, the Child Online Privacy Protection Act -- more specifically, to prove that child pornography was indeed a serious problem warranting government regulation.

Yahoo, AOL, and MSN complied. Google, however, resisted. After narrowing its initial request, the government now wants all search queries for an entire week -- quite a lot of data, considering Google processes hundreds of millions of searches a day. And the information would not contain any personally identifiable information. Still, Google is resisting the pressure, saying it will fight the request "vigorously".

Google cited various reasons it would not comply, from the significant resources necessary to complete the request to the fact that it's not a party in the government's case and its request was "overreaching". But what they've really done is throw the case into the spotlight, prompting novel questions about privacy in a connected world.

Google just announced the ability to take your Google personalized homepage with you on the go. Called Mobile Personalized Home, the service lets you see the same content you customized on your PC.

I've said it before: Google does personalized homepages correctly. I use it to watch my e-mail, weather, news, stocks, movie times, and even subscribe to feeds from other sites -- all in one clean, simple interface. Now, I can get it on my cellphone.

I tried it, and it was mostly a breeze. (I wasn't able to see the Personalized Home link with "www.google.com" entered in my phone, but "www.google.com/xhtml" had the link). I logged in, and stuff from my personalized homepage was there.

True, clean, easy integration. As the Web matures, and information becomes more meaningful and connected, services like Google's personalized homepage let us avoid the clutter (read: no ads) and see this information on our own terms (read: not picked by editors).

Google gets this. This, my friends, is why so many love Google's products.

Update. The title of page on my mobile phone is "iGoogle" -- is this indicative of something to come? In fact, that explains what the "/ig" part is in the URL used to get to the PC version of the personalized homepage. And iGoogle.com goes to the personalized home page as well.

Used this new service? Thoughts on other services like it? Post a comment, and share.

I started a blog so I could join the perpetual conversation. Recent innovations make it much easier to participate (take blogging itself), and the current culture surrounding online conversation encourages free exchange and sheer human dialogue. Rather than meticulously craft each post (something it's hard to find the time for), it's important to post often, and post freely. I plan to incorporate that mindset, and to participate in the conversation more frequently going forward.

I've also encountered other issues. I want to post thoughts and opinions on noteworthy current events, but I also want to share longer pieces on the bigger picture. I want to post news as it happens, but follow up later with a more comprehensive opinion. I want to write for a technical audience, but I want everyday folk to glean something too. Doing all this cohesively is a challenge.

In the coming weeks, I'll experiment with better presentation on my blog. And I invite your comments and suggestions. Use the comment form and participate!

I decided that once I start talking to the world, there's no turning back. This is only the beginning.