Google Drive Blog: May 2009

Spotlight on Developers: Gadgets to Visualize Data in New Ways

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Continuing our Spotlight on Developers series, we present a few gadgets that give you new and exciting ways to visualize your data.
Our spreadsheet gadgets API is all about giving developers the power to extend the functionality of Google Docs spreadsheets. The following four spreadsheet gadgets display information in unique ways.
1. Tree Map Gadget (By Yaar Schnitman, former Technology Program Manager intern) - A color-coded area diagram that helps you understand complicated hierarchical data at a glance. Required columns: one or more text columns describing a hierarchy of items, and a single numeric column describing the weight of each item. Optional: supply one additional numeric column to create a heat map. Check out this visualization of the 2008 U.S. budget.

2. Advanced Word Cloud Gadget (by Seth Glickman, former Web Development Intern) - Word clouds are a great way to visualize the popularity of words from large amounts of text, say for example a feedback form, where the more often used words appear in a larger font. With this advanced world cloud gadget, you can customize your word cloud by choosing the color, excluding words of your choosing (like "or" and "the"), and best of all, turn each tag into a link with an easy-to-use search string. Check out a word cloud for Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

3. Spider Chart Gadget (by Greg Marra, former Software Engineering Intern) - With spider charts you can visually compare the values of multiple attributes. In this example, the handling, acceleration, top speed, firepower and armor of a race car is compared to a tank.

4. QR Code Gadget (by Greg Schechter, former Software Engineering Intern) - Use this gadget to quickly encode data into the QR code format from a Google Docs spreadsheet so that it can be scanned and read by mobile devices that have a QR code reader. An easy way to send web addresses, phone numbers and notes. Try out the QR code gadget.

There are two ways to get started using these gadgets. First, you can use the templates above since they already have the gadget inserted within the spreadsheet. Or you can add these gadgets to your own spreadsheet by creating a new spreadsheet and using Insert > Gadgets. There you can check out all of the gadgets that are available.Posted by: Ronald Ho, Product Manager, Google Docs

Spotlight on Developers: Spreadsheet Mapper

Monday, May 25, 2009

This next post in our Spotlight on Developers series highlights a gadget that combines spreadsheets and the My Map feature in Google Maps. In addition to using it while househunting like our guest author did, you might even find it useful to plot out points of interest for a vacation or a road trip this summer. :)My Map in Google MapsKMLusing this templateInsert > Gadget

http://spreadsheets2kml.appspot.com/helpPosted by: Alec Go, AdWords Sales Engineer (and spreadsheet fan)
Update: Replaced the link to the published spreadsheet with a link to a template.

Spotlight on Developers: Educational Spreadsheet Gadgets

Thursday, May 21, 2009

As we gear up for Google I/O, our annual developer conference, we'll be presenting a series of posts highlighting some of the gadgets and applications that have been built by developers using our APIs. Today, we'll start with a few gadgets that might be useful for educators, students, and maybe word-lovers, too.spreadsheet gadgets APIspreadsheet Data APIsGantt ChartAnalytics for Google Docs spreadsheets1. Flash CardsTry this out

2. Word Study Try this out

3. Word SearchTry this out

Insert > Gadgets

Posted by: Ronald Ho, Product Manager, Google Docs

Teachers: How do you use Google Sites?

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Docs for Teachers pageGoogle Sitesrequest for projects
Posted by: Ashley Chandler, Docs User Operations

Create groups of contacts to make sharing faster

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

People who regularly work in teams should check out the recently released standalone contact manager: http://www.google.com/contacts. It lets you manage your contacts and put them into groups.
When you share a document in Google Docs, just click Choose from Contacts to pick one of these groups. There's no need to enter your collaborators' email addresses individually. The groups you create or modify while using Google Docs are stored in the contact manager and can be used across other services like Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums, and Gmail.
To learn more about the contact manager (and to find out how to use it within your organization) read this Google Apps blog post.
Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager