Google Docs is getting better for long docs

3 years ago I blogged about Google docs not so good for long docs? Whilst I love Google Docs (collaboration, history, web access, stability etc. etc.) there are certain long document features that it doesn't have that MS Word does - and when I'm working on a long document I miss them. Well, since coming to University of Bristol where they have Google Apps I've been using Google Drive, and in particular Google Docs, much more. And consequently, having barely having had to even open a MS Office document since I've arrived I love Google Drive even more (especially the Google Drive apps for iPhone/iPad). And to make it even better I've just stumbled across Add-ons for Google Docs - one of which is a Table of Contents add-on - which, oddly, doesn't fix the TOC page number problem but does fix the mult-level lists problem nicely.

Is anyone with Google Apps using Google Plus?

I'm probably more excited than I should be that Bristol are using Google Apps for Education. Google Mail, Google Calendar and Google Drive are going to be all very useful to use more in a work context. What I've been wondering about in the last few days though is whether there is scope to make more of Google Plus. I've had a Google Plus account for a while (plus.google.com/+StuartJohnson) but other than for sharing photos with my family (the instant upload is brilliant, if not a little unnerving) I've not made much use of it - all my networks are on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; Google Plus just arrived too late for me (and was one network to many for regular use).

I like this summary of social media by Doug Ray. Clearly it's a bit tongue-in-cheek but it's pretty accurate.

So I don't under-estimate the difficulties involved in encouraging people to switch social media platforms (I haven't done). But with everyone in the institution having a Google account it seems like there's an opportunity.

So, a couple of questions:

1. Which other HEIs are using Google Apps for Education?
2. Are any using Google+ well?

Google Plus and age restrictions

I need some Google help. My 12 year old son has had a Google account for a couple of years. His cousin sent him a link to sign up for Google Plus. He followed the on screen instructions which included entering his date of birth (something that I didn't have to do 2 years ago when I set up the account for him - or if I did there wasn't an age restriction at the time). He can now no longer login to Gmail and gets the following message.

The Google Account for xxx@gmail.com has been disabled.You will not be able to sign in to this account or use it to access any Google products or services.You do not meet the age requirements for a Google Account. This account will be deleted in 27 days unless the birthday you entered was incorrect and you submit proof that you are 13 years old or older. Learn more.If you are 13 years old or older, click here to start the account unlock process.

Any ideas? Or have the Ts&Cs changed since G+ kicked off and now you have to be 13 to even have Gmail?

Google+ and Google contacts on mobile device

Snappy title, eh?

Last night Jane was commenting on Google+ how much she liked Google+ when I noticed that I could see her full home address on her profile.

Which, clearly was a bit worrying. But after a bit of digging around Jane figured out that it was because I was viewing the mobile site and Google was taking the personal information I hold in my Google contacts on my iPad and merging them into Jane's Google+ profile.

Which I confirmed by taking a screenshot of her profile with the original contact information (don't worry Jane - I've blurred the details!).

...and then changing Jane's address in my Google contacts and then opening the mobile page again.

Add it worked. As you can imagine, Jane was very relieved.

Phew!

By the way, while I'm here can I link up my blog to automatically publish to Google plus? After a quick search I can't see how to do it.

Google presentation plus live twitter feed

On Friday afternoon I hosted a celebration event for The University of Leicester Internship Programme, otherwise known as TULIP (you remember, the one we got shortlisted for a Times Higher Award for). When putting together some slides quickly on the morning I thought it would be good to have a twitter hashtag feed as part of the presentation. I posted a tweet asking if anyone knew if I could add a twitter feed to a Google presentation. Then I thought about it the other way around and asked if a Google presentation could be embedded in Twitterfall. This would be easier if I just storify-ied it.

So the clever (and simple) way to do it was as per Matt's suggestion of using a Google site. I just used the default theme and stripped out the navigation, then added the Google presentation and found a twitter widget (Insert > More gadgets > Featured > Search 'Twitter Widget' - it's by http://www.gstatic.com - make sure you include the 'Featured' step otherwise you get all sorts of exotic gadgets!). It took me less than 5 minutes.

So here's the google site with the live twitter feed from the #uoltulip tag (and I used <F11> to make it full screen).

I figured that if the twitter feed was abused I could just click on the button to open the presentation full screen, but this wasn't needed, partly due to the specificity of the hashtag and partly due to the fact that Twitter is much better at blocking spammers than it was a few years ago.

Google docs not so good for long docs?

Since being introduced to Google docs a few years back I've become a big fan. It's now the only office software I use at home (and I'm slowly persuading the rest of the family) and is beginning to overtake my use of Microsoft Office at work. It's fast, it's easily accessible, the revision history is brilliant and the sharing and collaboration features are super useful. There is something that I would like it to do better though and that's the long document stuff.

About five years ago I wrote a course for students here at Leicester on Using Microsoft Word 2003 for long documents (I nearly called it Getting Microsoft Word to do something useful) when I discovered that lots of people seemed to be wasting lots of time formatting dissertations and theses - and often doing a shoddy job of it. I also wrote an accompanying workbook. Since then I've updated it for Office 2007 and it continues to be extremely popular. I've lost count of the number of times I've run the session and it's had 1000s page views on our website. Here's an extract from the booklet's introduction explaining what it covers.

Long documents, for example a dissertation or thesis, can be difficult to work with for a number of reasons. Microsoft Word provides you with some useful features to make managing long documents easier. Many of the features are also useful for shorter documents that require internal referencing. The features include:

• style formats to apply to different types of text;
• captions to label objects such as figures or tables;
• tables of contents;
• tables of figures;
• cross-referencing;
• master documents and sub documents to divide large documents up into smaller, more manageable chunks whilst still retaining referenced links.

What I'd really love to do though is find out how to do all of the above using Google docs because of the additional advantages of its revision history, sharing, collaboration features, etc. (although I don't think the master/sub-document stuff would be necessary as Google docs seems to be so much more stable than Microsoft Word with lengthy documents).

So here's is the Google document where I tried to find the features, but as you'll see when you read it - it was rather a disappointment.

In summary:

• heading styles work nicely;
• multi-level lists aren't supported;
• captions aren't an option;
• tables of contents work fine but I can't see how to add page numbers;
• tables of figures aren't supported;
• and neither are cross references (although see update below).

You'll see if you look in the document that I've put in various links to work arounds suggested in the Help forum - but most of them are far too fiddly to be viable for your average user.

Given the brilliance of Google docs in so many other ways I'm wondering if it has some of these features and I just can't find them, or am I just asking it to do things it isn't designed for? I love Google docs and I'll continue to use it but it seems like it's not very suitable yet for long, formal, documents. Or am I missing something?

Update re bookmarks

Just realised that Bookmarks are a reasonable alternative to cross references (although if captions were supported this would be much better). I've added one in the Google doc example at the end. If I was to change the text in the bookmark it wouldn't update in the link but it does still provide the ability to cross reference.

Chromed Bird

Just had a little twitter conversation with Alan re Chrome Bird. It went like this:

I said: 'Chrome bird is great - discrete and not intrusive but easy to use when you want it'

Alan said 'What is it? Blog it please (don't you dare lmgtfy me!)'.

So here I am... I'm having to work from home today so I get to use the full version of Google Chrome rather than Chrome portable (which is I use at work because I don't have permsission to install the full browser). Chrome portable is great but I can't get it to do extensions (I'm told it does but I haven't had time to figure it yet). To get round this problem I've been using Twhirl but I've been finding its constant presence a bit annoying - especially when working on a small screen.  So as I'm working from home I thought I'd see what Chrome extensions had to offer.

You get a very long list of extensions if you just put 'Twitter' into the search box, but if you Google 'chrome extension twitter' - top of the list is Chromed Bird. And like I said on my tweet I think it's discrete and not intrusive but easy to use when you want it. It has loads in the options too.But then again, Gaz says that Free Bird is better.