We’ve covered lots of chart generators here at MUO, including online apps like Pie Color and Chart Tool. We even once covered Google’s Image Chart Creator, which I’m pretty sure was a predecessor to Google Fusion Tables. The beauty of Google Fusion Tables is that it takes chart creation to a more automated level, by letting you import spreadsheets from right inside of Google Docs. You can also import data from a file stored on your computer, or create it on-the-fly.

Access Google Fusion Tables From Inside Google Docs

The first step is to log into your Google Docs account, and then click on the “Create” button on the left side of the main screen. You’ll see a dropdown list of all of the typical things you can create in Google Docs, like documents and spreadsheets. If you look a little further down that list, you’ll see a selection for “Table“. Currently this is a beta feature.

The first option you’ll have is to import your table of data. As you can see, you can simply use a spreadsheet that you already have in your Google Docs account (Google Spreadsheets), or you can upload a spreadsheet data file from your computer.

For the purposes of this article, I want to show you how you can use Google Fusion Tables to display real data onto a map. In this case, I’m going to create a list of the trips our family has taken through the years, and I’m going to rate each trip with a “like” value – from 0 percent to 100 percent.

When you create a new empty table, you can enter in the data one row at a time. It isn’t quite like a regular spreadsheet where there are a bunch of empty rows. You have to click on the “Create New Row” button to enter in new data.

Text and Number can be anything at all. Location is optional, unless you want to represent the data in a map format, in which case you’ll want to connect that data to a specific location that will show up on a Google Map. You can also add a date, which can come in handy as well depending on what you are trying to represent, but that too is optional.

Here is my completed table, with five places we’ve visited and a number representing how much we liked the trip.

When you’re ready to convert your data sheet into a graphical format, just click on the “Visualize” menu item and select one of the options from the list. You can represent the data as a line chart, bar chart, pie chart, scatter plot or a timeline.

Of course, my favorite feature of Google Fusion Tables is the ability to overlay data on top of a Google Map. When you select the Map option, there are a few additional steps you can go through to customize your data visualization.

Right now, there really isn’t anything special about the data points, except that they are plotted on the map based on the locations that I provided for those data points. Instead of this, I want to make the map more useful by changing the actual marker itself based on the “like” percentage that I gave that trip. Just click on “configure styles” at the top of the map. Click on “Buckets” and then divide the data points into ranges of values. In this case I want 5 different icons that represent ranges of rating points.

Don’t forget to select what data you are representing by identifying the data column in the dropdown list. In this case I chose the “Number” column of my table. Now, you can see that the icons display in the size and color relating to the “weight” that I gave that trip.

Obviously, this can become far more useful when you have hundreds or thousands of data points, and you divide the icons into very fine-tuned buckets. Doing this, you can represent information such as illnesses, accidents, natural disasters and other data in a way that could reveal information that’s otherwise hard to visualize in just a table format.

Of course, you can also use Google Fusion charts to represent data in your standard pie, line or bar chart formats – the sort of everyday charting that you may do at work or school.

The best part of Google Fusion Tables is that the visualizations you create can be embedded anywhere on the web. All you have to do is make your original table “public”, and then in the map display, click on the “Get embeddable link“. This will provide code you can highlight and then paste on your own blog or website.

The other charts are also embeddable in the same way.

Google Fusion Tables makes it ridiculously fast and easy to import huge volumes of data and then represent that information in a graphical format that might otherwise have taken you much longer to accomplish using an application like Microsoft Excel. Google Fusion Tables lets you quickly identify the exact data you want to represent, how you want to display it, and then takes care of the rest – and lets you share your visualizations quickly on the web.

So go ahead, log into your Google Docs account and give Google Fusion Tables a try. Let us know if it helped you analyze your data in a new way. Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Images uploaded from the gallery or camera can be scanned with optical character recognition to extract text and save it to a document. Users of Android Honeycomb can enjoy an optimized version of the app for larger screens.

The Interface

The interface of the Google Docs app is clean and straight forward and not too different from the web interface. A visual overview can be found under > Settings > Quick hints.

When you click the little arrow button on the far right of a document, you can preview the respective document and view its details.

Clicking the button will open a little sidebar with document properties, including date last viewed, date last modified, owner, and a list of people who can edit the document. In this view you can also  add collaborators (people or groups), send or share the document, or rename the document. Via the settings button in the top right, you can open or delete the document.

If you want to send, rename, delete, or open a file with an alternative app, press it for a couple of seconds to trigger the menu shown in the screenshot below.

Creating Documents

The Google Doc apps supports creating new documents, spreadsheets, or documents from a photo or the gallery.

When you create a > Document from gallery or photo, the image you choose from the gallery or take with your device camera, can be uploaded as individual file, converted to a Google Docs document and embedded into a new document, or sent to web clipboard, so that you can paste it into a desired location.

When you choose the > Convert file go Google Docs document, the respective photo will be converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR). In theory, OCR is a fantastic feature, but in reality it doesn’t work very well, even with clearly printed text. However, if you experiment with the camera conditions (light, position, size of text), you might be able to get it to work for you. It also is rather unfortunate that the app can not display the source image, which is inserted on top of the recognized text, although it is very well able to display images.

Editing Documents

Editing documents within the app is possible, but it is fairly difficult. Edits can only be done line by line. Finding the right spot can be a bit of a challenge, typically resulting in short flickers of the document and a jumpy keyboard. Moreover, Google Docs does not allow you to zoom in, but forces you to work with the available text size. It must be said though that once the right line or paragraph has been highlighted, moving the cursor to a desired position works very well, unlike in some other apps.

Homescreen Widget

Google Docs comes with a simple homescreen widget. It unites four functions: opening Google Docs, viewing starred files, taking a photo and uploading it, and creating a new document.

In Honeycomb, you can add the widget by pressing an available spot on your homescreen for a few seconds or tapping the + icon in the top right, which opens the widgets gallery. The app is listed as Docs. You can drag and drop it to your desired homescreen.

Verdict

The Google Docs app is great for accessing and reading your Google documents. However, I would not recommend to create and edit documents with it. Overall, I find the app very useful and hope that Google will continue to develop and improve it.

However, there are always ways to improve, and thankfully that is where extensions come in. There are extensions that let you know when someone changes your document, and some even help you start a new document faster and easier. There are two particularly useful ones that I am going to take a look at today. These apps really bring the Google Docs experience to a whole new level in terms of efficiency.

Watch Doc

WatchDoc is available for free from the Google Chrome Web store, which you will find here. Once you get to the application page, simply click “Add to Chrome” and the extension will automatically show up in the top right corner of your screen.

The first time you log into the extension you will need to grant it permission to get access to your Google account. This will pop up automatically when you log in for the first time, and all you need to is click the grant access button.

Once you have the application installed, it will sit quietly up there and watch any document shared with your Google account. Of course, you need to make sure you are logged into Google in order for the application to work. If you aren’t sure if you are logged in, simply click the button for WatchDoc. If you aren’t logged in, the application will tell you and provide you with a link to log in.

When someone edits one of your documents, an alert will pop at the bottom of the screen, and you will see a number over the icon.

Click the icon, and the extension will show you the document that has been edited and it will offer you a quick link to go straight to the document. It even tells you how long ago the edit happened, so you never miss a beat.

Docs Quickly

To install Docs Quickly, click here to see it in the Chrome web store. Click “Add to Chrome” and then get ready to have access to Google Docs much more quickly.

Once you install the extension, you will see the little icon for it on the top right of your screen. If you click it, a small drop down menu will appear that allows you to choose what kind of document you wish to create. It saves a few seconds when you are trying to create something, and if you are against a deadline, that can be extremely valuable.

What do you use to improve Google Docs? Let us know in the comments!

In all, Google claims there are over fifty new features in the new version of Presentations. They added transitions between slides, which is a feature users have begged for. They also give users the ability to add drawings, rich data and flowcharts into presentations. Google also added a slew of new themes and animations to make Presentations a much richer experience.

Some users will already have the new presentation, but if you do not, you can enable it manually. Simply click the gear box on the top of the Docs screen, then click “document settings“, next click “editing” and lastly click the checkbox to “create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor“.

The one catch here is that older browsers are not supported, so make sure you have your browsers updated to the latest version so you don’t miss out on any of the exciting new features.

Source: TheNextWeb

Now available via Google Docs, this feature allows users to send a document saved to the cloud to a local Fedex location, where it will be printed. Or if you’re unable to make it to the nearest Fedex, you can have the documents delivered to you as soon as the next business day.

Using the service is easy, but does require that the Fedex site be given access to your Google account. Once you’ve uploaded a document, multiple print options become available including folding, lamination, and binding.

Of course, Fedex isn’t offering this out of the kindness of their heart, but rates do seem reasonable. The site quoted me $1.38 for printing out a simple two-page document at the nearest store, while having it delivered to my apartment tacked on an extra $9.99. Not as cheap as doing it yourself, obviously – but this should be handy for Google Docs users in a pinch.

Source: Google Docs Blog

First, Google launched their offline Gmail app, which allows users to archive, read and compose emails while offline. It stores your changes locally, and the next time you connect to the Internet, all of your changes will be uploaded and available online. Simply head over to the Chrome App Store and install the app.

For Google Docs you need to click the “settings” gear on the top right of the screen in the Docs app and click “Set Up Docs Offline“. The offline feature for Docs is still in beta and not available for everyone yet, but it will be over the next few days.

Calendar works similar to Docs. Click the gear and enable offline viewing.

The only problem is that you cannot edit Docs or Calendar offline, but it is still a step forward for Google apps, and Google is promising new features are being constantly added to their offline apps, so expect these features to be available soon.

Source: The Next Web