That’s the beauty of data – something that most people look at and find boring, or overly complex, data-analysts find beautiful and revealing. We’ve covered a number of useful tools for analyzing data here at MUO, such as Bandalizer for CSV data files, which of course Excel can handle as well. Data analysis lets you do things like niche analysis research, and of course create cool data visualizations.

However, did you know that one of the greatest tools of all to conduct data analysis is actually Google Spreadsheet? The reason for this isn’t only because a Google Spreadsheet report can do nearly everything you might want to do with Microsoft Excel (although you can), but it’s actually because of a few very cool reporting tools that comes standard in Google Spreadsheet.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use Pivot Report, graphs and charts in Google Spreadsheet, a few examples of how you can use them to analyze seemingly complex data, and how you can end up with some really awesome charts and graphs in the end.

Using Pivot Reports to Perform Wonders

If you’ve never used pivot reports, then you’re in for a real treat. In this example, I’m going to use Adsense data that includes three fields I want to analyze – the number of ads clicked, the number of ads viewed, and the length of my article titles.

What I’m curious to find a correlation for is whether title length of the article affects the number of Adsense ads that are viewed or clicked. It’s this kind of seemingly unconnected data that a pivot report can calculate and reveal.

When on the table with that data, just click “Data” in the Google Spreadsheet menu, and select “Pivot table report…” in the drop-down menu.

This will open a new sheet where you can start building your new pivot report. A “Report Editor” opens up on the right side of the sheet, which sort of acts like a wizard that guides you through creating your new report. You’ll want to start out by adding the rows – the main data that you want to start with. In this case, I want to know if title length impacts ad performance, so the rows in this case would be titles.

Next, you want to add values to the report. As you add new values, it’ll fill out the report with those values from the original spreadsheet, except the data is calculated in the way you define it in the report editor. In this case I use “SUM” because each title only has one value anyway. However, now I can sort by the title length under the Title row setting at the top.

You may notice some “junk” data in your sheet – things like zeros, or fields where there’s just no valid data. You can actually tell the pivot report to ignore those bad values by clicking on the “Add field” in the Filter section of the Report Editor. Then you can deselect all of the items that you want the report to ignore.

Now that you’ve summed and sorted all of the data, things may become much more clear. Suddenly you may see patterns, such as the fact that titles between 60 to 80 characters tend to perform much better for some reason (for example).

These are things that just aren’t quite as clear in the messy, chaotic spreadsheet world where the data is unsorted and unfiltered. Pivot reports are extremely flexible, and will let you do other things with each column of data like summarizing by count, average, max or min, standard deviation, and a whole lot more. The power of pivot reports really comes out when you start messing around with the data and watching what amazing things come out of it at the end.

Using Charts and Graphs in Google Spreadsheet

Another good way to analyze data is in a more graphical form. When you’ve got the data sorted the way you like using a pivot report, it’s time to start charting that stuff. Google Spreadsheet comes with a good array of charting tools to help you out. To get to those, just highlight the data that you want to chart, click the “Insert” menu item and choose “Chart” from the list. A chart editor will pop up, with a preview of your data charted in the right pane.

You can run through all of the chart types available to see what offers the best representation of data that you’re looking for. There are line charts, bar charts, pie charts, and even some really cool gauges and also map charts that I’m looking forward to playing around with at some point.  However, for my purpose here, the area line chart comparison really revealed what I wanted – two hot spot areas that seem to imply better ad performance at two specific title lengths of articles.

This is pretty interesting stuff, and not something that would be so easily revealed in a table full of raw data. Another cool tool that’s available in Google Spreadsheet to graphically display data is a function called “Sparkline”. This function actually lets you transform a cell in the spreadsheet into a bar chart. All you have to do is type something like the following into a cell:

“=sparkline(E8:F8, {“charttype”,”bar”})”

What does this do? Well, basically it lets you chart data right in the cell. In this case I’m comparing the numbers in column E and F and using a bar chart to show the percentages. Column F is represented in blue and E in orange, so with just a glance at your spreadsheet,  you can quickly identify where the scales have tipped when comparing data or identifying “alarm” conditions.

These are only a few ideas to make use of Google Spreadsheet to analyze data using powerful tools like pivot reports and the charting tools. Google Spreadsheet is fast becoming (or maybe it already is) a major contender in the data analysis business, and it’s accessibility online means that it’s also convenient and easy to use no matter where you are.

When you’re in a hurry and need to process a lot of information quickly while on the go, that’s a huge deal. And the fact that you can simply import data or a CSV file into the first sheet, and all of the pivot reports and charts get created automatically for you — that’s just pure gold dust.

So if you haven’t used it yet – I highly suggest giving Google Spreadsheet reports a try to automate your data analysis chores. And if you have been using it for a while but didn’t know about these tools – by all means, give them a try. You’ll be glad you did.

How do you make use of Google Spreadsheet? What are your favorite tools that you couldn’t live without? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

Image Credit: Businessman Hand via Shutterstock

The post Become An Expert Data Analyst Overnight Using Google Spreadsheet Report Tools appeared first on MakeUseOf.

I am ashamed to admit that I’ve only recently decided to start experimenting with Google Spreadsheets, and what I’ve discovered is that whatever allure or power Excel had over me due to the amazing things you could do with VBA scripting, is completely overshadowed by the awesomeness of the sorts of things you can do inside of Google Spreadsheets.

After playing around with Google Spreadsheets for just a few weeks, I can barely contain my excitement. Many of the things I’ve discovered one can do, I plan to cover in future articles. However, as a quick preview let me say — since Google Spreadsheets is an online application — it is far easier to integrate it with many of the online tools and services that you already use, like data from websites, information from other Google Spreadsheets, information from (or to) emails, and a whole lot more.

Honestly, I feel like a kid in a candy store here.

6 Amazing Things You Can Do With Google Spreadsheet Functions

In Spreadsheets, there’s an entire library of Google Spreadsheet functions that you can use in intricate ways to perform impressive feats of data manipulation the likes of which you’ve never seen before. If you thought the power of Excel functions were cool, you really haven’t seen anything yet. You can treat the functions in Google Spreadsheets almost like mini-scripts in themselves, nesting one function within another as many times as you like in order to produce some really cool output information.

I’ll cover how to do that in this article, as well as creating intelligent conditional formatting rules, creating output charts and in-sheet bar graphs, and much more.

Fun With Google Spreadsheet Functions

A good majority of functions that are used in Excel, can also be used in Google Spreadsheet. However, there are some neat little functions that are entirely Google specific, and one of those was actually mentioned by Ann Smarty years ago – adding current time to the sheet.

You can do this using the usual Text(Now()) function, but the problem there is that it only updates the displayed time when you edit the sheet, not whenever someone views the sheet. The better alternative is actually the GoogleClock() function.

This always shows the current date and time – which is really useful for sheets where the viewer needs quick access to the current date/time to either fill out forms or do calculations with data from the sheet.

The example spreadsheet I’m going to use in my examples in this article is one where I’ve imported data from Google Adsense. This was done simply by exporting an Adsense report into CSV and importing that into this Google Spreadsheet.

If you’ve never used conditional formatting, it’s a really useful method to quickly highlight important information at a glance. You can get to the conditional formatting feature by right clicking on a value or a column, and clicking on “Conditional Formatting”.

There are lots of things you can do in here, between controlling text color or background color based on a range of comparisons. In this case, I want to quickly identify articles that have a high clickthrough rate, and call attention to the ones that are performing very poorly. To do this, I set up the conditional formatting to change the background to dark green when the number is greater than 4, change the background to light green when it’s between 2 and 4, and red text (bad) when it’s less than 2.

Now, at a quick glance, I can see which articles are stellar performers when it comes to getting a great ad clickthrough. Another thing you can do to make decisions based on multiple pieces of complicated data is to create an equation and place it into a logical statement.

The “IF” function lets you perform a logical comparison. In this case, I want to check whether the number of ads clicked is low, and the eCPM is high. I use the average in each column as a baseline. You can do multiple calculations like this, and “AND” multiple comparisons like this:

=IF(AND(C3<AVERAGE($C$3:$C$502);E3>AVERAGE($E$3:$E$502)),”TRUE”,”FALSE”)

This basically embeds an “AND” function inside of an “IF” function, with two “AVERAGE” functions embedded inside of the AND function. The last two parts of the “IF” function let you define what to fill into the field if the conditions are true or false. In this case, I just use “TRUE” or “FALSE”.

So, here’s the function in action. As you can see, when there are just a few ads clicked, and a high payout, I’m alerted to that line with a “TRUE” result.

Now I can try to figure out why those articles have such a phenomenal payout, and try to do more of the same to increase revenue! You can do a lot of cool stuff with embedded calculations combined with logical comparisons. But for many spreadsheet aficionados, this is really what spreadsheets are all about, right? What’s new?

Well now, let’s move on to the other cool things you can do with Google Spreadsheets.

Playing With Text

In my opinion, the power of spreadsheets comes out when you start dealing with text. If you’re accustomed to programming, then you know that you can use functions like “Left”, “Right” or “Mid” to extract sections of strings in order to manipulate them and build them into new strings.  Well, Google Spreadsheets gives you the same ability to do these kind of things with functions by the same name – although they perform a little differently.

Here’s an example. My spreadsheet includes a list of my topic URLs straight out of Google Adwords, but it’s only a section of the URL that starts with the date. If I want to create a new field that provides just the title, I need to remove the date section. To clean up strings like this, you need to find a common pattern to identify the area you want to strip out. In my case I noticed that the dates all have three slashes “/” in it.

All I need to do is find the third slash, and extract the rest of the text after that point. You can find the first incidence of any text inside another text using the FIND function.

=find(find text, text, position)

So, in my case, I have three levels of embedding to get to the last “/” before I can extract the right part of that long string. This is going to get funky, so follow along. To extract the strong after the first slash, you can use the RIGHT, the LEN and the FIND functions.

=Right(A3,len(A3)-(Find(“/”,A3)))

This Google Spreadsheet function returns all of the text starting from the right end of the text, all the way to the position of the first slash. This leaves you with part of the date including two slashes, and the title. To remove the sections with two more slashes, you can embed that RIGHT function into itself two more times. Here’s what such a crazy function looks like.

=Right((Right((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))),len((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))-(Find(“/”,(Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))))),len((Right((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))),len((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))-(Find(“/”,(Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))))))-(Find(“/”,(Right((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))),len((Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))-(Find(“/”,(Right(A5,len(A5)-(Find(“/”,A5)))))))))))

If you try to follow that function all the way through, you’re almost guaranteed to get a headache. But check it out – it works (see column I).

How did I create another function with the URL link to the article? Well, at least that’s an easy task.  All I had to do is use the CONCAT function to glue together two strings – “http://www.topsecretwriters/” and the title from the first column including the dates.

=CONCAT(“http://www.topsecretwriters.com”,A3)

Easy peasy.

Importing Feeds From the Internet

Another very useful function that could potentially be used for some pretty cool uses inside of Google Spreadsheets is the IMPORTFEED function. If you consider the sheer volume of information throughout the Internet that are offered by feeds, just think of what you can do with this versatile function.

How it works is pretty straightforward. Simply fill in the feed details into the function itself, surrounded by quotes.

It’s best to do this in the upper left cell of a fresh sheet. This will allow all of the information to cleanly import into that sheet.

Depending on what’s included with the feed, you could dynamically perform calculations on the information in additional columns using other fun functions you’ve discovered. Maybe the U.S. census offers a feed of demographics? Maybe you can get a stock feed with the latest data on your top stocks – and have your spreadsheet automatically perform  calculations on them.

The possibilities are unlimited – and much faster and easier than if you were trying to do the same kind of thing in Excel.

Have you dreamed up your own creative uses for Google Spreadsheet? What kind of info do you import off the Internet? What else would you like to see us do with Google Spreadsheets here at MUO? Share your thoughts and input in the comments section below!

Image Credit:Pen and Magnifying Glass Via Shutterstock

The post Perform Amazing Feats With These Useful Google Spreadsheet Functions appeared first on MakeUseOf.

In the future, I truly see using Google Docs is taking over the use of traditional desktop word processors. Google Docs may not be as sophisticated as the latest versions of Word, but given enough time, it’ll get there. I’ve already switched over and I know many of you MUO readers use it regularly as well. If you’re one of them, here are some great tips that you may not have known that will increase your admiration for Google Docs.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Most of the time, you can’t really use keyboard shortcuts on webpages because those shortcuts are often intercepted by the browser itself. Try using Ctrl + S (the universal shortcut for Save) and you’ll probably be prompted to save the entire webpage as an HTML file. However, Google Docs gets around this (not that it’s very difficult to do) and lets you use shortcuts to make word processing easier.

Here are some of my favorites features of using Google docs that I make use of all the time:

• Ctrl + Alt + C: Copies the formatting on the currently selected text. Easy to remember because it’s the same shortcut as copying except with Alt.
• Ctrl + Alt + V: Pastes the latest formatting that you copied. Easy to remember because it’s the same shortcut as pasting except with Alt.
• Ctrl + \: Clears the formatting on the currently selected text.  Great for removing bolds, underlines, italics, messed up headings and paragraph settings, etc.
• Tab and Shift + Tab: Obviously, Tab inserts indents. Shift + Tab removes indents. If you have text selected, these apply to the entire selection.
• Ctrl + Shift + C: Displays the word count stats for the current document. If you have text selected, it will also show stats for the selection only.
• Ctrl + Alt + Shift + G: Opens the revision history for the document. Not sure what revision history is? I cover it later in this article, so keep reading!

If you want to learn the dozens of other keyboard shortcuts available, check out the full list of Google Docs shortcut commands.

Drag & Drop

For the longest time, I thought Google Docs was rather primitive. I would get frustrated because I’d have to click on a bunch of menus and buttons in order to upload a single file, then I’d have to do it all again for another file. I’m not sure when drag-and-drop was introduced to the service, but man, it’s made my life a whole lot easier.

If you want to add a new file (e.g., DOC, DOCX, XLS, etc.) to your Google Docs account, you just need to drag it off your computer and into the browser. It’ll upload automatically. If you want to be able to edit or view it in Google Docs, though, make sure it’s a compatible format.

One-Click New Document

One big bother with Google Docs is that there’s a lot of overhead that you need to wade through before you can start using it. By that, I mean you need to open your browser, open a new tab, navigate to Google Docs, then click a few links to have a fresh document open before you. Granted, in everyday life, it’d be a lot quicker than how I described it. It’s still annoying, though.

Luckily, there’s a trick you can use that automatically opens up your browser to a fresh new Google Docs document… and you can run it straight from your desktop. Sounds cool, right? Here’s how to set it up:

• Right click on your desktop, select New then Shortcut.
• For the location of the link, input this: https://docs.google.com/document/create
• When it asks for a shortcut name, type Create Google Doc or whatever else you want it to say.

Done! Of course, this requires you to be logged into Google Docs on your default browser (as the link will open up in your default browser). Very easy and very neat. If you want to change the icon of the new shortcut:

• Right click on the shortcut and select Properties.
• Click the Web Document tab.
• Click Change Icon.
• Select your desired icon.

File Revision History

The coolest feature of using Google Docs, in my opinion, is the file revision history. For those of you who don’t have any experience with the revision history feature, here’s the basic gist of it: not only does Google Docs track every single change that you make to your files, it allows you to revert your file back to any past state instantly (as long as Google Docs has a history of that change).

The uses for this are numerous and the impact is insane. Did you erase your entire thesis paper and save by accident? Do you prefer the version of your novel from last month instead? Need to go back to the very beginning of your edits and start afresh? Revision history lets you do that.

Hit the revision history shortcut (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + G) and Google Docs will show you every saved change for that document. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Instant Translation

The final tip in this article is for those of you who frequently write documents that need to be translated from language to language. Now, as with any sort of AI-generated translation, the translating tool in Google Docs is not perfect. As far as I know, it’s the same tool used in Google Translate, which makes sense to me. If you aren’t satisfied with Google Translate, then you may not be satisfied with this.

All you have to do is go to the Tools menu and select Translate Document. This will actually create a new document with the translated text, which is great in case you aren’t happy with the results. You can translate TO and FROM dozens of languages, presumably the ones supported by Google Translate.

Conclusion

Google Docs still has some catching up to do if it wants to be a complete alternative solution to Microsoft Word, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, it has a number of great features that really showcase its potential going forward. If you want to make the switch now (or already have), then be sure to use these tips to maximize your Google Docs experience.

If you know any other tips, tricks, or cool features, please share them with us in the comments. Anything to make Google Docs better is worth learning in my book.

Image Credit: Keyboard Keys Via Shutterstock

The post Word Processing In Google Docs? 5 Important Tips To Keep In Mind appeared first on MakeUseOf.

The new intergation means that aside from regular video and audio conferences, Hangout participants can upload and share various Google Docs, and edit them collaboratively as the meeting progresses. Try it out by launching a Hangout and clicking on the new Docs button. From there on you can:

• Add an existing document, or upload a new one.
• View uploaded documents in the left side of the window.
• Choose to toggle between and collaboratively edit multiple documents at once.

Google Docs integration was a available as preview feature since last year, along with screen sharing and sketchpad. Robin Schriebman from Google shared the update on Google+ and mentioned:

Google+ community has used it for all sorts of awesome — from trip planning and lecture notes to doodling and charades. Today I’m happy to announce that we’re graduating Google Docs to the core Hangouts experience for all users.

Potential uses could range from recording minutes on a Google Doc or working collaboratively on a term project, deciding on an itinerary, or just taking down impromptu notes. The Google Docs integration has certainly placed video conferencing on steroids. Do you agree?

Source: Google Plus

The post Google Docs Collaboration In Hangouts Is Now Available To All Users [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Each office suite has its own advantages, so it’s important to determine what your needs are in an office suite under Linux.

LibreOffice

As far as traditional office suites go, LibreOffice is the most popular choice. A cross-platform suite of office utilities, LibreOffice aims to address the needs of all its users and is therefore often seen as the open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It includes alternatives to the most popular components of any office suite – Writer for document creation, Impress for presentations, and Calc for spreadsheets. The suite also includes decent compatibility with Microsoft Office’s proprietary formats, including the new .docx and .pptx extensions.

From there, LibreOffice and Microsoft Office start to go different ways. For example, LibreOffice doesn’t include any alternatives to Publisher, Outlook, or OneNote. However, there are other software applications available under Linux which aren’t related to the LibreOffice suite but take care of the job.

Calligra

While LibreOffice can be installed on any Linux desktop, some people who are running the KDE desktop environment may want to have an office suite which integrates better into their desktop. For those people, there’s the Calligra office suite. It takes a slightly different approach to LibreOffice and Microsoft Office when it comes to the layout, but you can still work effectively with this suite.

While it may be a joy to use, it doesn’t save in every format that you may want to use, so this is a slight downside to using it. Besides that, it’s mostly a preference of taste as to whether you prefer LibreOffice, this, or the following solutions.

Google Docs

If you want to have something which you can use online from anywhere, you should look into Google Docs. Although it doesn’t include as many suite components as LibreOffice, this online office suite provides good functionality for documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Google Docs is also fantastic to use for collaboration, so people can work on a document and see those changes in real-time.

The suite is feature-complete for basic to moderate functionality, so it’s more than enough to write papers for school or other simple documents. Again, don’t expect a level of editing as found in Microsoft’s Publisher.

You save files in a number of popular formats, or simply use, print, or present your work directly from Google Docs. The office suite is available to anyone with a Google account, and not just a Google email address.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

Last but not least, if you need the best compatibility possible with Microsoft Office documents, you can go straight to the source and use Microsoft Office. Of course, you can use WINE to have Office run on Linux, but if you’re looking for a more native solution, you can use Microsoft Office’s Web Apps which you have access to from a Live account. Like Google Docs, you can easily collaborate with other people on the same document and see changes being made in real-time.

The Web Apps are quite a bit more limited in functionality than the fully-fledged products, however, but at least you’ll be guaranteed to have complete compatibility with whatever documents you’re working with. Otherwise, you can always try your luck with WINE.

Conclusion

With these four office suites, you should be fairly well prepared to start an epic journey of productivity under Linux. There have also been a few rumors going around lately that Microsoft may be looking at porting Office to Linux, now that the operating system has shown some commercial viability through the advances made by Steam. However, no matter what you actually use, it should serve you well in personal, educational, and professional environments.

What office suite are you currently using under Linux? Why do you like it? What would you like to see added or improved to make it better? What do you think about the Microsoft rumors? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: KDE

The post Which Office Solutions Should I Use On Linux & Why? appeared first on MakeUseOf.

If you can relate to any of those, then the Chrome extension, Send To Google Docs, is a great solution and has earned a spot on our Best Of Chrome Extensions page under “Productivity”.

The Easy Setup & Install

Send To Google Docs, like any extension in the Chrome Web Store, installs in your browser with one click. Often though, extensions require some additional customization of options before you start using them (e.g. creating an account, changing default settings, etc.). However, Send To Google Docs is ready to use right away. There are a couple of options to explore though.

The first is “Save without Preview” which saves to Google Drive without showing the preview window first. This allows you to quickly save pages without taking time away from whatever you were doing.

Next are the conversion settings. If you don’t have a Pdfcrowd account (which is the service the extension uses), this isn’t relevant to you. And although you can create an account for free, the real benefits of having an account (both for this extension and their service) come with a premium monthly subscription.

How Google Drive Handles The Imported PDF

There isn’t really anything that “pops out” – it is just how you would expect a webpage to converted from HTML to PDF and saved in Google Drive. And if that is exactly what you want, then it does it well – which is good if you like simplicity.

Recently, Erez said regarding an app he was reviewing:

Please, please, resist the temptation to add features.

This is great advice for the majority of extensions and apps that are being developed. However, there are a couple of things I feel could be improved upon.

Weaknesses Of The Extension

When you “clip” your first page to Google Drive, you’ll quickly see that there are a couple of flaws that come with it. First it doesn’t detect the specific page content and save only that in PDF form to Google Drive. This is a feature that is pretty widespread and used in many other tools and extensions such as the popular Evernote Web Clipper and Clearly. Of course, this would mean that it didn’t convert the whole page to PDF, which is what it is supposed to do, but this would be a nice option to have added.

Another shortfall of this extension is that it doesn’t organize the content at all on the page. In a way, I’ve already mentioned this about detecting the content, but this is still different. When you save a page to Google Drive, it is saved “as is” with no editing whatsoever. That means if some text or an image falls on a page break between two pages, it will get split up instead of moved down.

Sometimes the text is even split down the middle of the line so it becomes completely unreadable. This is counterproductive to saving the page in Google Drive to read later as it can’t be read entirely if this occurs on the page. It also makes printing quite difficult and unprofessional.

Conclusion

Perhaps these weaknesses put a bad taste in your mouth for this extension. Don’t get me wrong – it is good. But it could be better. Personally, I’m not a developer, but in my experience of using other tools which don’t have the issues that I’ve expressed with this one, I don’t feel it would be too difficult to improve upon.

Again, if you are looking for a tool to send webpages to Google Drive and convert them as well (instead of just saving them as a link), this tool works pretty good.

If saving to Google Drive isn’t a must, you might want to look into the MakeUseOf article Top Tips & Tools To Help With Printing Webpages, which covers tools that, yes, can print, but also ones that can save and extract the text in an easy to read format.

Do you use Google Drive to save your web articles to read later? Or have you wanted to and are now able to with this tool? If you use the Send To Google Docs Chrome extension, how does it help you?

The post Send To Google Docs – Convert HTML To PDF & Save It In A Single Click [Chrome] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Because of the unique situation I’m in where I love technology, but often don’t have a means of bringing it with me to the extent that most people do, I’ve found many workarounds to accomplish just as much, if not more, than the average smartphone and tablet user. Granted, most of the time I do have my laptop, but when I don’t, I’ve found the following strategies just as efficient as using my own personal computer.

Use A Portable Hard Drive, SD Card And/Or USB Flash Drive

Sync Your Files To Your Portable Device(s)

This would likely best be done with a portable hard drive in order to ensure you take all your files with you. However, SD cards and flash drives with larger capacities are becoming much more affordable and still might be able to store the bulk of your data. We’ve covered several programs that can back up and sync your files. The benefit that syncing has over backup is that if you make any changes to a file while away from your computer, that change will then be made to the file on your personal computer once the device is plugged in.

For an excellent extensive list, check out Justin’s article - Top 10 Backup Software Apps For Your PC.

Install PortableApps On Your Portable Device(s)

You may have heard of PortableApps before through the coverage of it on MakeUseOf. But you may not know that it can be run on literally any portable device – portable hard drives, SD cards, flash drives, even your iPod.

What I love so much about PortableApps is the diversity of applications and that you can even run web browsers from it. This is crucial to being truly portable as much of what you will need is access to the Internet.

Sync Your Browser Settings To The Cloud

We just talked about PortableApps and that you can run browsers from it. Now let’s look at some of the things that you can do with your web browser to allow you to access your information no matter where you are.

Set Up Browser Sync

In Firefox, Chrome and Opera you can sync your browser settings, including bookmarks, passwords and tabs. This is called “Firefox Sync”, “Chrome Sync”, and “Opera Link“. There’s a great article on MakeUseOf on setting this up in Firefox.

For more information on this, check out Tina’s article - 4 Great Ways To Sync Your Bookmarks & Favorites Across Computers & Phones.

Extend Synchronization With Third-Party Add-Ons & Extensions

Syncing some browser settings like tabs, extensions and themes is nice, but I prefer LastPass and Xmarks for password and bookmark synchronization. This is because there are online “vaults” where I can log in and access my bookmarks and passwords even without a portable device running a browser. There is an article on MakeUseOf featuring LastPass, which is focuses on Firefox, however LastPass works for Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome and Safari as well. Xmarks is great for syncing your bookmarks across all browser platforms, so no matter whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari on another computer, you can access your bookmarks.

If you are interested in managing your tabs with an extension as well, I recommend taking a look at TabCloud for Firefox, Chrome and Android or Session Buddy for Chrome.

Use Bookmarklets & Web Apps, When Local Apps Aren’t Available

Bookmarklets, in case you don’t know, are small scripts written in JavaScript and stored as a URL of a bookmark or as a hyperlink on a web page. These can easily be dragged from a web page into your browser’s bookmark bar for easy access. Bookmarklets do have their limitations and sometimes can’t replace an extension, but Erez highlights many of the reasons why you want to use them instead of extensions.

Using web apps can also make you more portable since your browser is often already open. As there are more and more web applications available for various tasks, you might find yourself merging away from the standalone local application and more into the web. Obviously some programs can’t be replaced however, which is why you use bookmarklets and web apps in combination with PortableApps.

Access Files & Notes Anywhere With Cloud Storage & Web Docs

Cloud storage can be your best friend when it comes to being portable. We discussed backing up your computer files to a portable device, but an additional method that I recommend is using a cloud synchronization and backup service to have the most recent file as many local backup programs won’t be running constantly nor will they detect a change and automatically make it to the stored file. Cloud sync applications do this. It is recommended that before you just choose an online backup service, you do some research. Personally, I recommend SugarSync, but have found Dropbox very useful at times too.

Moving on to web docs, Google Docs and Evernote are two excellent services. Evernote has a desktop application that you can use on your personal computer, then while you’re away you can access all of your notes via the Evernote website. Google Docs is a complete web-based app, but is connected with Google Drive, which you can install on your personal computer and access any files which you have in it.

Access Voice Mails & Texts, And Make Calls Without Your Phone

This might sound too good to be true, but Google Voice can do this. Perhaps you haven’t heard of it yet. If not, check out Justin’s article 5 Awesome Things You Can Do With Google Voice. Basically through set up, you can receive text transcripts of voice mails, make calls from within Gmail (if you have a microphone), and access your voice mails and texts any time in the Google Voice interface. There are a lot more features too.

Use Text Messaging To Communicate With Various Online Services

Speaking of phones, many of the non-computer things you can do are simply through text messaging itself.

Facebook

Most of you know you can message someone from your phone via text if they message you and that you can receive text notifications regarding wall posts, likes, comments, etc. But you may not be familiar with some of the other popular services across the web that you can control with texts too.

Google

Google has several neat uses for it. The most basic one is texting “Google” (466453) to get directions, weather information, phone numbers and addresses, movie times, the list goes on. There are a plethora of things you can receive via text. See! You don’t need a smartphone to search, just text Google. As I previously mentioned, Google Voice actually can send text transcripts of voice mails which is very helpful. You can also create events and receive notifications in Google Calendar via text.

Twitter

I use Twitter quite frequently, but much of the time I am not at my computer. So in order to stay on top of my notifications, I’ve set up my phone to receive text messages of mentions from only those I follow. This cuts down on the amount of notifications, while still informing me about the relevant ones. I can easily respond to these by sending a text back to Twitter (40404).

IFTTT (If This Then That)

Justin wrote an article on making your “dumbphone” smart with IFTTT and I highly recommend you check it out. There are an abundant amount of things that IFTTT can do and is a major part of being mobile without a smartphone.

Evernote

We previously discussed Evernote as a web doc solution, but have you ever had an idea that you wanted to right down, only you didn’t have a pen and paper. Most people have a smartphone, but you don’t. What do you do? Text Evernote of course! Whenever you sign up, you get a private email. Add this email as a contact in your phone and you can send ideas and save texts or pictures by forwarding them.

Mint

Have you heard of Mint.com? Hopefully so. It’s the greatest budgeting website around. I won’t go into detail, instead I’ll let Bakari’s article take care of that. But I will say that you can set up next notifications for different situations such as low balance, bill reminders and unusual spending. there are many other categories that you can be notified through SMS as well.

Trapster

Trapster is a mobile app and service that notifies you about police sightings. Tim explains it in detail. I have been able to still use this service despite not having a smartphone since they have the ability to also send text messages.

For more sites that you can interact with through text messaging, such as Flickr and YouTube, check out Mark’s article - 5 Popular Sites That You Can Update via Email from Your Mobile.

Access Your Computer Remotely While Away

Accessing your computer remotely is another way of accessing your files while away from your computer. There are several great services available, many of which we’ve covered on MakeUseOf.

Use A Portable Operating System

This is a bit of a stretch, especially since some public computers won’t allow you to boot from a portable device. But if you’re the type that wants a completely custom operating system, you have a couple options. You can run Linux on a USB drive or build your own custom and portable operating system with Slax.

Conclusion

How portable are you without a smartphone? Have you tried any of these tips? Do you have any of your own that we missed? We’d love to hear your input on going portable without the convenience of a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

Image Credits: Portable HDD and Flash Drive via Shutterstock, Cloud computing via Shutterstock, Voice mail from PC via Shutterstock, Businessman texting via Shutterstock, Computers via Shutterstock

The post How To Be Completely Portable Without Your Own Computer Or Smartphone appeared first on MakeUseOf.

This script will try to connect to one or more websites every five minutes. If it can’t connect, you’ll receive a notification by email and text message so you can deal with the problem immediately. While this is free, your cellular provider may charge you to receive SMS messages. Check with your provider if you’re not sure whether they charge for incoming text messages.

Associate Your Phone Number With Google Calendar

First, open your Google Calendar page, click the gear at the top right corner, and select Settings. Click the Mobile Setup tab.

Select your country and enter your cell phone number to set up SMS reminders. Assuming your carrier is supported, you don’t have to select it in the Carrier box – see this page for a list of carriers Google supports.

Once you’ve entered your cell phone information, click the Send Verification Code button and Google will text you a verification code – enter the code on the page and the setup process will be complete.

After providing your cell phone information, you can also use the reminders feature in Google Calendar to receive reminders for calendar events. You can even create calendar events via SMS.

Set Up Website Monitor

Now we just need to set up the Website Monitor script. First, click here to create a copy of the Website Monitor spreadsheet in your Google Docs account. (If you’d like to check the source code of the script, you can view it here.)

Next, click the Website Monitor button on the Google Docs toolbar and select Initialize. You’ll be prompted to give the script the permissions it requires – the ability to write calendar events, send email, and so on.

Once the script is initialized, enter your email address into the Email Address box and enter your website address into the Website URLs box. You can enter multiple website addresses with a comma and space in between them.

If you’d only like to receive email notifications, you can set the SMS Notifications box to No – the script won’t send you text messages.

Once you’ve provided your settings, click the Website Monitor menu again and select Start Monitoring.

The Google Apps script will run constantly — even when you don’t have the spreadsheet open — checking your websites every five minutes. If one or more websites go down, it will email you and send you a text message (by creating a calendar event with a reminder).

Thanks to Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration for writing this script!

Other Website Monitoring Tools

We’ve also covered other ways to monitor websites, including SiteMonitor, a free desktop application that checks websites and provides desktop notifications if they go down. Pingdom is another good option. While it’s mostly focused on paid services, Pingdom does offer a free account that can check one website and includes up to twenty SMS alerts – much more limited than the script above if you’re looking for a free solution.

How do you monitor your website’s uptime and get alerts when it goes down? Leave a comment and let us know about your favorite tool!

Image Credit: Mobile Phone Alert via Shutterstock

The post How To Setup Free SMS Alerts When Your Website Is Down appeared first on MakeUseOf.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the new way to edit is a handy shortcut which makes the spreadsheet program more user friendly. The quick editing function extends to any editable part of the chart like the horizontal and vertical axes and the data series on them.

The Quick Edit mode is explained in more detail on Google Docs Help. But the help page also says:

Quick Edit is not available for all chart types. Charts that don’t allow Quick Edit will not show the two buttons in the top-left corner, and can be edited only by opening Advanced Edit mode.

Google Spreadsheets also gets a Move and Resize mode for better visibility and chart design. In this mode, you can move and resize the chart to better fit in other components like axis labels and the legend. As the Google Drive blog explains:

Click the background of the chart and choose the Move and Resize option. You’ll then be able to drag the edges of the chart and move it around to allow things like the legend labels to all fit on one line.

Once done, you can click back to the view mode and take a preview. The Google Drive blog also says that more charting features will be added soon.

Source: Google Drive Blog

The post Google Spreadsheets Get Easier Editing Options & Enhanced Charts [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

In reality, not much. According to Google, “Google Drive is the new home for all your files and folders including your Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This means all your files that were previously stored in Google Docs will now be available in Google Drive”. To put it simply, Google is taking all the files you have stored in Google Docs, and moving them to Google Drive. You might already see the change in your Google Bar.

Another way to look at it is simply as an interface change. Your files are unchanged, but instead of using the Google Docs interface, you will now be using Google Drive. Even your old links to your Google Docs will simply redirect to the new Google Drive links. If you’ve never used Google Drive before, you’ll see this message next time you access Google Docs:

You can use the link provided to set up your Google Drive account. Once you make the switch, you’ll see that while it’s now called Drive, it looks almost identical to what you were used to in Docs. The major differences are the Google Drive desktop app you can download, and the ability to upload any file to your Doc/Drive account.

All in all, you probably have nothing to worry about. You might even like the switch to Drive and the new features it provides.

Were you already using Drive or will you start using it now? What do you think of the switch?

Source: Google Drive Blog

The post All Your Google Docs Files Are Being Moved To Google Drive [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Google Drive has support for making files available offline, which is ideal if you have a Nexus 7 (or other Android tablet), or just don’t want to use much expensive cell phone data.

Using the App

You can install Google Drive for Android from Google Play – although many Google apps come by default with the Nexus 7 and other Android devices, Google Drive doesn’t. If you already had the Google Docs app installed, you’ll notice that it was automatically upgraded to the new Google Drive.

Google Drive has both a smartphone interface and a tablet interface, so it’s optimized for the screen size you’re using it on.

Using it is simple – just open the app and select a category to browse your files. Google Drive uses the Google account you have set up on your device, so there’s no need to log in. If you have multiple Google accounts configured, you can tap the name of your account in the app to switch between accounts.

Tap a file to open it – the file will be downloaded to your device. This makes it easy to send files between your computer and Android – just drop them in the Google Drive folder on your PC and open them in the app.

Note that Google Drive for Android doesn’t work like Google Drive for PCs — files aren’t automatically synchronized to your smartphone or tablet. Files are only downloaded to your device when you open them or when you make them available offline.

Accessing Files Offline

Long-press a file to access more options. From the long-press menu, you can share files with others, make them available offline, or perform other file operations, such as renaming or deleting the file.

Files you’ve made available for use offline can be accessed from the Offline category. Other categories allow you to view all your files, files shared with you, favorite files you’ve starred, or files you’ve recently used.

Uploading Files

Google Drive makes it easy to upload pictures and other files from your smartphone or tablet to your Google Drive account. You can use the Upload button within the app to upload a file or select a file in any application, tap the Share button, and select Google Drive. For example, you can easily upload photos and screenshots from the Gallery app – your pictures will then be accessible in the Google Drive folder on your computer.

Editing Google Docs

Google Drive incorporates the old Google Docs app, so you can create and edit documents and spreadsheets from within the Google Drive app. You can create a new document or spreadsheet from the New button.

To view or edit an existing document or spreadsheet, just tap it in the Google Drive app – an in-app Google Docs editor will appear. Like with Google Docs in your browser, you can collaborate with other people in real time from the Android app – any changes you make will be immediately visible to others. Other people will also be able to see your edits as you make them. Unfortunately, you can’t yet edit documents offline, although you can view them offline if you’ve made them available offline.

Google Drive is a solid Android app that’s essential to anyone that uses Google Drive on their PC. Most of the features you’d need are here, although the lack of offline editing is something that sticks out — Google will hopefully add offline editing in the future.

For more Google Drive tips, check out our list of tips and tricks for Google Drive.

Have you tried Google Drive for Android? How did it work for you? Or do you prefer another cloud storage service, such as Dropbox? Leave a comment and let us know!

The post Access Your Files From Anywhere With Google Drive [Android] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Thankfully, there are other options – and good ones. These range from web-based apps and local software to free and paid. Although some do cost, all have free options and the price you pay for the paid software is a fraction of what you would pay for Microsoft Office. Through this article I will touch upon any unique features such as mobile capability, cost, user interface and compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

Google Docs (AKA Google Drive)

Google Docs has practically become my unconsciously chosen alternative to Microsoft Office. Although I actually own Microsoft Office, I use Google Docs heavily primarily because of convenience. First off, I’m already logged into my Google account either to check my email, watch a video on YouTube, add an event to my Google Calendar and so on. I plain just use Google for everything.

Besides that, I have found the interface to be very nice, although I still think the interface of Microsoft Office 2010 wins hands down – it’s just beautiful.

Features

Probably my favorite feature in Google Docs is the ability to easily collaborate. Collaboration on most sites can be difficult. So often if you want to share a document with someone, they too must have an account. Google is similar to Facebook in this aspect in that (almost) everyone has a Google account. This makes collaboration very nice. But even if the user doesn’t have a Google account, you can still share the document with them.

But sharing a file is only one aspect of collaborating. Editing a document and seeing the changes live is a tremendous benefit to Google Docs – non-Google users can do this too. Now with Google Drive you can also access all your files right on your desktop.

Other unique features are the research and dictionary tools to enable you to search certain topics or words right next to your paper. Since Google Docs is a web app, it’s also mobile and can be accessed from your tablet or smartphone.

Cost

Google Docs is completely free – plain and simple. There are options to upgrade space, but it’s hardly needed – I wouldn’t recommend doing it.

User Interface

Google Docs has seen some pretty major improvements in this area from the past interface. The interface is now even cleaner and simpler, without lacking essential features.

Compatibility

Google Docs’ compatibility with Microsoft Office is surprisingly good! When a Microsoft Office file is uploaded, it labels it differently than it’s own native files, but the editing process is all the same.

What about synchronization and sharing files? Well we already covered collaborating with others while using Google Docs in the cloud, but what about collaborating with others who are using Microsoft Office? Google offers a solution with a plugin for Microsoft Office called Google Cloud Connect, which has been covered thoroughly here on MakeUseOf.

Microsoft Web Apps

Some may argue that Microsoft Web Apps is Microsoft Office. However, that is completely irrelevant. Unlike some articles, the purpose of this article is not to avoid Microsoft products, but to find cheaper alternatives. Microsoft Web Apps is free – you can’t get cheaper than that. The only thing that can make it better is if it’s a solid online office suite, which it is.

Not only is it available for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but it also offers OneNote online, which was news to me. If you don’t know what OneNote is, it’s a note taking application similar to Evernote.

Features

Web Apps is combined with Skydrive, which gives you access to 25 free gigabytes of cloud storage. That is the best deal anywhere right now! Remember when I said I wouldn’t recommending paying for more storage on Google Docs? I’d be hard pressed to find one logical reason to pay for additional Google Docs storage when you have 25 free gigabytes at your disposal. If you have Skydrive installed on your computer, these files are synced there as well (similar to how Google Drive works, except you get 20 more gigabytes with Skydrive).

As far as other features compared to the official Microsoft Office software, Web Apps can’t really compete, but it’s not too shabby. It’s ideal that they’re used together – that’s how they were made. Can Web Apps be used by itself? Yes it can, but just like Google Docs, don’t expect it to be a full feature office suite. As far as mobile access, to my knowledge you cannot edit documents on your phone, but you can view them – which is still very nice.

Cost

Just like Google Docs, Microsoft Web Apps is entirely free of charge.

User Interface

Remember when I told you how beautiful I thought the interface was in Microsoft Office 2010? Well seeing that Web Apps is practically identical, I just want to reiterate that. Sure Google Docs is clean and simple and even what I use primarily, but Microsoft knows what they’re doing when it comes to creating an office suite user interface.

Compatibility

This is almost obvious, so I’ll keep it short – if there is going to be any “winner” in compatibility with Microsoft Office, I really hope it would be Microsoft Web Apps.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a full featured, open source office suite that “broke off” from OpenOffice. LibreOffice lives up to its name, as “Libre” stands for “free.” As you can see in the image above, LibreOffice has Text Document (Word alternative), Spreadsheet (Excel alternative), Presentation (Powerpoint alternative), Drawing (Publisher alternative), Database (Access alternative) and Formula, a math and equation program.

Features

Like I previously mentioned, LibreOffice is a full featured office suite meaning it has all the same functions and maybe even more than the competing office suites (free or not). Other software typically has alternatives for the “popular trio” as I call it – Word, Excel, PowerPoint. LibreOffice goes beyond that adding software for publishing and databases, as well as it’s own addition – a math-focused software.

One great feature about LibreOffice is that it’s portable. You can install it on your flash drive or portable hard drive, or even an SD card and take it with you wherever you go.

Cost

LibreOffice, like OpenOffice, is completely free. Although, donations are accepted.

User Interface

For a free, full featured software suite, LibreOffice looks surprisingly good. It doesn’t have Microsoft’s fancy ribbon-style menu, but it is still modern and easy to use.

Compatibility

When I opened my resume, a heavily formatted document originally created in Word, in LibreOffice, everything was in place. There were no lines pushed over, or any fonts, styles or settings changed. The only thing that was a little different was the spacing – somehow the last couple lines didn’t make it onto the second page and got pushed onto a third. I’m sure that this could be fixed with spacing settings within LibreOffice. I use LibreOffice as my primary portable office suite on my portable hard drive so that I can open up my files where ever I may be without worrying about having software that is incompatible with my Microsoft Office documents.

SoftMaker Office

SoftMaker is a company that creates a very good alternative to Microsoft Office. They offer two different paid versions of their software, as well as a free version. Another thing they do, which is unique, is they allow free downloads of their previous versions of software. Their free office suite is named no other than FreeOffice.

The benefit to downloading this as opposed to other office suites they’ve created and sold, but are not free, is that FreeOffice is in and will continue to be in constant development, whereas older suites are, in their words, “frozen.”

The screenshot above displays the SoftMaker Office Professional 2012 version of TextMaker.

Below is FreeOffice TextMaker:

Features

I found while using SoftMaker, that it is very similar in features to Microsoft Office and other office suites. There wasn’t anything feature-wise that necessarily made it stand out apart from other suites. That said, it has a lot of features and options within each program. There are two versions, other than FreeOffice, of SoftMaker Office Suites. The professional version includes TextMaker, PlanMaker, SoftMaker Presentations, BasicMaker, SoftMaker eM Client Professional and 4 Berlitz Basic Dictionaries. The standard version only excludes eM Client Professional and the 4 Berlitz Basic Dictionaries.

TextMaker, as it implies is a Microsoft Word alternative. PlanMaker is the spreadsheet software. SoftMaker Presentations is the PowerPoint alternative. BasicMaker is the macro language that lets you automate TextMaker and PlanMaker. The SoftMaker eM Client Professional is actually an all-in-one email, task, calendar and contact client. This would be similar to Outlook.

Cost

It is obvious that FreeOffice is free, so I’ll jump right into the prices of the Standard and Professional versions. Office Standard 2012 is € 69.95 and $ 79.95. Office Professional 2012 is € 89.95 and $ 99.95. If you’re looking for an all-in-one email client alternative to Outlook included with your office suite, this is a pretty affordable option. Of course, there is Thunderbird however. Another thing to consider with SoftMaker is that if you want to upgrade, you don’t have to rebuy everything again, but instead just pay a fraction of the cost.

I feel the true value of SoftMaker Office resides in FreeOffice, and not just because it’s free, but for what you get in comparison to what you pay for in their other suites. It truly is a bargain and is a great new rival to LibreOffice. Yes, FreeOffice is new. SoftMaker hasn’t officially announced it’s arrival, but we have been given permission to introduce it to you.

User Interface

SoftMaker Office 2012 isn’t bad, but it isn’t superb either. I definitely think that LibreOffice has it beat in this area. I will give it credit though in that it allows you to add and remove icons from the toolbars so that you can customize it to your liking – that’s nice and often a forgotten feature with many office suites.

Compatibility

When opening up different Microsoft Office files with SoftMaker Office, I didn’t notice any changes in them. In fact, the problem I mentioned about an additional page being added in LibreOffice, did not occur in this case. I was quite happy with the overall performance of the program. Again, the only drawback is that the interface seems a little backdated and could be overwhelming to someone who isn’t very tech savvy.

Kingsoft Office

Kingsoft is a software company based out of Hong Kong that should worry Microsoft. They have a pretty good product here. However, the product only includes the “popular trio” as I’ve previously called it: Word alternative, Excel alternative and PowerPoint alternative. If that is all you need then this will suit you just fine. If you need a software for publishing or databases or note taking, you will need to look elsewhere or get “supplemental software” along with Kingsoft Office.

Although Kingsoft hasn’t been covered on MakeUseOf (to my knowledge), it has been mentioned by a reader in response to a question on MakeUseOf Answers. To read his opinion about it, scroll all the way to the end of the page.

Features

Aside from only having three programs, Kingsoft Office still excels (no pun intended). One feature that I really liked was the mobile app for Android, which is full functioning – you can view and edit your files, right from your phone or tablet. Not too many office suites offer that. Unfortunately my lack of owning an android device inhibited me from testing this personally, but I would be happy to hear any reviews in the comments below.

Cost

Like SoftMaker Office, Kingsoft Office has three versions as well: Free, Standard and Professional. The standard version costs $49.95. The professional version costs $69.95. In my opinion, this is a great deal. Also note that you don’t have to have the entire suite if you don’t want everything. Each piece of software (free and paid) is available individually too.

User Interface

As I was writing this review, I had to continue to hold back my praises on the interface until this section – believe me, it was hard to do. My first impression of Kingsoft Office happened like this, “Wow! That is nice!”

Of course that faded a little once I realized that the ribbon style was only for the professional office suite and not the free one, but that said, the free version looks pretty nice too. With the ribbon style and full featured software combined with an affordable price, I would say that Kingsoft Office is probably the biggest contender to Microsoft Office. Sure, LibreOffice is free, and it does offer more programs – which in no doubt is a plus, but Kingsoft Office comes in at a super close second place.

Compatibility

Compatibility with Microsoft Office for Kingsoft Office isn’t even an issue. When I opened the files they all looked uniform and I noticed that the program’s own interface actually plays a roll in the look and “feel” of the file you’re viewing. Even in the free version, Kingsoft Office worked awesome.

Honorable Mention

ThinkFree

ThinkFree has web based and mobile apps as well as one for download. Don’t get the online and local versions confused. Contrary to what the name may imply, and although it’s a reputable company, the version for download is not as free as you may think.

Zoho Office

Zoho has been around quite a while and has long been Google’s contender for the calendar and office web apps. If you prefer to not use Microsoft Web Apps or Google Docs, Zoho is the next best choice. They do have a free plan as well as two monthly paid plans.

KOffice

KOffice is a free office suite with Word, Excel and PowerPoint alternatives, as well as diagram and flowchart, and vector graphics software. If you are looking for something that is free and diversified, you may want to check out KOffice to see what it has to offer. The interface isn’t bad and the updates are current as well.

Note: KOffice is the older version of Calligra Suite, which was covered on MakeUseOf for popular Linux office suites. Both are fantastic and Calligra Suite does have some differences. If you are interested in one of these two, I recommend you try them both out to see which one you like better.

IBM Lotus Symphony

Lotus Symphony is another one of the “popular trio” desktop applications. It has been around for a while and seemed to be popular among Linux users for a while until OpenOffice came about. It still is a decent alternative if you enjoy trying out different software, but it isn’t my favorite by any means.

Conclusion

I hope that these recommendations have been helpful in deciding what you should use as your primary office suite. Some are much better than others. To sum up my thoughts, I feel the best to consider would be Kingsoft Office and LibreOffice for desktop apps and either Google Docs or Microsoft Web Apps for online files. To me, these have the best user interfaces, the most affordable prices (or are just plain free) and are the most full featured. If you have already tried some of these, I would like to hear your feedback. Which one do you prefer? I’m curious if there are others out there that may not be as popular, but are just as good or better. Let me know!

Also, if you use Microsoft Office, be sure to check out our guide on the best tips and tricks in Office 2010!

Image Credit: Blue Document via Shutterstock

The post 9 Of The Best Free & Low-Cost Alternatives To Microsoft Office appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Type in a keyword and you’ll see Google results in the sidebar. Each result can be previewed via an additional sidebar pop-up. If it’s what you need, you can add it to your document via a link or cite it, which places a footnote in your document.

You can also reach the Research sidebar by right-clicking any word in a document and selecting Research from the menu. This will automatically search for that word. If you’d like to search for multiple terms at once you can highlight them with your cursor before right-clicking.

If your search is about a very specific person or place you’ll receive a summary at the top of the research sidebar before the search results. Entering the name of your favorite actor, for example, throws up his or her birth date, height, any awards they’ve won and some thumbnail pictures. You can do this for places, too, and you’ll receive a map along with the information previously listed.

All Google Documents users can access this immediately, so give it a try. What do you think of it?

Source: Ars Technica

The post Google Adds Research Sidebar To Google Docs [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Using Google Forms, you can collect names, emails, and other contact information on your computer or mobile device that supports mobile browsing. All the data is saved to a spread sheet which can be used for various purposes.

Creating a Form

To create a Google form, sign into your Google account and click on Documents in the menu bar. Next, click the Create button and select the Form tool.

You can add various types of input data items to your Google Form, e.g., Text boxes, Multiple choice responses, Choose from a list.

Click on the Add item button in the Forms editor and familiarize yourself with the type of items available. Before you get started with the layout of your form, outline on a separate sheet of paper the type of information you want to collect.

The “Multiple choice” and “Choose from a list” items work especially well for collecting data from a drop down option, rather than requiring responders to type out information.

Of course, you will also want to collect simple contact information (e.g. name, email, phone number) using text boxes. Keep in my mind, however, if you plan to collect information during an event or meeting, keep your data collection as simple and minimal as possible so that it takes maybe less than 30 seconds for a form to be filled out.

Selecting Theme

Collecting data using a Google Forms is much better and faster than trying to do so on a spread sheet, though the data you collect ends up in spread sheet. To enhance the form, you should use one of the supplied background themes.

Select the Theme button and choose from about 100 different themes. If none of them fit your organization or club, simply go with the graphic free Sample or Plain Form. To change a theme, click the Apply button. (Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to add your own custom image/background.)

Publish Form

Notice at the bottom of the Google Form editor you can click the assigned URL to see how your form will look. You can embed the form into your website, but for our purposes in this tutorial we focus on using the form to collect information during an event or meeting.

To use the form, simply go to your Documents folder and click on the title of the form in your Docs menu. The form will consist of a spreadsheet. Click on the “Form” the menu bar, where you edit, view, send or embed the form in a webpage.

Click on “Go to live form” to open it again in your web browser. Because the form is web based, it can be opened on a mobile device as well, with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. Simply send and open the URL on device(s) you want to use it on. The form can be used simultaneously on more than one device.

Using the Spreadsheet

Google Forms saves data to a spread sheet, so you can export that data, say as a CSV file and then import it into an Address Book, save or print it out as a PDF, or use it in OpenOffice.

Google Forms saves you time in collecting, managing and using data. It’s a free service, making it less expensive than  similar costly services. Let us know what you think of Google Forms and how you’re using it.

For other Google doc related article, start with these:

• Google Docs For Android Updated With Real Time Collaboration And Rich Text Editing [News]
• Sync Your Google Docs To Multiple Machines With Insync
• Use Microsoft Office As An Offline Google Docs Editor with Offisync [Windows]

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This time around the buzz-worthy feature is real time collaboration. Google Docs has offered this feature on the PC for some time, and it seems to receive a fair amount of use. Android users can now see real-time updates and join in collaboration by tapping on a document. The smaller display on a smartphone does make it harder to keep up with your PC-using peers, but you can at least be present.

You can at least be present if you’re editing a text document, that is. Real-time spreadsheet collaboration is still unsupported. Hopefully an update for that is around the corner.

Another major enhancement is rich text editing. You can now bold text, add colors and include lists. Previously these rather basic features were entirely absent, severely limiting the use of Google Docs as a mobile document editing option. Although this may not be as cool as the addition of collaboration, it’s at least as important, and will reduce the frustrations of many users.

You can download the new Google Docs app by visiting the Android market, where it is (of course) available for free. It requires a device running Android 2.1 or better.

Source: Google Docs For Android

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