Submitted by asgarland on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 09:52.
Hey guys. Thought I would start by saying hi. A little information about me. I am a mechanical engineer at Purdue, and am actually at Purdue right now. So that means if any of you guys are here, I am willing to meet up. If not, here is some contact info:
Hello, I'm Meredith. I'm in Zionsville, so not too far from Purdue if everyone is near there and wants to get together sometime. Here is my contact info:
I don't get on AIM unless someone asks me to, so if you guys want to get on AIM for a group chat just let me know and I'll be there. Otherwise, I check my email compulsively so you can get me pretty quick there.
Submitted by Purdue_ME on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 00:04.
Hey everyone, I'm Jason Jerger and I'm a junior at Purdue. I'm studying Mechanical Engineering. I live in Newburgh, IN right now (outskirts of Evansville, IN) so I'm not near Purdue. I check my email multiple times a day, and I'm on AIM a lot, so I can be contacted easily by both of those methods. I probably won't check the group Wiki as much because it's kind of a hassle to get to, but I can if everyone wants to use this method. It sounds like we got a pretty good group going on here so I look forward to working with all of you.
I'm Dan, and I'm working at a camp in northern Michigan for the summer. My e-mail access is limited to a few hours a day when I'm not on time off, but when I need to get things done, I can be on when I need to.
My e-mail is dkleinbaum@gmail.com but if there's an urgent need to reach me, sending me a text will be the quickest way. My cell is (734) 417-7254.
This reference is one of the best that I found. It explains what Google Docs is, why it is good or bad, and why their company uses it. The document does go into a little more detail about the coding that may cause possible problems or could be coded better, which might be a little to detailed for the white paper. The source then continues to talk about some details about Google Docs and what can be done to make it better. Thought downfalls are found, a great part about this source is that it talks how Google Docs could be improved. Some pros that are listed is that it is a simple program to use and also allows for congruent editing. A few major “shortcomings” that are mentioned are that that the output is hard to control, meaning the formatting when exported to an offline editor might not be as shown in Google Docs, and Google Docs is only a text based editor. Since it is text based, graphics and other content will not be able to be edited by multiple users.
This reference is also very good. Google Docs is talked about starting on page 31. The history of Google Docs is talked about first to give the reader background information of where it came from. It is interesting that to see that it was known as Writely before October 2006, and known as Google Docs since then. Not only is Google Docs talked about, but Google Spreadsheets is mentioned which will combat with the offline version of Microsoft Excel. A very important pro that is mentioned is the fact that Google Docs is free to sign up for. This source then starts to talk about formatting and how documents can be saved or exported. Finally, an important part of this source is that is mentions Google Talk. This is also offered by Google, and can be accessed once an account has been created for Google Docs. This is a fast way of communicating, and is often used like AIM, which a lot of college students use because it is free and conversations can be saved.
This last source is made available by PC Magazine, a very reputable magazine in the technology world. This source is mainly good for its pros and cons that it lists. Also, not only is it compared to Microsoft Office, it brings in new direct competitors, such as Zoho and ThinkFree, which are online editing software and also competing against Microsoft. PCMag mentions that it has been checking the development of Google Docs and when they first checked, there was much, but a year later, a lot of features were added. It also mentions that this software is still a beta version, and therefore Google is still working on making it better. Finally, an easy to read Pros and Cons chart can be read which will help us compare Microsoft Office and Google Docs to one another.
I also have some other sources that I found that could be useful, and my team members are welcome to read them and use them for their annotations as I have not completely analyzed them yet.
This article was actually written not long after Google Docs was first launched. Obviously the software will have undergone changes since then, but I think it provides a good look at the beginning of Google Docs and would be useful for a history section if we decided to write one. The article talks about how Google Docs integrated writely and spreadsheet programs into a single interface, and the pluses and minuses of that integration. For example, a rival program called Zoho (at the time of this article) offers the ability to embed spreadsheets into writely documents, while Google Docs does not. It also makes a brief mention of Microsoft Office and how it is more limited in its web publishing abilities than Google Docs. Finally, the article mentions one of the major drawbacks of Google Docs, which is that potentially sensitive documents are stored on Google's servers, rather than on a user's personal computer.
This is a short article on CNet which was only written a few days ago. The title is "Can Google Docs work for live blogging?" and it analyzes an article written on the official Google Docs blog about how to write a live blog using the application. The original blog article (linked in this source) is useful to learn the steps required, but I found this CNet article interesting for its critical analysis. For instance, the author points out that when live blogging, Google Docs will automatically publish any auto-saves, which can be a problem if the user isn't quite ready for the changes to be published. One of the advantages they mention is that Google Docs allow several users to work on a document at the same time, which most standard blogging tools do not. Since this article was written recently it has a more timely use for this project.
This article is pretty short but it has a really useful tip about using Google Docs to convert Microsoft Office documents into PDFs for free. This would have been particularly useful to me for our earlier projects since I have an older version of Office (2003) which cannot convert .docs to pdfs, while the newer versions can. It's a pretty simple process, and the article includes a little screenshot of what to click on. It also lists which file formats can be uploaded and converted. The article isn't very long and wouldn't provide a lot of information for the project, but it does give a good specific description of this particular process. It also provides links to other Google Docs tutorials and links, so that would be helpful at least.
Submitted by Purdue_ME on Wed, 07/16/2008 - 21:47.
Here are the three resources that I found:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/google_apps_outlook.php "Comparing Google Apps to Microsoft Outlook." This is a good website because we plan on doing a comparative white paper. It compares Email Functionality, Calendar Functionality, Contact Functionality, Shared Folder Functionality, Remote and Mobile Access, and Setup and Support between Google Apps and Microsoft Outlook. I think that this source will benefit us because it gives us an in site on how Google Apps are compare and contrast to Microsoft Outlook. Although we are comparing Google Docs to Microsoft Word in our paper, we can definitely use some information from this article. This article is not a biased article, and it explains the pros and cons of each. Since we are supposed to write a non-biased article, this would be a good source to compare our paper to. It compares the usability of Microsoft vs. the usability of Google Apps. It talks about how Google is free is and Microsoft is not. It says that the choice you need to make is whether you want a little performance, or if you want to save some money.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9732473-2.html. The second source I found is titled "5 things you probably didn't know you could do in Google Docs & Spreadsheets." This article, as you probably have guessed, gives you a look at some features that Google Docs has that beginners probably didn't know existed. I thought that this would be great for our group because when we emailed each other no one seemed to use Google Docs before and no one knew how to use it or what it was. We obviously did not know the things only advanced users know. The 5 things it mentions are "Live lookup via Google and Google Finance", "Google search inside a spreadsheet", "Color-coded live comments", "Revisioning", and "There are many copies, and then have a plan." Another plus to this article is that there are user posts at the bottom, and some people have also attached links and comments furthering advanced features. This will help further our knowledge on Google Docs and make us more of an expert on the subject before we write our paper.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/office_live_workspace_vs_google_doc.... The third sources that I found is titled "Office Live Workspace vs. Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison." This article compares Google Docs to Office Live Workspace. This is basically the same thing that we are doing. This will help show us why Google Docs is better, or worse, than Microsoft in certain areas. The article compares file size, file types, storage space, sharing, collaboration, versioning, batch uploads, integration, direct URLs, folders, saving, exporting, mobile access, and others. This article should be extremely helpful to us because I personally did not know that you could do half of those things with Google Docs. Comparing Google Docs with Microsoft feature by feature is something that our group might have to take into consideration. It helps by making your paper seem more thorough, and also makes it look more professional. It shows the reader that you have done your research. If we use this information and develop a paper like it, I believe our paper could be successful.
The following are my research posts on Google Docs in relation to our white paper projectI decided to focus on the publicly posted and available sources and went straight to Youtube to browse what other people have put together in terms of tutorials and other random video clips.
Expert Village's Google Docs tutorials are short, but the entire series is extensive and thorough. The series of videos has 32 different segments and starts very simple with a basic user information and interface instructions, and proceeds to cover a vast amount of material. It has extensive lessons on using spreadsheets in Google Docs, and also formatting, editing and sharing presentations using Google Docs. The adding comments feature in Google Docs appears to be very similar to the comments/track changes feature in Microsoft Word, and will be useful when our team is editing and getting peer reviews.
The third and final resource is another series of tutorials, which cover slightly different material than the expert village, and are a little more basic. They are put together by a secondary school teacher, and are clearly aimed at a little less computer savvy customer than the expert village tutorials, but the interface lessons are very clear, simple, and give anyone who has very limited or no experience with Google Docs a good starting point. The author starts from finding and registering for Google and locating the documents and introducing some plain formatting instructions like changing fonts and adding titles. If a user did not know how to use Word of Google Docs, this would be what I would advise to check out, but it also is a good resource to make sure our white paper covers some of the simple differences as well.
The following is a quick YouTube video that provides a brief intro to using Google Docs for business research. It gives a quick demo of how to lookup business details including stock price, price/earning ratio, market share, etc. This one is extremely useful when trying to research any companies, put together spreadsheets comparing figures and makes company research quick and easy. The way Excel formulas can be copied into other cells can also be used with these business research functions and with a list of companies in one column, they only specify one row of information they want for the companies and copy it through the entire list. They also have the latest news headlines for business, which could be a cool feature for a constantly changing document. Google Docs definitely has the advantage of putting constantly changing information into documents, as there is definitely no feature similar to this in Microsoft Word. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVjwKmDLrIE&feature=related
Submitted by Purdue_ME on Sat, 07/19/2008 - 16:44.
The email is apparently down for awhile, so I thought I would post this on the Wiki to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
Meredith- Pro/Cons of Docs and Word
Andrew- History of Docs and How it will benefit BioMet
Dan- Basics of Docs (not comparing) and conclusion
Jason- Introduction and Basics of Word (not comparing)
Sound good to everyone? We're going to have our deadline and group convo on AIM at noon (EST) on Monday to write the executive summary.
Submitted by asgarland on Sun, 07/20/2008 - 02:29.
Depending on my class, I don't get out until 12:40, but we usually get out earlier, but no matter what, I will be on AIM by 1:00 at the latest. The assignments sound good, and I will have everything done by then!
Hi, I'm Andrew
Hey guys. Thought I would start by saying hi. A little information about me. I am a mechanical engineer at Purdue, and am actually at Purdue right now. So that means if any of you guys are here, I am willing to meet up. If not, here is some contact info:
AIM: happos2
email: asgarland@purdude.edu
gmail: garland.andy@gmail.com
cell: 865-599-0124
It should be fun working with all of you. Enjoy!
Andrew Garland
Hi everyone
Hello, I'm Meredith. I'm in Zionsville, so not too far from Purdue if everyone is near there and wants to get together sometime. Here is my contact info:
email: mervin@purdue.edu
AIM: Natame Secrea
Yahoo: stargatejack
cell: (317) 260-9215
I don't get on AIM unless someone asks me to, so if you guys want to get on AIM for a group chat just let me know and I'll be there. Otherwise, I check my email compulsively so you can get me pretty quick there.
Go Group 2!
Hey, I'm Jason
Hey everyone, I'm Jason Jerger and I'm a junior at Purdue. I'm studying Mechanical Engineering. I live in Newburgh, IN right now (outskirts of Evansville, IN) so I'm not near Purdue. I check my email multiple times a day, and I'm on AIM a lot, so I can be contacted easily by both of those methods. I probably won't check the group Wiki as much because it's kind of a hassle to get to, but I can if everyone wants to use this method. It sounds like we got a pretty good group going on here so I look forward to working with all of you.
AIM: shibbychester13
email: jjerger@purdue.edu
cell: 812-457-6162
Hey
I'm Dan, and I'm working at a camp in northern Michigan for the summer. My e-mail access is limited to a few hours a day when I'm not on time off, but when I need to get things done, I can be on when I need to.
My e-mail is dkleinbaum@gmail.com but if there's an urgent need to reach me, sending me a text will be the quickest way. My cell is (734) 417-7254.
My Research, and extra links!
Here are my three source annotations which I found very helpful.
http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/dekeyser/googledocs.pdf
This reference is one of the best that I found. It explains what Google Docs is, why it is good or bad, and why their company uses it. The document does go into a little more detail about the coding that may cause possible problems or could be coded better, which might be a little to detailed for the white paper. The source then continues to talk about some details about Google Docs and what can be done to make it better. Thought downfalls are found, a great part about this source is that it talks how Google Docs could be improved. Some pros that are listed is that it is a simple program to use and also allows for congruent editing. A few major “shortcomings” that are mentioned are that that the output is hard to control, meaning the formatting when exported to an offline editor might not be as shown in Google Docs, and Google Docs is only a text based editor. Since it is text based, graphics and other content will not be able to be edited by multiple users.
http://dmu-ca.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/dmca/publication/Diploma_Keno_Buss.pdf
This reference is also very good. Google Docs is talked about starting on page 31. The history of Google Docs is talked about first to give the reader background information of where it came from. It is interesting that to see that it was known as Writely before October 2006, and known as Google Docs since then. Not only is Google Docs talked about, but Google Spreadsheets is mentioned which will combat with the offline version of Microsoft Excel. A very important pro that is mentioned is the fact that Google Docs is free to sign up for. This source then starts to talk about formatting and how documents can be saved or exported. Finally, an important part of this source is that is mentions Google Talk. This is also offered by Google, and can be accessed once an account has been created for Google Docs. This is a fast way of communicating, and is often used like AIM, which a lot of college students use because it is free and conversations can be saved.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209724,00.asp
This last source is made available by PC Magazine, a very reputable magazine in the technology world. This source is mainly good for its pros and cons that it lists. Also, not only is it compared to Microsoft Office, it brings in new direct competitors, such as Zoho and ThinkFree, which are online editing software and also competing against Microsoft. PCMag mentions that it has been checking the development of Google Docs and when they first checked, there was much, but a year later, a lot of features were added. It also mentions that this software is still a beta version, and therefore Google is still working on making it better. Finally, an easy to read Pros and Cons chart can be read which will help us compare Microsoft Office and Google Docs to one another.
I also have some other sources that I found that could be useful, and my team members are welcome to read them and use them for their annotations as I have not completely analyzed them yet.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006744.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs
Not sure if we are allowed to use this as reputable source, though I think it is.
Andrew Garland
Sources
Here are three sources that I found useful.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/10/google-docs-spreadsheets-launches/
This article was actually written not long after Google Docs was first launched. Obviously the software will have undergone changes since then, but I think it provides a good look at the beginning of Google Docs and would be useful for a history section if we decided to write one. The article talks about how Google Docs integrated writely and spreadsheet programs into a single interface, and the pluses and minuses of that integration. For example, a rival program called Zoho (at the time of this article) offers the ability to embed spreadsheets into writely documents, while Google Docs does not. It also makes a brief mention of Microsoft Office and how it is more limited in its web publishing abilities than Google Docs. Finally, the article mentions one of the major drawbacks of Google Docs, which is that potentially sensitive documents are stored on Google's servers, rather than on a user's personal computer.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9986718-2.html
This is a short article on CNet which was only written a few days ago. The title is "Can Google Docs work for live blogging?" and it analyzes an article written on the official Google Docs blog about how to write a live blog using the application. The original blog article (linked in this source) is useful to learn the steps required, but I found this CNet article interesting for its critical analysis. For instance, the author points out that when live blogging, Google Docs will automatically publish any auto-saves, which can be a problem if the user isn't quite ready for the changes to be published. One of the advantages they mention is that Google Docs allow several users to work on a document at the same time, which most standard blogging tools do not. Since this article was written recently it has a more timely use for this project.
http://www.lytebyte.com/2007/07/12/free-alternative-way-to-convert-offic...
This article is pretty short but it has a really useful tip about using Google Docs to convert Microsoft Office documents into PDFs for free. This would have been particularly useful to me for our earlier projects since I have an older version of Office (2003) which cannot convert .docs to pdfs, while the newer versions can. It's a pretty simple process, and the article includes a little screenshot of what to click on. It also lists which file formats can be uploaded and converted. The article isn't very long and wouldn't provide a lot of information for the project, but it does give a good specific description of this particular process. It also provides links to other Google Docs tutorials and links, so that would be helpful at least.
Resources I found
Here are the three resources that I found:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/google_apps_outlook.php "Comparing Google Apps to Microsoft Outlook." This is a good website because we plan on doing a comparative white paper. It compares Email Functionality, Calendar Functionality, Contact Functionality, Shared Folder Functionality, Remote and Mobile Access, and Setup and Support between Google Apps and Microsoft Outlook. I think that this source will benefit us because it gives us an in site on how Google Apps are compare and contrast to Microsoft Outlook. Although we are comparing Google Docs to Microsoft Word in our paper, we can definitely use some information from this article. This article is not a biased article, and it explains the pros and cons of each. Since we are supposed to write a non-biased article, this would be a good source to compare our paper to. It compares the usability of Microsoft vs. the usability of Google Apps. It talks about how Google is free is and Microsoft is not. It says that the choice you need to make is whether you want a little performance, or if you want to save some money.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9732473-2.html. The second source I found is titled "5 things you probably didn't know you could do in Google Docs & Spreadsheets." This article, as you probably have guessed, gives you a look at some features that Google Docs has that beginners probably didn't know existed. I thought that this would be great for our group because when we emailed each other no one seemed to use Google Docs before and no one knew how to use it or what it was. We obviously did not know the things only advanced users know. The 5 things it mentions are "Live lookup via Google and Google Finance", "Google search inside a spreadsheet", "Color-coded live comments", "Revisioning", and "There are many copies, and then have a plan." Another plus to this article is that there are user posts at the bottom, and some people have also attached links and comments furthering advanced features. This will help further our knowledge on Google Docs and make us more of an expert on the subject before we write our paper.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/office_live_workspace_vs_google_doc.... The third sources that I found is titled "Office Live Workspace vs. Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison." This article compares Google Docs to Office Live Workspace. This is basically the same thing that we are doing. This will help show us why Google Docs is better, or worse, than Microsoft in certain areas. The article compares file size, file types, storage space, sharing, collaboration, versioning, batch uploads, integration, direct URLs, folders, saving, exporting, mobile access, and others. This article should be extremely helpful to us because I personally did not know that you could do half of those things with Google Docs. Comparing Google Docs with Microsoft feature by feature is something that our group might have to take into consideration. It helps by making your paper seem more thorough, and also makes it look more professional. It shows the reader that you have done your research. If we use this information and develop a paper like it, I believe our paper could be successful.
Research Posts
The following are my research posts on Google Docs in relation to our white paper projectI decided to focus on the publicly posted and available sources and went straight to Youtube to browse what other people have put together in terms of tutorials and other random video clips.
Expert Village's Google Docs tutorials are short, but the entire series is extensive and thorough. The series of videos has 32 different segments and starts very simple with a basic user information and interface instructions, and proceeds to cover a vast amount of material. It has extensive lessons on using spreadsheets in Google Docs, and also formatting, editing and sharing presentations using Google Docs. The adding comments feature in Google Docs appears to be very similar to the comments/track changes feature in Microsoft Word, and will be useful when our team is editing and getting peer reviews.
http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/4204_google-documents.htm
The third and final resource is another series of tutorials, which cover slightly different material than the expert village, and are a little more basic. They are put together by a secondary school teacher, and are clearly aimed at a little less computer savvy customer than the expert village tutorials, but the interface lessons are very clear, simple, and give anyone who has very limited or no experience with Google Docs a good starting point. The author starts from finding and registering for Google and locating the documents and introducing some plain formatting instructions like changing fonts and adding titles. If a user did not know how to use Word of Google Docs, this would be what I would advise to check out, but it also is a good resource to make sure our white paper covers some of the simple differences as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-m-4Hmxspg&NR=1
The following is a quick YouTube video that provides a brief intro to using Google Docs for business research. It gives a quick demo of how to lookup business details including stock price, price/earning ratio, market share, etc. This one is extremely useful when trying to research any companies, put together spreadsheets comparing figures and makes company research quick and easy. The way Excel formulas can be copied into other cells can also be used with these business research functions and with a list of companies in one column, they only specify one row of information they want for the companies and copy it through the entire list. They also have the latest news headlines for business, which could be a cool feature for a constantly changing document. Google Docs definitely has the advantage of putting constantly changing information into documents, as there is definitely no feature similar to this in Microsoft Word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVjwKmDLrIE&feature=related
Group Jobs
The email is apparently down for awhile, so I thought I would post this on the Wiki to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
Meredith- Pro/Cons of Docs and Word
Andrew- History of Docs and How it will benefit BioMet
Dan- Basics of Docs (not comparing) and conclusion
Jason- Introduction and Basics of Word (not comparing)
Sound good to everyone? We're going to have our deadline and group convo on AIM at noon (EST) on Monday to write the executive summary.
Works out!
Depending on my class, I don't get out until 12:40, but we usually get out earlier, but no matter what, I will be on AIM by 1:00 at the latest. The assignments sound good, and I will have everything done by then!
Talk to you soon!
Andrew Garland
Group Jobs
Fine by me! See you guys tomorrow.
Have fun
Hey guys. Just wanted to say that it was great working with you and I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer! Good luck with school next year!