Tag Archives: jotspot

Web Applications

Google Sites: What I would like

I am not going to deny that the basic Wiki functionality is all there but there are a few things that I would like to see. Now I know it is a free service but I would actually be prepared to pay for some of this on a WordPress model (i.e. buy what you want when you need it).

  • Categories or page tagging
  • The ability to send a page to Google Docs or alternatively the ability to export to external formats as you can for a Google Document.
  • The comments section should collapse if there are no comments; ditto the attachments. If something does not apply to my page then I just need a simple text link to add it.
  • Most of all, proper HTML markup rather than a massive paragraph consisting of my whole page, with a BR tag… if I’m lucky. If I want to reuse my content then I cannot export it and its not even decent HTML. Blogger is no better but crazily Google Pages does the right thing!

As with Blogger I think Google is having some major integration issues with all the companies it has bought up. If one of the applications or systems has a cool feature then I think it is natural to assume that it will be available in all Google branded applications.

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Web Applications

Try our new, new services!

So on Friday not one but two long awaited beta service invitations arrived. The first was the announcement of the addition of Jotspot to Google Apps (finally) and the other about the Amazon Simple DB service. Typical buses…

I didn’t have a lot of time this weekend so I plumped for signing up for Google Apps and trying the new wiki functionality as I was hoping for a beefed up version of Pages. The Simple DB service also needs me to beef up my Web Service scripting fu.

It is too early to say much about either service but after signing up for a Google Apps account (apparently you cannot simply drive one off your regular Google Account). I was slightly underwhelmed by the new Google Sites service. It has taken how long to make a basic and acceptable wiki service available?

Still you can have a lot of separate wiki sites and you have a lot of flexibility on how you share and collaborate on them so maybe I need to build up some content first and then try to share it around. I would like to know whether you can hook Analytics up to some Sites content. That would be useful for some of the content that otherwise would go on something like a WordPress page.

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