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Google Docs, the company’s online office suite, now lets people create and use templates. There are many examples already posted in Google’s template gallery, including invoices, resumes, invitations, mileage caluclators and calendars.

Avery Dennison has already posted a number of templates for their self-adhesive labels. Now I have one less reason to use Microsoft Word, and the folks at TastyPopsicle seem to agree with me: see their article called Oh hell no, Google’s got templates!

I’m sure there are security concerns. How hard would it be for someone to post a template that lets users record their web passwords or credit card information, and then sends back that valuable data to the developer? Google’s videos don’t mention any of these issues - instead, users are told that they can email template-based documents to friends, who can fill them out and return the data in their email client. 

Before trying these templates, I suggest changing your Google password to something stronger, like a passphrase, or using a Google account that doesn’t have much or any email or data in it. It’s much easier to set up a fresh Google account than to figure out who’s looking at your data.

There’s more information and a couple of videos in this Google blog article called Templates bring Docs to life.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• 12 May 2008: Software and services - free or paid?
• 24 April 2008: Change that password into a passphrase
• 19 April 2008: Salesforce for Google Apps
• 28 February 2008: The Google cable
• 18 September 2007: Google, Yahoo and IBM in the Office
• 17 April 2008: Virtual keyboards and monitoring software foil keystroke loggers
• 12 April 2008: Finding business contacts and passwords on the Internet
• 19 April 2007: Living la vida Google
• 2 July 2007: CXOs face malware email attacks
• 23 February 2007: Google Apps vs Microsoft Office

In last night’s IS 6100 lecture, I mentioned Google Apps. This is a free web-based application suite that offers email, calendar, contacts, word processing and spreadsheet functions. No software installation is required, other than a Web browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer.

According to this Yahoo article and this Google site, Google will offer a business version of this suite for US$50 per seat per year. This version includes customization, support for specific domain names in e-mail addresses, and 10 GB of hosted storage per seat.

Google is aiming squarely at Microsoft Office, which is a major cash cow for Microsoft. Businesses that don’t need a full office suite on every employee’s hard drive can save money by using Google’s web-based apps. Google updates its software on its own servers, as it is operating as an application service provider (ASP), so Microsoft Update isn’t needed to patch the apps.

Google also offers an education version for universities. A university like HPU could offer students Gmail with an hpu.edu e-mail address. Google Apps allows users to share and edit DOC and XLS files, which would be very handy for group projects.

Finally, there are various free office suites available, including OpenOffice. Some of these require installation to a hard drive. I prefer web-based solutions, even when they don’t support PowerPoint files.

A couple of my students have asked why TurnItIn.com won’t accept their documents. Their files were written in the brand-new Microsoft Word 2007.

Students who use Office 2007 are going to encounter problems whenever they share files with students who use older software packages. As part of Office 2007, Microsoft has deployed new document formats based upon XML. In Word, this new 2007 file format has the extension .docx

TurnItIn.com has not updated their submission page to accept Word 2007 documents. One of two things is happening when TurnItIn.com receives a docx file. The site may be rejecting files when it sees the docx extension. This is an example of data validation, a task that computers perform to check hand-entered data. If you’ve miskeyed a postal address or telephone number into a web form, and received an error message, you’ve encountered data validation.

It seems more likely that TurnItIn.com’s server-based system simply can’t read the new XML format that Microsoft has used in docx files.

TurnItIn.com can easily fix this problem when they write and test a new docx filter. Because TurnItIn.com is an application service provider (ASP), it’s easy to deploy this change. TurnItIn.com doesn’t have to compile and release software for personal computers.

I’m not brave enough to try Word 2007 yet. I usually wait until Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 before I’ll try a new software version. I’ve heard reports from colleagues and friends that Word 2007 breaks macros, templates and documents that worked just fine in Word 2003.

The quick fix for Windows users is to use File, Save As and choose the Word 2003 DOC format. Upload that new DOC file to TurnItIn.com and all is well.

TurnItIn.com will also accept RTF and PDF documents.

File, Save As does have an RTF file type choice. RTF is an file format that Microsoft used in early versions of Micorsoft Word. For a simple document without graphics or macros, it should work well enough.

There are several free programs like CutePDF Writer that will allow Windows users to save documents directly to PDF format. I’ve used that program for years. Sometimes I get better results with CutePDF Writer than I do with Acrobat Professional.

Mac users can save any printable file to PDF format by opening the application’s Print dialog, pressing the PDF button in the lower left corner of the dialog box, and choosing Save as PDF…

CARS: A quick overview of the Smart car, which Chrysler plans to bring to the US market by 2006. ZAP will start importing and converting the cars for sale in the USA this year. When someone does start selling these in Honolulu, there will be a long waiting list. Cooper Minis are very popular here.

World: How are BMWs and justice related in China? Well, don’t buy a lottery ticket there.