Google Apps Hacks

I should confess that this book wasn't what I thought it was. I was interested in reading it because I misread the title. I thought it was about the Google App Engine - which is a technology that I really want to spend some time investigating. But it wasn't about the Google App engine, it was about Google Apps - the set of online applications that Google have been introducing over the last few years. <br /> <br />That misunderstanding meant that I had to adjust my expectations of the book somewhat. Instead of a book aimed at developers explaining the inner detail of a technology, I got a book which was firmly aimed at end users. <br /> <br />I don't often read computer books aimed at end users. I find that I'm not in the target audience. Unless an application is very complex then I like to think that I can work out how to use it without resorting to manuals. Of course that means that I often end up using only a small fraction of the functionality of an application. <br /> <br />The Google application set is no exception to this rule. I've been using many of the Google applications for some time. In particular I've started to write a lot of documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs, the online office suite which is intended as a replacement for Microsoft Office. I tend to work on several different computers so having my documents available on a web site means that the latest version is available to me on any computer. <br /> <br />Google Docs is one of the most widely-used parts of the Google application set and it's a good place for this book to start. The first four chapters present an over view of the applications and then one chapter each concentrating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As expected I found that I already knew most of what was described in the early parts of the chapters, but I found myself saying "oh, that's useful" quite a lot towards the ends of the chapters as I read about features that I hadn't come across before. For example, I had no idea that the spreadsheet application was able to access data from external web sites and extract information which can be used in your calculations. I'm sure I'll find that useful in the future. <br /> <br />The next chapter talks about what is probably the best-known Google application - Gmail (or, as it's known in the UK, GoogleMail). I have a Gmail account, but currently I only use it for a couple of high-volume mailing lists. I certainly learned a lot about Gmail and I'll probably start using it a bit more now. This chapter, however, demonstrated the obvious problem about using a book to learn about this products - improvements to the Google applications appear frequently and some of the information in the book is already slightly out of date. <br /> <br />Subsequent chapters go into other parts of the Google application set in a similar level of detail. Google Calendar, iGoogle (the customisable Google homepage) and Google Reader all get a chapter to themselves. Then we have a few chapters that cover multiple projects. There's a chapter on Picassa and YouTube, one on Google Maps, Google Earth and SketchUp (the last of which I had never heard of) and one on Blogger. The final chapter is about tracking the success of your sites using Google Analytics. In just about every chapter I learned something that will be useful to be. <br /> <br />All in all, I found this book well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in making better use of the Google applications. There are only two caveats that you should consider. Firstly, there's the fact that it's a very wide-ranging book and I think that few people would use all of the applications and therefore find all of the chapters useful. Secondly, as I mentioned above, all of the Google applications are being updated and improved at an incredible rate, so this is definitely going to be a book with a rather short shelf life.

Google Apps Hacks <br />This book is a keeper! Loaded with all kinds of things you would never think to look for. Such as did you know you can create PDF's with Google Docs? Or did you know you can upload photos of local landmarks for Google Maps? This books tells how to that and much more.

Philipp Lenssen's GOOGLE APPS HACKS provides a collection of hacks and tricks to offer different ways of customizing Google Apps, from its email and spreadsheets to some of its desktop applications such as Google Earth. Owners of Google Apps learn all about document sharing, embedding web pages into Google Calendar, adding photos to its mapping system, and more.

While this book wasn't chock full of the kind of insider information that you usually get from a "hacks" book, it did offer a lot of good information that I haven't seen altogether in one place. Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware of all the different tools that Google is making available: from Google Docs to Gmail to iGoogle and more. This book does an excellent job showing how to use these tools and how to get more out of them than you probably thought possible. <br /> <br />The book spends the first 4 chapters going through the various applications within the Google Docs family--which is essentially an online, non-Microsoft version of the Office suite. Subsequent chapters are then dedicated to Gmail, iGoogle (a customization of the Google home page), Google Calendar, Google Reader, Picasa, blogging, Google Maps (and related programs), and analytics. Even with all this information, there are still Google applications that were left out--but I suppose that is to be expected, otherwise this book would be well above its current 400 pages. <br /> <br />I found each chapter to be well written, and I felt that each "hack" was something a real user would try/want to do. The author includes lots of screen shots and includes extra HTML and javascript within the text where appropriate. The author goes so far as to show (in a few cases) some 3rd party applications that rival the Google offering. For example, in discussing Picasa, the author shows some non-Google alternatives. <br /> <br />I thought this was a great book that was well-written and easy to follow. It opened my eyes to many of the possibilities that currently exist within Google products. If you're looking to get more out of your Google experiences, this book is highly recommended. <br />