Online collaboration now extends to presentations with Google

Google Docs is a web-based platform for creating, sharing, storing and publishing documents. The new release means that users can now create simple web-based presentations at http://documents.google.com, that others can update and view from their own computers in real time. Google makes the point that web-based, collaborative presentations are a world away from managing and compiling group members’ inputs in separate attachments – not least because multiple users can view a set of slides while a moderator controls the presentation. It says that the Google Docs team is making the new features available in response to user demand for presentation sharing, and that updates and improvements will continue to roll out over the coming months. “This will be an extremely useful tool to our users and gives us an easy way to – literally – get on the same page,” says Scott Smith, vice president, Envirolet Environmental Sanitation and Google Apps administrator for Sancor Industries. “In our business the better the process for sharing information is, the better we can illustrate to our customers the value of our products.” “From student groups to sales teams, people are turning to the web for help improving both personal and group productivity,” adds Sam Schillace, director of engineering, Google Docs. “Putting documents in the cloud surrounded by easy to use features for collaboration and sharing can save people hours of inefficiency and frustration and even enable new ways of working together.”