2 posts tagged “google sites”

What would you like to do more of?

I would love to have the time to do more pure research - to build things (on the web). To play with the new Google App Engine, and Google Sites. To read blogs, write blog posts, and take part in things.

I would love to have more time to take part in online communities like Vox.

Our adoption of several children has pretty much slashed the amount of "free" time we have, and often I am so tired at the end of a day that I vegitate for a couple of hours and then often go to bed early and flake out. Last night I took the Nintendo DS up with me, and fell asleep before I even opened it.

If you have a Google Apps account, you may have noticed the sudden appearance of "Google Sites" within your applications homepage. It looks very much like Google's first stab at a SharePoint style collaboration workspace - and it isn't too bad at all.

Those with a long memory will remember the Google acquisition of "JotSpot" a few years ago, and the rumours that they were about to release their own Wiki tools - I have a feeling some of the elements of "Google Sites" are the end result - only Google have done a lot more than many might have thought.

Here's the official tour...

Google Sites provides many of the same features as a generic Windows SharePoint Services site - except of course you have no hosting fees, no server(s) to administer and no administration learning curve. Of course you can't modify what you get "out of the box", but I sometimes wonder just how many companies use SharePoint beyond the basic document libraries and discussion workspaces anyway.

I can't help wondering - if Google add workflow to this in the next version, it's going to be a realistic alternative to SharePoint...