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Google Office Hacks, an Upcoming Book  (View post)

Jez [PersonRank 1]

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
16 years ago6,652 views

Heres a great idea to make money!
1. Write a blog about Google.
2. Make money off Adsense
3. Tell readers that you are going to write a book about Google Office.
4. Tell readers that you have a couple of ideas. Ask them to provide the rest...

WTF?!?!? At least announce that you want all the readers to provide best tips, and offer them a cut of your adsense earnings!

Then in a couple of months release the book anyway! Crikey! Thats sneaky cheeky sneaky!!

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Cool!

<< For instance, yesterday I wrote a chapter on how to automatically add a linked Table of Contents to your Google document using a bookmarklet. >>

I actually got this feature working in Google Docs once using their native code which was mentioned a couple of times in this thread (before they pulled it):

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/101111.html#id101135

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Jez, there is a budget for hack providers, but I think it's more of a fun & fame than fortune thing. At least that was my reason when I provided hacks to O'Reilly's "Google Hacks" book by Tara Calishain (or why I put a "wiki chapter" into "55 Ways to Have Fun with Google"). Of course you don't have to provide tips if you don't want to, we have a working outline, we just think it's more interesting to add more different angles, and that's what this comments thread can be for!

By the way, in terms of "making money" I can tell you that doing Google Blogoscoped full-time pays much, much less than the last full-time job I had before that in 2005. But I don't regret quitting, because it's a lot of fun, especially as I can spend much more time to prepare posts than when you do it in a hurry after work (and I also have more time to work on my other sites). Just that as far as your "great idea to make money" goes, you'd be quite disappointed to find the truth :)

Hong Xiaowan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

When will done?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Xiaowan, there's no release date yet...

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

-How to fake having friends?
-Enable SMS notification in Google Calendar, and add a lot of reminders. You will receive SMS, you will be happy. That's a good tip ;-)

Danny Espinoza [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Problem: How to add Google Gadgets For Your Web Page (aka Google Universal Gadgets) to your desktop?
Solution: Use Amnesty Generator (for Vista and OS X) to convert Google Gadgets to Vista Sidebar Gadgets or OS X Dashboard Widgets.

More Info from Google Code Blog:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/02/convert-google-gadgets-to-other-widget.html

Amnesty Generator:
http://www.amnestywidgets.com/Generator.html

Hong Xiaowan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Jez

In fact, Google topic can not make money for adsense. If you want money, you should did the topic for fashion, food, travel, hospital, aids, Diamond, crystal, how to find girls, ect.

We are Gfans, stay here just for fun.

Philipp will remain the contributor's names as he did at this blog. For the profit, I think it is small cases, the project have risk. If Philipp lost money, did you donate some money to this project?

My target is to supply the ideas and get one book for memory. One day in the future, I can tell my grandson about this book, and about our story.
......

Rohit Srivastwa [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Philipp
We'd love to see a chapter on Google easter eggs
That would be real fun for readers.

Iolaire McFadden [PersonRank 6]

16 years ago #

Enjoy yourself – I'd like a post afterwards comparing how easy it is to go to print with O’Reilly versus what you went through with the last book.

Ernst Fuld [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

a book? a BOOK?
Why not an E-book or are we next going to read claytables in order to understand Gdocs?

Matt Cutts [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Wow, that's a really cool idea for a book! Congrats!

sabadashus [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Do. Not. Be. Defensive. About. Money.

Ever.

sabadashus[put at-character here]sabadashus

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Enjoy yourself – I'd like a post afterwards comparing
> how easy it is to go to print with O’Reilly versus what
> you went through with the last book.

This time the book layouting will be handled by a pro, meaning I just write the chapters! Considering I spent months with Word to PDF conversion problems and such on "55 ways..." (to name just one of the issues, and I received loads of help from you on that Iolaire!), I would already say it's much, much easier from my perspective. I mean I was drawing problem flowcharts to map all the formatting/ conversion issues with the last book (no, that's not a joke) :) But we have to see how easy it will be to import/ convert the Google Docs files into the necessary structure...

JohnMu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

One thing I'm looking for before moving more to Google docs is a quick, simple and automateable way to do backups (of the whole store) – either to a local PC or to some other server (eg via some form of secure FTP).

Any ideas?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I'm currently backing up all my docs of one folder via Select All -> More actions -> Save as HTML (zipped). But that's not automated, and it just works if there's no spreadsheet in it. Hmm... maybe that's a job for the new Google Documents API? (Like cronjob + server script creating daily ZIPs in a private folder...) I will look into that...

Pau Tomàs [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Good luck with the book!

Unfortunately there's no way to download documents it only allow to list them and to upload new files.

Guillaume [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Something I didn't find in Google docs: how to remove a word I saved in the spellcheck dictionnary? How to manage this dictionary?

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

would you share the current document(s) with us? ;-)

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Guillaume – Right now they don't allow you to edit words you've added to the dictionary. This should be an option in the Google Docs settings page.

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]JohnMu & Philipp, Why don't you guys add a feature request for the Google Docs API. Right now they allow uploading and searching of documents but not downloading. Make your voice heard. :)

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Docs-Data-APIs/web/api-feature-requests

Brian Mulligan [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

How to access all my email accounts via gmail!
How to easily synchronise Google calendar with my HP iPaq!

Oren Goldschmidt [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

How about creating a collaboration chapter and opening it up to all of us. See if we can crowdsource a chapter of your book and all discover and share the bugs and quirks in the collaboration system :)

Tarun Kumar Jaiswal [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Well,

No Doubt Google is the biggest revolution in this world ruled by clicks but tht comes with an (obvious) disadvantage too...... The same virtue becomes its disadvantage wen we go OFFLINE..... We need to stay in touch evn while we r OFFLINE.. Ths situation might not b imaginable to residents of already developed countries havin 24X7 internet connectivity at reasonable rates.. But even today most of the nations dnt hav it.......... there must b someway Google's few services become offline too!!

Like i hate using Outlook/Thunderbird as email client.i prefer a faster(though a bit geeky method.......my thanks to Life Hacker Editor Gina) Cygwin method to download all my mails to my HDD and then transfer it to my Pendrive and move all around.... I even prefer keepin my notes/records as mails so tht i can browse them efficiently.......

Just One request for a hack...: How to preserve "groups" while importing and exporting contacts from/to Gmail??

Regards,
Tarun.Reflex
jasiwal.tarun[put at-character here]gmail.com

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