Thursday, July 1, 2010

Google Docs update messes with my spelling

I for one was waiting with bated breath for new Google Docs to roll out to my account, I wasn't expecting the update, which brought wave like collaboration tools into the online office suite, to actually contain a downgrade, of sorts.

It might just be because I'm a little bit obsessive compulsive, but I like to ensure my often garbled typing passes at least the most basic of spelling checks.

A big part of this is having the feeling of a nice clean document, devoid of any nasty squiggly red lines which mean I have made a mistake. In any writing there are bunch of names, addresses, and ideas which might not be covered by the basic Google dictionary.

Unfortunately, the 'new' Google docs decided to do away with this essential feature, completely removing the ability to 'add to dictionary'.

What on earth was Google thinking? Do the people at Google actually use their own software? At what point did they think, ahh.. they dont NEED that, you can get other people to check your spelling in real time..

...right.

With Google poised to develop their own Facebook killer, I hope they manage to change focus a little from engineering at the bleeding edge, to creating user focused solutions.

Buzz has so far bombed because it failed to recognise what most users actually want, please stop making the same mistakes with your productivity products, or it will be hard to argue that going Google, in both the corporate and personal settings, is actually a viable alternative.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Playing around with ping.fm