UPDATED 12:54 EDT / MARCH 18 2011

Feel Free to Discuss in Google Docs!

Google has made some of the biggest changes in its new Google Docs by moving the comments to the sidebar and allowing people to have seamless discussions, as reported on its Official Blog today morning. So far, the update is available able only for newly created documents, and we can hope to see the same in old documents soon. There are a couple of improvements done to the Docs Apps, which we’ll now discuss here.

To improve the discussions, each of the comments will now have a timestamp and a profile picture of the user. Each discussion will have a ownership, giving rights to the owner to edit or delete a comment. You can remove comments from the visible document and can also view or re-open them later clicking the discussions button at the top of any document.

Google has integrated comments with the users’ inbox to create an ultimate seamless experience.  Just by using @mention, you can directly send a notification to a person’s inbox.  As soon as the comment is delivered in the form of an email, the receiver can respond back either through email or going to the discussion area in the document.

It has also given the option of turning off the Email notifications. All you need to do is to select ‘Mute Updates from this comment’ or ‘Discussion notifications settings’ and make required settings. This Google Docs update will soon be available for both Google accounts and Google Apps account users.

Recently, Google has been making several other updates in its Apps offerings, such as the feature for  instant previews as a part of its instant search interaction and results. The instant features have been specially created for the mobile search process to enhance the user experience at the fundamental level. It also presented the Chrome Beta 10 improved JavaScript speed and new password synchronization options.

The search giant has made several important collaborations to enhance its updates, like with Route 66 that launched two apps ROUTE 66 Maps + Navigation app, and the ROUTE 66 Drive & Walk app with “Follow Me” augmented reality feature. It also improved the Maps features by introducing Mini Google Maps extension for Chrome that processes faster, and opens a small Google map query on the right side of same page. One can also look up locations and get directions, with the exact distance between the two locations.

Competing head-to-head with Google, Microsoft also launched the final version of IE 9 with improved features like safer and faster downloads along with minimalistic presentation of the bar of icons and tools. Let’s just see how far this battle goes on!


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