Did Google Doc fail today, or did a link path break?

Now, I think I have a solution. Too many people don’t realize that there are so many EASY ways to get to certain Google places. Want mail? Try google.com/mail. Want calendar? Try google.com/calendar. Want scholar? Try google.com/scholar. Want voice? Try google.com/voice. Want docs? Try… you betcha… google.com/docs. Now when I try this, I am in like slim. The file is up on my machine in nanoseconds. Kiddies are going to gmail, click on email that notifies them that I shared something with them (cause, they won’t look if I don’t tell them it’s there!), and then the path is messed up. Bummer. So yes, something is messed up today, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very little error for such a ginormous company that does a pretty good job of running the world.

My response is 1) you shoulda not procrastinated. Your procrastination does not constitute a problem in my life. 2) there are 90 kids in my AP and several sections of Crabtree’s. I bet one of the over achievers downloaded the file weeks ago. This is what Google Groups is for (and I bet you know the URL for that one). Ask away. 3) be creative and try to figure it out. And by the way, in case it does work, here’s the BHS direct URL to the assignment.

Update two hours later…: Here’s an update after two hours of talking to students, colleagues, and researching online (just what I want to do on a Sunday!). The problem is NOT Google. It IS Microsoft. No one who has been using Firefox has any problem whatsoever. Every single person using IE cannot get to Google Docs. Microsoft sucks. Not Google.

So your solution is: Install a real browser like Firefox and proceed.

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Page breaks – Google docs now let’s the user set his or her own page breaks, which really helps me break up really long documents.

Horizontal Rule Breaks - This is an old school formatting style that also helps break up sections, but you don’t see it that much anymore.

Label colors – just like in gmail labels, you can now color code your Google doc labels! Woohoo! For optimum use, color them the same as the gmail labels to which they correspond (e.g. all emails from English 101 people are labeled “Eng101″ and are red in color. all docs and spreadsheets from English 101 people are labeled “Eng101″ and  are read in color) Woot!

Attach doc – Now you can attach your currently opened Google doc directly to an outgoing Gmail.

Owner options – You can change ownership of docs, so if you are quitting an ongoing project, etc…

Text format Styles – You can now format text headers like Titles with H1, H2, H3, etc… which correlate nicely to word processing programs to create Table of Contents.

Now I think what I haven’t seen, but I’d like is the ability to select multiple files and archive them all into a zip file automatically. I have old class files I will probably never need again, and I’d like them off Google docs, but I don’t want to do download them one at a time. Ugh!

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