Quite a bit of Google

The current Google librarians' newsletter contains some useful articles/links.

I'm hearing good things about Google docs&spreadsheets. Here's the newsletter on the subject -- written to appeal to librarians but the tool has benefits to other types of user:

Share and edit with Google Docs & Spreadsheets

"We launched Google Docs & Spreadsheets, an online word processor and spreadsheet editor that lets you to create, store and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets in real time. If you or your patrons know how to use any word processing or spreadsheet editing program, you can easily use Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It’s great for your library users, since they can work on writing and research without having to save files to a disk; all of their work is stored safely online, and can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. It’s as simple as checking email.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is free and supports all standard formats – DOC, XLS, OpenOffice and more – so you can upload and edit documents and spreadsheets you’ve created using other programs. And in response to users’ requests, we recently updated the spell check feature so you can check your documents in more than 30 languages.

If you’d like to let your patrons know about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, here’s a quick online tour."

There's other good reading in this newsletter issue, on Google Scholar, blog search and so on. Here's the complete table of contents:

Letter from the Editor

Features:
  Q&A with Google Scholar's founding engineer
  Meet the Scholar team
  Video: Scholar overview at ALA 2006
  Add Scholar to your site

Updates and Releases:
  A new way to browse books online
  More books in more languages
  Create your own search engine
  Explore Africa with Google Earth
  Share and edit with Google Docs & Spreadsheets
  On alert for bloggers
  Connect with literacy activists around the world