Monday, December 3, 2007

Google Sites to Launch Next Year


A recent presentation from Scott Johnston, a former JotSpot executive, revealed some of the future plans for Google Apps and other Google services.

A service based on JotSpot will replace Google Page Creator. "Scheduled to be launched sometime next year (2008), Google Sites will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps. Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration." The service will also allow you to upload any file formats. You can already see a gallery of applications that use JotSpot.

As expected, most Google services will become Gears-enabled and will start to work even when you're offline. "Will users be able to edit docs, spreadsheets and presentation offline? Scott's answer was yes, and that the Google Gears plugin would handle the offline work. In addition, Google Gears support is in the works for Gmail and Google Calendar."

Another service that will become a part of Google Apps is GrandCentral, but the integration is not expected to be available very soon.