Use Custom HTML and Javascript in Google Sites

This afternoon the Google Docs and Sites team announced some very useful enhancements to both products. To me, the most exciting news in the announcement is that you can now use custom HTML and Javascript in your Google Sites pages. I have long be frustrated by how difficult, impossible actually without a lot of work arounds, it is to use many custom widgets like some of these survey tools in Google Sites. Now if you want to use custom HTML, Javascript, or CSS in Google Sites all you have to do is select the "HTML box" from the "insert menu" then paste your code. Read Google's directions here.

In the same announcement I learned that you can now search for, highlight, and copy text in the scanned PDFs that you have stored in your Google Docs account.

The comments feature in Google Docs is great for collaboration on documents and presentations. Now you can find all of the comments for a document or presentation in one column by clicking the new "discussions" button which is located just to the left of the "share" button on your documents and presentations.

Applications for Education
I am most excited about the custom html and Javascript option in Google Sites. That removes a major limitation to customizing the pages in websites built in Google Sites. Now you can add things like educational games, custom flashcard applications, survey tools and more to your Google Sites website.

New Discussion Option for Google Docs Presentations

Last March Google introduced threaded discussion comments to Google Documents. That feature is great for suggestion edits or asking questions when you're collaborating on a document with other writers. I have used the feature for that quite a bit over the last year. Yesterday, Google announced that threaded discussion comments is an option for Google Docs Presentations.

Using the discussions option, collaborators can comment on a part of a slide or an entire slide. Discussions will allow collaborators to have threaded conversations in the margins of a presentation. By including the @ symbol before a collaborator's name you can reply directly to that person. Discussion comments can be tied to a specific part of a slide. Discussion comments can be removed when the suggested edit has been completed. Learn more in the video below.

Applications for Education

Discussions in Google Docs Presentations could be a great tool to use when editing students' presentations. You can tie comments directly to a part of a slide to suggest to students that they change color schemes, font size, or resizing an image.

You, Google, Ads, Search, and Privacy

As you probably know, Google's privacy policies were recently overhauled. The data that Google collects about your use of their services (including the Chrome web browser) is now shared across all of Google's services. In other words, what you do with Chrome can be shared with Gmail, Google Music, or any of the other Google services you use. Why did they do this? The answer is simple: advertising. Google wants to be able to display the ads that they think will be most relevant to you.

Now, it doesn't bother me that Google thinks I'm a geeky 35-44 year old (they've got my age wrong), but I know that it does bother some people. If it does bother you, there are a couple of simple things that you can do to limit the data that Google collects and shares about you. The obvious thing is to just not use Google products, but that might not be practical for you. And if you think that Google is the only Internet giant collecting data about you, you're wrong. The second thing that you can do is to use Incognito Mode if you are using the Chrome web browser. To stop display advertising from being targeted directly at you you can opt out of display ad networks. You can also opt out of targeted ads in Gmail and Search.

Here's a video about privacy in the Chrome web browser.


If you want to opt out of personalized search display there are two ways you can do this. First, don't log into your Google account before searching. Second, if you are logged into your Google account when you search you can quickly disable personalized results. See the screen capture below for directions.