Co-write a song, tell a shared story with the Gone Google Story Builder

We love hearing about all the different ways people use collaboration in Docs - from creating shared grocery lists to co-authoring full length novels. In the past, we even created a few of our own stories showing how you can go Google, whether you’re writing an 80s hit or crafting the perfect invite list.

Now, anyone can create their own story about collaboration with the Gone Google Story Builder. Make your own personalized video featuring the characters, story, and even music of your choosing and then share it with everyone you know (or maybe just a few of your closest friends).

Get started at google.com/gonegoogle/story.

If you feel up to it, post your best creation to Google+ with the tag #gonegoogle - we’ll feature a few favorites next week on our Google+ page. 

Posted by Preston Hershorn, Product Marketing Manager

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Announcing your two most requested features: offline document editing and Drive for iOS

In April, we introduced Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, and keep all your stuff. Today at the Google I/O conference we announced two new ways to get things done in the cloud: offline editing for Google documents and a Drive app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Offline document editing 

No internet connection? No big deal. With offline editing, you can create and edit Google documents and leave comments. Any changes you make will be automatically synced when you get back online.

You can enable offline editing from the gear icon in Google Drive and find more detailed instructions for getting set up in the Help Center. Note that you’ll need the latest versions of Chrome or ChromeOS to edit offline. We’re also working hard to make offline editing for spreadsheets and presentations available in the future.

Google Drive for iOS 

We launched the Drive app for Android phones and tablets a few weeks ago, and starting today, Google Drive is available for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

With the Drive app, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you're on the go. You can also search all your files, add collaborators to documents, and make files available offline to view them even without an internet connection. For blind and low-vision users, the app also works great in VoiceOver mode. Learn more about what you can do with the app in our Help Center.

Get Drive in the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.0+ and visit the Play Store to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet.

To learn more about Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start.

Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director

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Google Docs: May in Review

April showers bring May flowers, along with a bunch of new features and updates to Google Docs. In May we launched the research pane which makes it easy to look things up and insert quotes, images, and maps into documents without ever having to open a new browser tab. And we also made some other improvements over the last few weeks, like:

• the addition of five new themes (Color Strip, Inspiration Board, Lesson Plan, Steps, and Wave) to Google Presentations. 

• the ability to search for scholarly works in the research pane. 

• making it possible to put a Google Doc in a folder without leaving it by clicking on the folder icon to the right of the star in the toolbar. 

• teaching the new spellchecker a few more languages (Spanish, Dutch, and Finnish). 

• adding Alt+Enter (Option+Enter on Mac) as a keyboard shortcut for opening links. Simply place your cursor on a link and press the shortcut to open the link in a new tab. 
• the introduction of libraries and versions to Google Apps Script to make it easier for developers to organize, share and reuse their code. 

 Posted by Jason Ganetsky, Software Engineer

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