It seems like just yesterday we were talking about how email was improving. Google has now added a feature to Gmail that lets you preview the contents of Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in your inbox.

Google has made some updates to Google Docs. For one, they have introduced shared folders, which the company has been promising since July, and says is the most requested feature they get for Google Docs. Shared folders let users collaborate on groups of documents more easily.

Google has quietly announced that Google Docs documents that are published will soon be crawlable. This means if you have published documents as web pages, or used the publish/embed option for a document, and it has been linked to on the web, it can be indexed by Google and other search engines.

Google has launched some new features for Google Docs. They have made a couple improvements to drawings and added several new features to Forms.

Language barriers can make communicating the simplest things painful; no one wants to do a sort of hokey pokey just to find the nearest restroom.  However, Google’s attempting to leap way past basic human needs and help with complicated manuscripts by introducing translation technology to Google Docs.

Google has added the ability to include tables in presentations in Google Docs. The feature has apparently been in high demand, and the company says they really wanted it too.

Users can insert a table into their presentation, then easily add, select, and resize rows and columns, format and align text across the table, and set background colors for cells and borders. Rows will resize themselves to fit content.  Google provides the following example table:

At the moment, there are exactly 725 alternatives available in the Google Docs Template Gallery, and that’s a rather large number.  But if you check back at this time next week, there are liable to be a whole lot more, because Google’s now letting everyone submit templates.

Earlier today some confidential documents from Twitter began floating around the blogosphere. It appears the documents were obtained via a hacked employee Google account from several months ago.

Do you think this hack on Twitter will have any lasting impact? Tell us what you think.

Google announced today that it has added a couple filetypes to its list of supported ones. The new additions are .xlsx and .docx files.

Recalling his first encounter with Google Docs, Anil Sabharwal on the Google Docs Blog writes:

Google announced this week that it has launched a limited test of a new feature, which lets people add customization and automation to Google Apps, starting with spreadsheets in Google Docs. They call this Google Apps Script.

Google Apps Script lets users automate spreadsheet actions, like reading and changing values in cells and ranges, changing formats and formulas, and creating custom functions. It also allows users to send email or create calendar entries outside of spreadsheets.

No, Google is not changing the Google logo itself, but a number of the company’s products will be presented with slightly different logos, which all reflect one unified look and feel.

Google is in the process of rolling out these changes. So far, you can see the changes at Google Labs, Google Moderator, and Google Code. Look for new logos at Google Maps, Google News, and Google Docs soon.

Update: Google has addressed the issue on the Official Blog. The company says:

Google has recently launched a standalone contacts manager, which lets you manage your contacts outside of Gmail. This would be particularly useful for those who don’t use Gmail, but use other Google products that offer sharing capabilities.

If you use Google Docs, Picasa, or Google Calendar for example, you can now update people’s contact information without having to use Gmail. This was not an option before.

Google has launched a feature for spreadsheets in Google Docs called Sheet Protection. Basically, this will allow a user to let collaborators edit certain sheets of a spreadsheet while restricting them from others.

To use the feature, simply go to the sheet, and bring up the menu. You will find the option that says "Protect Sheet."

A while back, Google introduced a viewer in Gmail for PDFs, and that has now been improved upon to support TIFF and PowerPoint documents. This means you can view PDFs, PPTs, and TIFFs in Gmail right from your browser without having to save them or have any additional software.

Marc Miller on the Gmail notes that Gmail has had a "view as slideshow" option for PowerPoint files for a while, but the conversion technology is now integrated into this viewer.

Google Docs has started including a new feature – the ability to insert drawings into documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. To use this feature, simply go to the Insert menu and click Drawing.

Google Docs users may recall last month when Google improved the mobile version by adding list view for spreadsheets, which allows you to view, edit, sort, and filter them. Before that you could only view them.

Google has now made the same list view available for working on spreadsheets from desktop and notebook computers. It can be found in the View menu.

On Friday Google contacted some Google Docs users to alert them of a privacy issue. Less than 0.05% of user docs were accidentally shared with people with whom they were not supposed to be. 

You can now install desktop icons for Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Gmail on your computer for quick access. These icons are now an option of Google Pack.

If you are unfamiliar with Google Pack,it’s a free collection of software from Google and other companies. The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more. Learn more about each of the programs in the Google Pack.

Today Google announced an improvement to the mobile version of Google Docs. That is list view for spreadsheets, which allows you to view, edit, sort, and filter your spreadsheets from your mobile device.

Previously, you could only view your spreadsheets on mobile devices. Now, they basically have full functionality.

Google has redone the Google Docs Help Forum. It has added a few features to improve the ease with which users can obtain info, and increase the overall user experience. New features include: