Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a new service for Google account holders and Gmail users. Derived from Google’s acquisition of the Writely service earlier this year, this service allows users to create word processing and spreadsheet documents within a web browser, so they can accessed from anywhere. These types of web-based applications are often referred to as “Office 2.0″ applications, implying an evolution of the standard desktop-based Office software. Google describes their service on the docs.google.com home page:

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that keeps documents current and lets the people you choose update files from their own computers. You can, for example, coordinate your student group’s homework assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or collaborate with remote colleagues on a new business plan.

What’s exciting about Google Docs & Spreadsheets is that it also provides you the ability to post your documents directly to your weblog. It even can update your blog post when you update its original GDS document!

Google has made it easy to configure GDS to post to BlogHarbor weblogs by including BlogHarbor in the default list of blog services (thank you Google!), so all you need to know to configure GDS to post to your BlogHarbor weblog is your username and password.

BlogHarbor users see How to Configure Google Docs & Spreadsheets to Post to your Blog…

Technorati Tags: Google+Docs, BlogHarbor, Google

Bart Giamatti, former MLB commissioner, on the game of baseball:

It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

I heard that it rained pretty hard overnight in the NY area…

Technorati Tags: Mets, baseball

Congratulations to the New York Mets for a fantastic 2006 season! The Mets lost to the Cards last night in a very dramatic baseball game, one that Mets fans will be talking about for a long time… at least until Opening Day 2007.

And a thank you to Matthew Cerrone’s Metsblog.com, one of BlogHarbor‘s most popular weblogs (public stats).

Matt’s done a fantastic job over the past few years building Metsblog.com, not only publishing great content, but also creating a strong community. It’s so exciting to see our platform helping people to share their passion, and for some to even make a living off of it: Publishing the site is now Matt’s full time job!

Technorati Tags: Mets, Metsblog

Mets fan? Please see The Bobby Burger and How the Bobby Burger Came to Be to learn more about the new revolution in hamburgers.

Via Stowe Boyd, I came across this article in the WSJ which Stowe noted suggests that blogs are a bigger cultural phenomenon in in Japan than the US:

Six years ago, a Japanese businessman went online to vent about his domineering wife. Blogging daily under the pen name “Kazuma,” he detailed how she grabbed food from his plate, sent him shopping in a typhoon, and made him sleep in the living room when he caught a cold.

Now, his terrifying spouse is famous as Oni-yome, or “demon wife,” the star of a book, a television drama, a comic-book serialization, a videogame and, coming soon, a movie.

I am in Japan right now, and just got back from a bookstore, and was amazed at the number of magazines and mooks (see second definition on Wikipedia) on blogging… I’ll have to take a picture next time so you can see how many ブロッグ books are on display.

By the way, oni does mean devil and yome is one of the words for wife. It’s said, though I don’t know if it’s true, that the sterotypical oni in Japanese folklore is patterned after a foreigner or gaijin. It was our big noses that were so frightening…