Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Google Online Storage...Finally!

Today, the Official Google Docs Blog announced "the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs." Finally! (at least some time over the next couple of weeks)
...you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year...
According to the response to questions in the Comments in this blog entry, the additional storage is shared between Picasa Web Albums, Gmail and Google Docs. The cost is described on this page. Picasa (images) provides 1 GB free storage, GMail provides 7+ GB free, and now GoogleDocs provides 1 GB free. You can't share free storage between applications, but if you upgrade even the smallest amount (20 GB for $5 per year), you can use that extra storage in any of those tools.

The Google Enterprise Blog Entry indicates that this capability is available to GoogleApps users (also for GMail accounts). For now, the Documents List API will only be available to GoogleApps Premiere domains (what about Education Edition?).

Assuming this functionality is available to Education accounts, for ePortfolios, we finally have our digital archive that will hold any type of file. GoogleDocs Folders can also be shared. I can hardly wait to see how it works. Will the files have an Embed code? Are they individually linkable? I am specifically looking for the ability to embed audio files, much as we can do with YouTube videos. Will it be easy enough for a primary student to use??? Some of the comments in the blog are asking for a DropBox-type of interface (synchronize contents of folders). I agree!

UPDATE: In response to public requests, Google increased the maximum file size to 1 GB while also adding a Thumbnail view to your GoogleDocs Home page (Documents List). 

8 comments:

David said...

Thanks Helen,

I'm wondering how we will know when this feature has been turned on. As soon as I heard about uploading any files to Google Docs, I tried to upload an mp3 file. :(

http://screencast.com/t/ZDA1YmQ1ZD

Matt Montagne said...

Hi Helen,
We're a google apps education school and I can verify that there is indeed support for cloud storage of all types of files in enterprise networks. As a matter of fact, this was just rolled out to our network last night. It was so cool that a file could be uploaded and then shared with others in our network or shared publicly.

Just for fun, here is a link to an mp3 file of our student radio show project: http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B342XXIurCZfZDc4NjhhYTUtZGY1My00NmIwLWEzNjEtNmQ0MjM4YWMwYjg0&hl=en

~Matt Montagne
Palo Alto California, USA

eportfolios said...

Thanks. I tried your link... but I don't want to download an MP3 audio file... I want to be able to embed it on a Google Sites page with a player. I hope there will be a Gadget for that function soon.

Matt Montagne said...

yes, I was hopeful that support for playing multimedia files inline was included, but this isn't quite there yet. I'm guessing it will be at some point in the future as you suggest.

~Matt

wooster said...

If you attach the .mp3 file in a Gmail, you can play it from there without having to download it.

eportfolios said...

But an audio file stored in Google Docs can only be downloaded. I want to embed it. See my next blog entry. I was able to do it, but it wasn't for those who don't understand HTML.

Matt Montagne said...

NICE! I just followed your lead and posted that mp3 file on the sandbox page of my eportfolio created in google sites. I wrapped it in an Odeo player: https://sites.google.com/a/castilleja.org/montagneportfolio/sandbox-1

Unknown said...

I agree with your comments re: 'dropbox type facility' which helps embed videos/etc.

Dropbox.com has this kind of functionality so would be worth a look, it also spits out RSS which is another advantage.

Go google!