Paul Wille Consulting, Inc

Wow. Over the past 3 years I loved watching anxiously as Google made multiple strategic acquisitions (like Writely, Jot, and Tonic Systems), and was impressed with each, but not as impressed as when they tied them together into Google Docs and Google Sites. And it hasn’t stopped there…Google Gadgets that can be embedded and customized into your Google Spreadsheets give data visualization unlike anything else.
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Well, not really. I’m just moving my blog and RSS feed to the root of paulwille.com. I only mention this in case you subscribe to the feed from this site. You can now use the following:

www.paulwille.com – takes you to my blog

feeds.feedburner.com/paulwille – RSS feed for my blog

Hope this doesn’t cause too much interruption for you, and I look forward to sharing more thoughts and ideas with you, and continuing our conversation together.

–Paul

Most people know that for the past 6 months or so, Google has slowed its releases of very cool, interesting tools, and have acquired a good number of companies (some that make sense, and some that don’t…yet). But not too many people have figured out what Google is doing with all these seemingly one-off tools. I think today though, it became very apparent.

16 months ago, Google bought a wiki company called Jotspot (if you’re unfamiliar with what a wiki is, take a look at this definition). Wikis have been appropriated in a number of ways to date (for instance, Wikipedia). And at a conceptual level, they’ve made a lot of sense – its a central place to consolidate documents and information, and allow multiple people to see it, edit it, and maintain it. There just haven’t been many good platforms for companies to easily take advantage of wikis.

Until now.

Today Google relaunched Jotspot as Google Sites (sites.google.com). Users of Google Apps for your domain are the immediate beneficiaries of Google Sites, and with a few clicks, can set it up as a service for their organization. I’ll be giving a full review of Google Sites once I have a chance to build it out a bit.

But at a fundamental level, Google has created a true collaboration platform. Now, these one-off tools are all part of a larger purpose: to create and share information in a decentralized manner.

Google Sites is intended to allow you to post and share documents, spreadsheets, videos, photos, and general information. It comes with a central file/document repository, and robust permissions and security. And, of course, every part of the wiki is searchable thanks to Google’s search algorithm.

More on this collaboration platform soon, once I can get into it and uncover the details of it. For now though, rest assured it will be easy and intutive, just like everything Google builds.

Starwood recently launched their new Preferred Guest site. Note the usage of rich imagery as the backdrop for the whole site (in fact, refresh the page a few times, as there is different photos in the rotation). I’m a big fan of this for travel sites, as I mentioned in previous posts.

Simplified navigation options, simple calendar controls, great use of AJAX search for the destination search box too.

Nice work Starwood. Hope the rest of your brand sites are on their way to similar improvements.

Hawaiian Airlines just launched their new website about a week ago. You know, I really like it when I see a company break the mould of their online presence that all their competitors follow. The site is inviting, easy, and provides great tools that travelers need when planning their trip. Best of all, note how they do not show photos of the tail-section of an aircraft (which historically has been so prevalent on airline websites). What does a tail-section have to do with my vacation?

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