Google’s suite of social tools, referred to as Google+, continues to kick out new features for all of its services.

Today, the Google+ team announced that sharing Google Docs within Hangouts is now available for all users:

Last year we launched Hangouts with extras as a way to preview certain hangout features. (http://goo.gl/yXhB1) Google Docs integration was one such extra, and the Google+ community has used it for all sorts of awesome — from trip planning and lecture notes to doodling and charades. Today I’m happy to announce that we’re graduating Google Docs to the core Hangouts experience for all users.

To try it out, just click on the new “Docs” button inside your hangout:

- you can add an existing document, or upload a new one
- added documents are available as a list on the left-hand side
- you can switch between and collaboratively edit multiple documents at once

Here’s what the feature looks like within a Google+ Hangout:

The features available for Google+ Hangouts make working with those who are scattered around the globe simple, and Google Docs integration is the perfect addition to go along with screensharing. Being able to go back and forth within a work document while carrying on a video conversation is a huge step forward for digital workplaces.

The Google Docs team has announced a few helpful updates for the Android version of its Google Docs app. Most notably, the capability to view documents offline and sync them later has been introduced.

Once you grab the new version, you’ll see the option to “Make Offline” appear for most of your documents. According to the team, Google Sites, Google drawings, Google forms, Fusion Tables and collections aren’t available for offline viewing yet.

Once you select a document to be made available offline, it will download to your device. You can browse it with no connection at all of course, and even make updates. Once you have an internet connection again, the file will automatically sync with Google Docs. You can also manually sync as you go along by tapping “update”.

Along with offline support, the team has made Google Docs prettier for Android tablet users. Documents will now be shown in high-res and you can now swipe through pages as you’d expect on a tablet. This functionality allows for easier reading of documents, especially long ones.

It goes without saying that the best Google Docs experience should be on the Android platform, and incremental upgrades like this definitely make that the case.

➤ Google Docs for Android

Google Takeout, the service which allows Google users to download their data from various Google products all at once, has been updated with an option to be emailed when the archive is ready for download, configurable filetypes for services that support multiple formats, support for more Google products, and an updated interface.

Google Takeout was initially released in June 2011 by Google’s Data Liberation Front, a team at Google since 2007 dedicated to making it “easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.” Takeout was aimed at streamlining and consolidating the export process, allowing users to download data from multiple products at once, in open and portable formats. It launched with support for Buzz, Contacts, Picasa Web Albums and Google+ Circles, Profile, and Stream, and was expanded to include +1’s and Voice. Support for Knol was added when it was announced in November that the product would be discontinued.

The latest version adds support for Docs, which can be exported in ODT, PDF, RTF, Text, Word, and HTML. Additionally, data from other Google products can be downloaded from the Data Liberation Front’s website. Some of the data available for download from Takeout is also available from each individual product, but Takeout allows one to download from many products at once.

The downloads can serve as a local backup of information stored in Google’s services, as well as making the transition to a competing product easier, as the data is provided in open and portable formats. The inclusion of Buzz and Knol is interesting and especially important, as both products have been discontinued, and this allows the data people have put into both to be easily saved.

Data portability has been a major point of contention between Google and Facebook. Facebook also allows users to download their data, but unlike Takeout, it is not provided in a format that can easily be imported into other services.

Downloading data with Google Takeout

Exporting your data from Google Takeout is easy, as it is intended. Sign in at Google.com/takeout (you may be asked to sign in again during the process, for added security). If you want all of your data from all available products (+1’s, Buzz, Google+ Circles, Google+ Profile, Google+ Stream, Contacts, Docs, Knol, Picasa Web Albums, and Voice) in the default export formats, simply click “Create Archive” on the first screen, under “All your data.”

“Choose services” allows more discerning selection. You can choose a single service or a combination of services, and each allows further configuration (click “Configure…” at the bottom of each box), where you can choose what filetypes you want your data in (for some services, there’s no options, and “Configure…” only shows what filetypes will be used). The data will be provided in a zip archive (mine was just under 200 MB).

It’s important to keep backups, especially as more and more of our data is kept online and out of our control, and doing systematic downloads of your data is a good idea if you’d like to have a local backup or keep your data on other services, like Dropbox. And it’s always useful to have an offline backup of important data for those times when an internet connection isn’t available.

➤ Google Takeout

Today, Google announced a site called Google For Veterans, that provides tools and assistance for those men and women that fought and continue to fight for their country.

Google’s Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, introduced the site today:

There are almost 22 million military veterans in the United States today and millions more around the world. Google has created some new tools to help these vets – and their families – find new ways of connecting online. In honor of Veteran’s Day, we’ve just announced a new YouTube channel, Vet Connect page, and a resume builder powered by Google Docs.

My father was a Tuskegee Airman and a veteran of WWII and Vietnam, so it’s important to me that Google supports veterans; I’m proud of the work we’re doing on this front.

The service encourages the brave men and women who fight for the U.S. to use Google Docs, Google+, and its other services to document their time spent in the military.

For those who are still on active duty, Google suggests its tools to connect with family members and loved ones with services such as video Hangouts in Google+.

Furthermore, Google has brought together tools to help those Veterans who are seeking jobs and other opportunities now that their time of service is over. It’s really a great offering from Google, who is smartly wrapping up all of its social services for uses that we might not have previously thought about.

In addition, YouTube has set up a “Veterans Channel” which shares stories of those who have served in the military, seeking to help others with the transition back into civilian life. Here’s a special message from the First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama:

In a wonderful act of social good, Google is showing us that social media isn’t just for talking about celebrities, sharing funny videos, and complaining about your sports team. In a way that no other company has done, Google has made its services available to the masses for a host of purposes, and highlighting those who fight to keep everyone in the U.S.A. safe from war and attack is the best place to start.

➤ Google For Veterans

Scanning documents without a scanner isn’t an easy thing to do. Sure, you can take a picture of a receipt to hand in at work, but is it readable and sharable?

DocScan for iOS will turn photos you’ve already taken or new ones, and turn them into a worthwhile and professional scan in PDF format.

It’s a really slick app, and is a must have for road warriors who have to track every last receipt while on business trips. It’s also quite useful if you have a stack full of receipts on your desk like I do.

Scanning a Doc

While you don’t lay the document down on top of a device like you would with a scanner, simply point and shoot with your camera, and the DocScan app will zero in on the area where it finds text. You’re given the opportunity to change the crop area of the photo if you like, but I found it to be spot on.

After the part of the document that you want to save is grabbed, you can change the brightness or hue to make sure it’s both readable and presentable.

Storing your docs

Once you’ve scanned your image, you can then save it as a PDF with DocScan. Saving them items lets you easily bring them back up again to email, upload to Google Docs, or post on Facebook. The easy upload to Google Docs feature alone makes DocScan worth the download.

The scans don’t always come out picture perfect with DocScan though, so be sure to make your area well-lit, and I suggest photographing a document from above. Luckily, more often than not, DocScan finds the scannable text area and makes a great scan on the fly.

Earlier today, in response to the continued blackout of the Internet in Egypt, Google and Twitter announced that they had set up phone numbers in Egypt for protesters to call into, that would then automatically be turned into voicemail messages, that would then be tweeted out on the account @Speak2Tweet. Of course, the immediate point of this system is not to help organize within Egypt, but hopefully to offer a way for Egyptians to literally speak to the rest of the world.

To further this aim, a number of volunteers outside of Egypt (you know, where the Internet still works) have decided to collaborate online to get those voicemails – which are mainly in Arabic – translated into English.

We captured a video of the Google Docs spreadsheet that the volunteers are using to translate the phone messages left by Egyptian protesters at lightning speed. The video below is in real-time – we did nothing to speed it up. Either watch it and be in awe, or go right to the spreadsheet and watch it continue to update (or better yet, if you can translate Arabic to English, lend a hand!):

Here is a slightly more HD version as well.

Update: As of 9:50pm PDT on January 31, the volunteer translators had already more or less completed the translation of nearly 200 phone messages. All of that work was done in roughly five hours – amazing.

We originally assumed that these translations would be retweeted out somehow, and a couple of volunteers on the Google Docs spreadsheet chat confirmed that this is indeed the plan (see the screenshot below). We’ve asked them to let us know in the comments when that process happens.

We’ve also contacted Google (which most likely does not actually have any official connection to these volunteers) to see if it has any plans to assist in any of the retweeting efforts. Regardless, the effort and the spirit of these volunteers speaks for itself. We’ll update as soon as we find out more information.

Update 2: The site is now live: Alive In Egypt, and here is our continued coverage.