Google Apps: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner was a great book. In 2008.
Today? Not nearly so much. So much has changed in the Google landscape in the last few years (or even months) that, sadly, much of the content is now quaint, or just out-and-out wrong.
It’s too bad – because the book is very well written. It’s accessible to a variety of audiences, and one I would love to recommend to anyone interested in, or currently using, Google products.
However, with the passing of Gears and the free edition of Apps, this text is not nearly so helpful anymore – at least to me.
And with the constant stream of updates to the online apps coming from Google, it’s not going to be much better than a primer for anyone else.
Maybe Ms Conner will do an update – I hope so, because I bet it’d be a great resource [again]. But if Google continues to change direction and policy as they have so far, it would likely again be out-of-date too quickly.
Printed books about technology are fantastic – when they cover something static like Microsoft Office 2010 or compiler design or data structures and algorithms. For web sites and apps? Not so much.