Google has recently added an entirely new type of document to their Office Cloud offerings (i.e., Google Docs). In addition to cloud software for wordprocessing, spreadsheets, and presentation (Powerpoint is the most well-know presentation software), Google has added drawing to its Google Docs suite.
Google's New Drawing Application in the Cloud
The Google Drawing software looks very much like a simple desktop drawing application with tools for selecting objects in the drawing, inserting shapes, adding lines (with optional arrowheads), a freeform drawing tool, adding polygon shapes, text boxes, and filling an area with “paint”. You can change the color of the bounding box (and the thickness of its lines), and the text color. You can rotate an object. You also have five useful menus will additional functions.
Drawings, besides being a native Google Docs file format, can also be saved and downloaded as jpeg, PNG, PDF, and SVG files. Note the third tool from the left in the toolbar. It is Google’s “web clipboard”. Drawings (or parts of drawings) copied to the web clipboard are saved in the cloud instead of on your computer. These drawings are retained in the cloud and can subsequently be pasted into other types of Google Docs (Wordprocessing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations). Items copied to the web clipboard stay in the cloud for a month, so you can choose which of several copied items to paste into a doc.
The web clipboard can also be used to copy a selection of cells in a spreadsheet and paste them into a different kind of document.
Harvey Levine
Cloud Computing for Free 