Google Docs will now really let you stamp your mark on your work

Making sure your work gets the respect it deserves will soon be a lot easier in Google Docs thanks to a new privacy tool coming to the service.

The word processor tool, part of Google Workspace, has announced users can now add background text identifiers such as watermarks to their documents.

This means that Google Docs users can now mark their work in order to protect copyright, show that the information within is confidential, or simply notify readers that it is a draft or work in progress.

Google Docs watermark

In a blog post outlining the new feature, Google notes that text watermarks will repeat on every page on your document, making it useful for indicating file status.

Users can also include an image watermark, such as a company logo or sign, or include other images above or behind text. To find the new feature, which has no admin control, users simply need to go to Insert > Watermark > Text

The feature will work across other platforms too, as when working with Microsoft Word documents, text watermarks will be preserved when importing or exporting your files.

Google Docs watermark

(Image credit: Google Workspace)

The tool will be available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, with the rollout starting in January 2022 and due to take a few weeks.

The news should be a boost to legal and high-end businesses dealing in confidential documents, and comes shortly after a further new functionality also looked to add greater depth to Docs that sees a new process for formal document approvals for high-priority files (such as contracts, legal documents and the like), building upon existing comment and suggested edit features.

Google Docs has also recently boosted its citations feature, making the software a more viable choice for students and academics. When adding a citation to an essay or research paper, users will soon be able to search for sources via an in-built database, and then automatically populate the necessary fields (title, publisher, date of publication etc.).

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Turns out a lot of us are really bad at behaving on Zoom calls

After another bumper year for video calls across the world, Zoom has released a series of somewhat surprising facts about some of the oddest facts it has gathered about users in 2021.

The video conferencing platform carried out a global survey and combined the results with its own internal insights to show how we really used Zoom – with some particularly odd findings.

This includes over half (53%) of Zoom users saying it was OK to eat during meetings, 42% saying they have made a call from their beds, and over a quarter (26%) saying they almost never showered before going on a call.

Zoom in 2021

Covering the period of November 15 2020 to November 15 2021, the company's survey discovered that Wednesday was the most popular day of the week for Zoom calls, followed by Tuesday and Thursday.

The average length of a Zoom call was a whopping 54 minutes, with the average meeting size found to be 10 participants.

Zoom, which was used in nearly 200 countries and territories around the world, also found that January 21 2021 was the busiest day of the year for virtual meetings, with February 25 the most popular day for webinars.

Elsewhere, nearly three-quarters (71%) of Zoom users have had to say the phrase “you're on mute” at some point in the last 12 months, with 57% needing to ask if everyone on a call could see their screen.

75% of users said they waved goodbye at the end of their meetings, with outdoor landscapes (26%) proving slightly more popular than blurred backgrounds (25%) or company logos (20%).

Just under half (43%) confessed to only cleaning the part of the room visible on camera, with the same number (43%) of parents having a child show up during a meeting, and 36% saying they have had a pet show up during a meeting.

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