Examples of Google Sites usage

Google Sites is definitely more popular among the educational institutes than other type of organizations.

Here are key reasons why Google Sites is very popular tool:

1. No technical knowledge required like html, stylesheets or javascript
2. Faster way to develop sites
3. Can be developed in a collaborative way
4. Can access from anywhere to make changes (no software required)
   

Saline Area Schools (http://www.salineschools.com) is currently using Google Apps (mail, calendar, docs, sites, and videos) and have developed few good websites using Google sites. Here a few well done example sites made using Google Sites by Saline Schools:

Women’s Swim and Dive Team
Heritage PTO
Coach Glennie’s Website

Source: http://blogs.salineschools.com/lupok/

Google users can now

If you have a "Google Account" you now have an OpenID similar to a Yahoo account. For Gmail users your Gmail address is your OpenID.

Google has joined OpenID. By joining the OpenID movement, Google helps all of its Gmail users to the hundreds of websites that accepts OpenID, by providing them a way of accessing without creating an account with that website.

However Google has only become an issuer of OpenIDs and has not indicated that it will accept other OpenIDs for people who want to sign up for Google services. Google appears to be an OpenID "provider," not a "relying party." In other words, you cannot sign into Google with your Yahoo account.

But this still helps the OpenID movement as a whole because it gives smaller sites more incentive to join as "relying parties." Among the first sites to accept Gmail accounts for sign in are Zoho and Plaxo.

View Calendar and Docs in you Gmail

Some new features are released in Google Labs this week. These include Gadgets to see Google Docs and Google Calendar in Gmail interface.

With the Google Calendar Gadget you can see your Google Calendar agenda and get an alert when you have a meeting.

The Google Docs gadget shows a list of your recently accessed Google Docs and lets you search across all of your documents right from within Gmail.


Another Gadget lets you add any new Gadget by URL.

To enable these features in your gmail go to your tab of settings >> Labs and enable the desired option and save.

More: Send SMS from your chat. I have not seen this but was told that there is SMS feature which will be enabled (gMark) which will help in sending SMS to mobiles from Google Gmail (like in Yahoo Mail).
Together above gadgets will be killer Gadgets.

Boise State University has opted for Google Apps

OIT (Office of Information Technology) at Boise State University has been using Google Apps. More and more departments migrating to Google App and they are using Google Apps including Google Sites, and Calendar. Here is a post in blog sphere which also gives and example of Google Sites

http://itcboisestate.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/opting-in-to-google-apps-at-boise-state/

Readers of this blog can share their experiences on using Google Apps and their examples of Google Sites and by writing comments to this post.

New features with Gmail contacts and spreadsheets

Gmail Contacts
Gmail will now automatically adds people that you corresponded with to 'Suggested Contacts'. You can move people you correspond with regularly to 'My Contacts'. Gmail's address auto-complete feature will work for all of your contacts, whether they're in 'My Contacts' or 'Suggested Contacts'.

To ensure that only the right contacts are synced with your mobile device in the future, Gmail has moved previously auto-added contacts in 'My Contacts' back into 'Suggested Contacts'. Only contacts that you've moved to 'My Contacts', edited, imported or added to a group will remain in 'My Contacts' for syncing.

Full screen for Google spreadsheets
Google Spreadsheets now lets you view more of your work on-screen. Ctrl+Shift+F toggles between three modes: hide header, hide header and toolbar, and show all.

New Feature: Using Advanced IMAP Controls in Gmail

The new feature in Google Apps Mail (Gmail) is "Advanced IMAP Controls"

This is a Google Labs feature that lets you fine-tune your Gmail IMAP experience. Now you can choose which labels to sync in IMAP and will be useful if you find your mail client choking on a big [Gmail]/All Mail folder.

After enabling this Lab feature, just go to the Labels tab under Settings. You'll see a new 'Show in IMAP' checkbox next to each of your labels. Uncheck the box and the corresponding folder will disappear from IMAP.



There are also some more options for those who want to make Gmail's IMAP work more like traditional IMAP providers: you can turn off auto-expunge or trash messages when they're no longer visible through IMAP.

To understand this better let note that traditional IMAP protocol allows messages to be marked for deletion, a message is still present in the folder but marked to be deleted the next time the folder is expunged 9an option given in mail clients).

In Gmail's standard IMAP implementation, when you mark a message as deleted, Gmail deletes it immediately. If you are comfortable with the old metod and want the two-stage delete process, after you've enabled this Lab, just select 'Do not automatically expunge messages' under the 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' tab in Settings.

Tips on managing your Google Apps email inbox

Web Worker Daily has given some good tips on how to maintain a zero mail inbox with Google Apps. Some of the tips are really useful and worth reading:

• Using "Remember the Milk" extension to gmail
• Using GreaseMonkey script - Folders4Gmail to have a folder like hierarchy of labels
  

The full article can be accessed from following link:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/04/14/inbox-zero-with-google-apps/#comment-306728

GMDesk: use Google Apps applications stand alone

If you use Google’s services a lot, you might have wanted at one time or another to use them as stand alone applications. GMDesk is an Adobe AIR application that allows you to do just that.

GMDesk offers you access to GMail, Google Calendar, Google Documents, Google Maps, Google Reader and Picasa . It also offers the ability to switch between the Google Services via keyboard shortcuts.

It allows you to use any of the applications without opening a web browser and being distracted by surfing or checking the latest in Facebook. It saves time because you don’t have to wait for your browser to open and, if you use more than one browser, there is no problem switching between them.

this application required Adobe AIR. If you are not using Adobe AIR already go to Get Adobe Air, download it and install it.

If you are already using Adobe AIR - Download GMDesk and run the installer.

Georgetown University moving to Google Apps

Georgetown University's email service is moving to from University servers to Google Apps for Education

http://blog.georgetownvoice.com/2008/10/14/georgetown-moving-email-to-gmail-in-spring/

Google Site Usage: Government

A recent example of the use of Google Sites for Government Institutions is for Washington DC. The have recently made a Google site public for their upcoming job fair:

https://sites.google.com/a/dc.gov/octo-jobs/Home

Washington, D.C. Government Implements Google Apps

When it came time for Washington, D.C., to create a new intranet for city employees, spending US$4 million on a site based on proprietary portal software just didn't seem like a good idea to CTO Vivek Kundra. But using Google Apps did.

Google Apps is not replacing Microsoft Office entirely for the 38,000 municipal employees in Washington D.C. However, more and more government employees will be "migrating to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office,". Google's online applications have advantages as far as ease of use and the ability to build new sites for the city's intranet quickly and easily. Washington, D.C., has been piloting the intranet with employees since June 2007. The application, which uses Gmail as its e-mail service and Google Apps for documents and spreadsheets, went live earlier this year and is currently in regular use, Kundra said.

Kundra decided to go with Google Apps as the basis for the new intranet not only because it was less expensive -- the city is paying Google about $475,000 a year in licensing fees -- but because new applications and interfaces can be assembled quickly on Google's platform because of its open nature. When we looked at integration and deployment costs Google Apps was at a lower cost and was a faster way of achieving the same goal.

Take for example a new site the city created for its Fall 2008 Job Fair. On it, Kundra has his managers outlining in YouTube videos the positions for which they're hiring, an example of how easy it is on Google Apps to allow for "voice, video and data integration," he said.

SaaS Business Collaboration from IBM

IBM has launched online services for business collaboration based on lotus platform. This makes them a key challenger to Google (Google Apps), and Cisco (webex). IBM has tied together parts of its Lotus, Rational, and Tivoli software to appeal to Small and Mid size Business and departments in larger corporations, because of the minimal up-front costs and maintenance.

This is a "cloud-services initiative" of IBM which makes use of IBM's Lotus, Rational, and Tivoli software. In addition, IBM unveiled an online social networking and collaboration service for business called Bluehouse, which is available in beta at no charge.

By introducing its online services, IBM is targetting for companies looking to avoid the deployment and maintenance costs of in-house software.

Software as a Service is gaining popularity among the companies. While many companies prefer to keep their core business applications and data protected within the firewall, some less-critical applications are becoming attractive for hosting by a third party. An example of SaaS success us, Salesforce.com, for example, has built a successful business around customer and sales-force management applications.

IBM's Bluehouse services are a suite of hosted online technologies that enable employees among business partners or within the same organization to share documents and contacts, collaborate on joint project activities, host online meetings, and build social-networking communities.

For companies looking only for Web conferencing, IBM has launched Lotus Sametime Unyte, which also offers document sharing and multilanguage support. IBM plans to integrate the service in the future with its Lotus Notes and Sametime e-mail and instant messaging software, respectively, to make it possible for users to invite people to a conference with a single click, according to the vendor.

IBM's service offering also will include automated Web content scanning to ensure it complies with business policies. The Rational Policy Tester OnDemand is available on an annual subscription basis. IBM also launched Rational AppScan OnDemand for automatic scanning of Web applications for security bugs. To better control the quality of product data shared online, IBM introduced Telelogic Focal Point, which centralizes information shared by stakeholders, such as product management, engineering, and marketing.

Check the website of IBM Bluehouse at: https://bluehouse.lotus.com

Google Spreadsheet has "New Menu"

As an avid user of Google Apps and Google Docs I have always wondered about when the Google spreadsheet will be more closer to the MS office Excel Spreadsheet in terms of its usability, navigation and features. For a detailed description of the new interface you can go to the already updated Google Docs help page.

Here are some key changes:


One step has been taken by launching the new 'Google Spreadsheets’ menu. Now, Google decided to reorganize the interface a bit and give it a real looking menu. The menu now gives you the standard menu format like - “File, Edit, Format, Insert, Tools, Form, Help,”.

These were the options I was accustomed to in almost much all Office suites. Menus neatly provide access to all commands and functions.








Updated Toolbar: The updated toolbar gives shortcuts to the most commonly-used commands, including one-click access to currency, percent, and other cell formats.

Formulas are now accessible from the toolbar (or, as always, by typing them directly into the cell).

Hover over the sort bar to expose sorting tools. Drag it by the handle on the left to freeze header rows so they are visible while you scroll.


In the Share menu you can invite people, see who has access, publish to the web, and find other advanced sharing features.

Chat with people who are editing at the same time, or just see who's there.







An additional (additional to the other spreadsheets) is the Form option which is now accessible from the standard menu.

So now no need to go to another page to create a form - you can create and edit form right from the standard menu.

I am loving it!