Google Apps Today

Google Sites example: www.tenismesalazubia.com

2008-12-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

Our readers are sending more examples of Google sites. This is another example of an excellent site created using Google Site. This is the site (in Spanish Language) for a Tennis Club:

http://www.tenismesalazubia.com/

Now you can view PDF documents in Gmail without downloading

2008-12-15T04:54:00.000-08:00

Earlier a to view a PDF file received in Gmail will have to be downloaded and opened in Acrobat reader. But now you can view PDF file in Gmail itself.

Now opening up a PDF in Gmail will not open your native PDF viewer (which is relatively slow-to-load), and instead will send you to the document reader built into Google Docs. Clicking “View” quickly opens the PDF inside your browser, complete with the graphics and formatting you expect to see in a PDF. You may have seen this feature before, in Google Docs. It’s the way that we did uploading and viewing of PDFs online.

The Gmail implementation is very useful as it lets you check the PDF file in different zoom views. Users can also search for content in the file in addition to download it for saving.

Of course you can also use the Adobe Acrobat tool which opens the PDF file into the web browser but that usually makes the browser unresponsive for seconds.

Google Sites Case Study: Global Alliance for Self Management Support

2008-12-13T03:20:00.000-08:00

Global Alliance for Self Management Support (www.globalalliancesms.org) is using Google Sites for their website and collaboration. Global Alliance for Self Management Support is an international non-profit project promoting patient empowerment and self management support worldwide.

This is a case in point about how Google Apps can be used for Not for profit organizations. That too cutting across the geographical borders and collaborating with people worldwide. This Google site has used Google docs forms, Google docs presentations. The site also has Google Apps Knowledge base for those who are creating sites within community.

Manuel Serrano Director of Global Alliance for Self Management Support indicates that they are looking for cyber volunteers to work collaboratively on the development of this collective intelligence platform. He can be reached at manuel [dot] serrano [at] globalalliancesms [dot] org

Google Chrome has been moved out of Beta

2008-12-12T00:41:00.000-08:00

Google after releasing the 15th update for its Google Chrome Web browser and officially ended the beta testing phase for the application Thursday. It already has some 10 million active users. With the 15 updates under its belt, the browser has improved its stability and performance.

"Google Chrome is a better browser today thanks to the many users who sent their feedback and the many more who enabled automatic crash reports, helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues," they wrote in a Google blog post.

Shortest of Beta Period at Google: The Chrome seems to have spent the shortest period of time in beta status. Considering the previous record of Google which is known for taking its time with beta projects, even in its most popular offerings - this is a healthy development. Launched in September 2008 Chrome was in beta for just three months. If you compare this with Google's Gmail e-mail which began beta testing in April 2004, and more than four years later, the e-mail app is still there.

However Google says that it applies a different time frame and standard to its client software than other offerings. Google also indicated that Chrome was fairly advanced when it was released in beta.

What is new in Google Chrome

Google Chrome is built on the Chromium open source project, anyone can see features being developed by Google's team and the developer community.
Chrome now offers users better stability and plug-in performance. Video and audio issues and other common bugs have been fixed.
Speed has also been a focus and now the javaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster.
It is now easier to switch between another browser and Chrome with bookmark import and export features. Google also worked to give users greater control of their data. To that end, all features in Chrome that affect user privacy are grouped in one place with an explanation regarding what each one actually does.

I am using both Firefox and Google Chrome as some of the sites are still not designed from Chrome and show display errors. So the users who were shying away till now can download from here and start using Google Chrome.

Now chat from Gmail to a mobile through SMS

2008-12-11T23:23:00.000-08:00

Even if the person you are chatting with is not available near PC you can chat with then using this new feature unveiled by Google Gmail - SMS Chat.

Leo Dirac, Google product manager says - "A few weeks back, we ran into a few snags when we first started rolling this out, but starting today you can turn on text messaging for chat,"

You get your own unique Google chat phone number, so the person receiving the texts will be able to know who you are by saving the digits under your name in their phone book.

How to enable Gmail SMS Chat? - just go to the Labs area in Settings to turn it on.

Then- you can type any US phone number into the search box in the chat window on the left, then select “Send SMS.“ You can also select the contact you want to SMS first and then add their phone number. You can send messages to US numbers from anywhere in the world. If you’re on the receiving end, when you get a text message from Gmail on your phone, messages from each contact will come from a unique number with a 406 area code (406 spells G0O…), reply like you would to any other text message and the reply will be routed through Gmail’s servers straight to your friend’s Gmail chat window.

How to block a Gmail sender while chatting from your mobile? Recipients can also block the service simply by sending the word BLOCK in response to a chat message, so you won't be stung by pesky messages all day either.

Google is rolling out this service in the US at the moment, although it appears to be only a matter of time before it will be available in other geographies

How to use Tasks in Gmail

2008-12-10T02:15:00.001-08:00

One of the most requested features in Gmail - "Task management" has been unveiled by Google. Task management is important especially since it comes as default in most desktop- and web-based email clients.

The fact that task management goes hand in hand with handling email - this will be one of the most use solutions alsong with email. A new tasks management feature is now available in Gmail to let users manage tasks from within the web-based email interface.

Enabling tasks:

The experimental-only feature first has to be enabled under the Labs tab in the Settings section of the Gmail web interface.

Adding new Task:

You can access tasks by clicking on the Tasks link right below the Contacts option in the left-hand part of the Gmail web interface, which will open a dialog for creating a new task.

To add a new Task simply press ENTER

Adding New task for email:

Alternatively, you can turn the currently open email message into a new task by choosing the Add to Tasks option from the drop-down menu labeled More Actions, which will automatically put the message subject as the subject of a new task and provide a link to the email message in the task body.

Managing Tasks:

Use Actions Button at Bottom to indent OR Move Tasks up or down

Indent Tasks to List Sub tasks for a Major Task

Click on ">" after a task to edit task Details

Task Details

Task details like due date and Task Notes can be edited from Task Detail view.

Tasks Keyboard shortcuts

You can use keyboard shortcuts (if enabled) for Tasks:

- Open Task Box: "g" and then "k"
- Create New Task: ENTER
- Delete a Task: Delete the text and hit BACKSPACE
- Navigate Between Tasks: Arrows
- Indent/Unindent Tasks: TAB and SHIFT-TAB
- Reorder Tasks: drag and drop or CTRL-UP and CTRL-DOWN
- Main View/Detailed Toggle: SHIFT-ENTER
- Create a Task from Email Message: Shift-T (alternatively, choose Add to Tasks from the More Actions drop-down menu)

Since this is experimental Labs feature, it is not yet ready with full features. For instance, the current incarnation of Gmail Tasks lacks basic features like setting reminders, sharing tasks with others or setting task priorities. Tasks integration with Google Calendar that we would expect from Google is also non-existent at this time.

Users who looking for more comprehensive task management features should check applications such as the excellent Remember the Milk service that integrates with Gmail, iGoogle and Google Calendar and provides offline functionality through Gears as well.

Readers can write the comments to this post about their experience with Tasks in Gmail.

How start up and small business can save money using Google Apps

2008-12-04T05:22:00.000-08:00

Most business these days use Microsoft's Office suite of software applications. MS Office (as it is popularly called) is almost as common as a PC in an office. But using office is also a very costly affair. A cost which can be avoided by start up and small business.

Using Google Apps can reduce your cost multi-fold. Here is a quick assessment on how much you can save in an small office with 10 persons:

MS Office
MS office: $400/licence (Cost $4000)
Hosted Email solution for 10 employees: $114/month (Annual Cost $1368)
Installation and maintenance: $600
Total: $5968

Google has offered something similar for over a year, and like OpenOffice (another free package), it's free. Just sign up for Google Docs, and you can create new spreadsheets, documents and presentations or upload those created by Office or OpenOffice, and export or download them in formats that are also supported by both.

Google Apps
Package cost: Free
Setup cost: $50
Training cost for 10 employees: $500
Ongoing Maintenance: Free

You save: $5968 - $550 = $5418

While not as full-featured as Office or OpenOffice, Google Docs offers much more flexibility. You can share documents with multiple people and even allow them to make changes so multiple people can collaborate. If you're out of town or on vacation, you can review and edit files saved online from any machine with an Internet connection and a web browser.

If you combine OpenOffice (another free open source application) and Google Docs, you'll be able to do anything you currently use Microsoft Office for and more (yes more) at zero cost. There may a training cost for training your staff familiar with Microsoft Office to make them aware of google Apps.

And to be on safe side you can keep one or two full version of Office available just in case you need. Microsoft will soon be releasing a version of Office that will run in an ordinary Web browser, called Office Web Applications. These will be available at a small cost compared to Office but not free.

So before you are writing your check in the name of Microsoft for hundreds of dollars to buy expensive Office licences, you should definitely check out the free alternatives available. And sice they are free - what you are going to lose?

New Holiday templates in Google Docs to keep you organized this Holiday season

2008-12-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

You can save time and money with the Google Docs template gallery for documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The templates are useful for every one from a small business owner or the chief holiday organizer. The gallery includes a few special templates designed to help you manage holidays this season better. Here are some of the useful templates:

Survey form to update mailing list
Holiday Postcard
Mailing Labels
Gift Tags
Video Cards
Newsletter
Gift certificates
invitation cards
RSVP capture to Party
Budget Tracker

It's easy to get started with any of these tips.

Click File -> New -> From Template to be taken to the main template gallery where you click the "Holiday" category to see just the holiday templates, or you can tab through to filter results by product. Pick the design you like and edit it for your needs.

Read post on Google Blogs (Part 1 Part 2)

Wesleyan University goes for Google Apps

2008-12-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

Wesleyan University's (http://www.wesleyan.edu) WSA-ITS Committee has announced announce that the transition to Google Apps for Education has been approved and will go online for the start of the spring semester.

Google Apps will give students many new options in their digital lifestyle, including expanded e-mail capacity, calendaring, and digital collaboration.

Read more

Webinar: Achieve Success on Enterprise-class Google Apps Deployments

2008-12-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

Registration is required to join this event.

Date and time: Thursday, December 4, 2008 10:00 am
Pacific Standard Time (GMT -08:00, San Francisco)
Program: Google Apps Webinars
Duration: 1 hour
Description: Achieve Success on Enterprise-class Google Apps Deployments
Topic: Achieve Success on Enterprise-class Google Apps Deployments
Speaker: Customer, (speaker TBD)
Intended Audience: 1000+; IT professionals; Health care; manufacturing, media, retail

Short description: A large pharmaceutical company, Genentech (http://www.gene.com/gene) has recently implemented Google Apps. Learn how Google Apps is used at this leading pharmaceutical company with 12,000 distributed employees. Hear from one of the chief project leads on the people, process and technology considerations that made the deployment a success.

Learn how this leading pharmaceutical maximized the chances for the deployment's success by:

* Phasing in usage of each Google Apps to ensure adoption
* Providing top-notch training materials to educate users
* Identifying "Google Guides" to help train users
* Using marketing tools to create enthusiasm

More and more companies are moving away from traditional/legacy infrastructure and migrating towards a SaaS approach, I really think this webinar will be educational and informational, in terms of gleaming insights and experience from a company that is definitely way ahead of the game when it comes to technology adoption.

To register click here

Google has launched a new Desktop gadget for Gmail

2008-12-03T02:57:00.000-08:00

Google has launched a new Desktop gadget that you can use to monitor your Gmail Inbox, read messages, and compose new emails. Check out the announcement on the Gmail blog.

Google released Google Desktop in 2004. Google Desktop is designed to make searching a PC as easy as searching the Web. It provides full-text search over e-mail, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail and Web pages viewed, according to Google. The application includes other gadgets that allow users to be shown new e-mail, weather updates, photos and personalized news.

Here are some of the ways you can use this new Gmail Desktop gadget:

* It doesn't take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you'd like.
* You can also keep two instances of the gadget open - one logged into your personal Gmail account and the other set to Your Google Apps account for work-related stuff. Instead of getting lost in a sea of tabs or browser windows, you can bring up the gadgets in an instant.

Download this Gadget from here

Fireforx + Google Apps = FoxGLove Standalone Google Apps Portal

2008-11-25T01:06:00.000-08:00

Crafty Firefox user Alex customized his own Firefox Portable installation to tightly integrate with Google Apps. He calls his creation "FoxGLove," and uses it as his own Google-powered productivity portal instead of Microsoft Outlook. Along with his pick of add-ons that enhance and integrate Google Apps in Firefox, Alex tricked out this portable Firefox version with a Chrome-like theme, custom homepages (that auto-load in tabs), web site favicons...

Read full article at lifehacker

How to do voice and video chat from your Gmail window

2008-11-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

Always wanted to do voice and video chat from your Gmail window rather than loggin in to Google Talk every time? Your wait is over!

Here is a new Killer feature from Google! You can now have both voice and video chats with your contacts for free within your browser's Gmail window.

To do this click on the 'Video & more' menu at the bottom of the chat window, then select 'Start video chat' or 'Start voice chat'.

The first time you use this feature, you'll be prompted to download and install a small plugin. Do not hesitate and download the plugin.

This feature is available to all users of Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions. However this feature is at present released only in US English.

For more information click below:

Google Apps updates

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Gmail voice and video chat

CalDAV support enables Google Calendar access from Apple iCal or Mozilla Sunbird

2008-11-03T05:39:00.000-08:00

Google Calendar now has CalDAV support. Which means, you'll be able to view and edit your Google Calendar events directly in calendar applications, such as Apple iCal or Mozilla Sunbird. Any changes you make in other calendar applications will automatically appear in Google Calendar the next time you sign in (and vice versa). If you use other calendar applications while offline, changes you make will be saved and updated in Google Calendar when you get back online.

What is CalDAV?

CalDAV is an open protocol that allows calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections. This allows you to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, sync between multiple users and sync between multiple

Google Calendar at the time of writing this post only supports CalDAV using Apple iCal or Mozilla Sunbird.

To enable Google Calendar in Apple's iCal and Mozilla Sunbird follow the instructions at:

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358#

There are however few open issues need to be resolved by Google

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99360

I am sure in near future the Google calendar access through other popular client applications will be available.

Use Google Sites as your Free Web Host

2008-11-03T05:14:00.000-08:00

Many times it makes sense to go for a free hosting account rather than spend everything on a paid hosting solution. For example, if you are requirement is that of a simple but professional website on which you do not want to spend much. Or when you just want a temporary site. Or what you are looking is just a plain site to show pictures of your pets.

In all these cases the sites do not require a thousands of MBs as space. For most of your needs 10-12 MB is good enough unless you have lot of PDFs and Videos. As for the bandwidth (there is no problem if you do not understand these terms) also they do not require more than 2 or 3 GBs.

You search on internet and you will find many of the web hosting guys (read sharks) who want to sell the hosting plans. (This may sometime include me also). They will always lead you to buy the most expensive plan they have on some pretext or other. Some will say - "hey you need that bandwidth - go for premium plan" or "Our assisment shows that you need a virtual private server". But remember for a small requirement like this you don’t have to go for them. If you have Google Apps just stick to making a professional website using Google Sites. Contrary to popular belief that Google sites does not have good look and feel or thay have very "templated" look -well if you customize it well and use the images smartly - the site can be very professional. You can try suing the Google Sites. And then if you need - you can always upgrade later on. If you feel Google sites is not good enough, then move on. Anyway here are some advantages and disadvantages who want to evaluate Google Sites.

Advantages:

Google sites has the WYSWIG editors (even year computer savvy child can use it to create a site). Can be used easily by even someone who doesn’t know a thing about HTML. In fact many schools in USA have students using Google sites very regularly.
No software need to be installed - this is one factor that separates, Google Sites from other free web designing sites. There is absolutely no need of web page development software like dreamweaver or front page. There is no need to learn any software, no struggles with FTP and you got nothing to do with complex scripting.
Making a website in Google Pages is as easy as blogging. If you have ever blogged using Blogger or Wordpress then you know enough.
Things like creating a table is easy - all you need to do is to cut and paste from a word document.Or you can just create a new page of that type.
Adding photos and attachments is as easy as uploading files is easy. By uploading files, you can easily help the reader to download, simply by clicking a link.
Google Sites can be easily integrated to documents in Google Docs to present data.
You can create site for your business domain. So your site appears when you typr your business domain name. If you use masked forwarding then the site visitor may not know that the site is created using Google Apps.

Disadvantage:

It has links to Google Sites (so people will know that you have crated it using Google sites (what is they know?)
Limitations like fixed templates, fixed site structure and no scripting are allowed
You don’t have many choices when building the site. There are only a 15-20 of templates provided. You cannot use other templates from other free template sites, or make one using frontage.
The only way to increase page size is to go vertical. It is also difficult to place links horizontally.
Google Pages does not allow you to edit HTML of a whole Page, you can edit just sections of it.

I recommend readers of this blog to share their Google sites.

Use Google GrandCentral to aggregate your voice mail messages

2008-11-03T04:57:00.000-08:00

Some time back Google has acquired a company called GrandCentral. This is a useful service for small business as it gives them ability to get aggregated messages left for your multiple phones.

Google GrandCentral offers a unique phone number which is linked to you for life. GrandCentral doesn't replace your phones; it just link them together and help them do more. How do they achieve that? Well they people One Number for Life - a number that's not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you. This means one place where you can check your voice messages and have them kept for life.

Here are some of the features provided

Check your messages by phone, email, or online (online like skype voice messages)
Keep all your messages online for eternity
Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
Click-to-dial from your address book - Google GrandCentral will connect your phone and call the target person
Surprise your callers with a custom voice mail greeting - you can have separate voicemenl for each phone
Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

Google GrandCentral is currently available to select few by invitation only. That too its present reach is limited to USA. To know more about Google GrandCentral and its features click here

Google now offers service level agreement for Premier edition customers

2008-11-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Google now offers service level agreement for 99.99 percent up time to Premier Edition customers. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) will ensure that customers get extra Service credit if they do not meet the desired criteria.

More about the SLA for Google Apps can be read on their website at

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html

This is sure a good news for customers and is another step to reassure enterprise clients.

Examples of Google Sites usage

2008-10-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

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:

No technical knowledge required like html, stylesheets or javascript
Faster way to develop sites
Can be developed in a collaborative way
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

2008-10-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

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"

2008-10-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

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!

Virginia tech on Google Apps

2008-09-26T01:53:00.000-07:00

It seems another educational institution is moving to Google Apps - Virginia tech

http://david.carter-tod.com/wp/2008/09/21/moving-to-google-apps-for-education/

Google's Project 10 to the 100th

2008-09-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

This is off topic. Google has completed 10 years and have put a webpage for celebrating 10th birthday which is worth having a look:

http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday/

They have also lauched a new project called Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th")

This is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. You can submit your idea and if shortlisted you can be among five chosen to implement your dream project. read more by clicking the link below:

http://www.project10tothe100.com/?hl=en

Why are you crying over 'beta' in Google products?

2008-09-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

A lot of noice is being made on internet about most of Google products being in "beta". It all started with an article by Web Monitoring company Pingdon in their article where they questioned why out of 49 of Google products 49 are in beta?

They indicated that some of notable products which are stim in beta are Google Docs, Google Gmail and Google Finance. They have even raised objection to Google charging its clients on Beta products.

Google has responded to this by indicating that - "We have very high internal metrics our consumer products have to meet before coming out of beta. Our teams continue to work to improve these products and provide users with an even better experience. We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where people expect continual improvements in a product. On the Web, you don’t have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update to become available. Improvements are rolled out as they’re developed. Rather than the packaged, stagnant software of decades past, we’re moving to a world of regular updates and constant feature refinement where applications live in the cloud."

Frankly as a user of Google Apps and other Google products it does not matter to me whether there is a "Beta" tag or not. And why it should? I am looking for some level of performance and if I am getting it - whether "Beta" or No beta - it does not bothers me.

And to the question of paying for a "beta" product - is there a regulation which prohibits companies for charing beta products. Let the market decide if they want to pay for something. In a free market where competitive offerings are available in market let the users decide what they want to buy or not. If I am getting a superior offering - I am ready to buy it and whether it is "beta" or not doen not matter to me.

I am sure most of my readers agree!

Real Life examples of Google Sites

2008-09-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

Dr. Helen Barrett of Washington, United States is an educationist and have recently retired from the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has this very impressive Site created using Google Sites.

http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/Home

Within this Google Site she has a section on "Creating an Interactive Portfolio with Google Sites" which may be helpful to readers.

http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/how-to

She also conducts professional programs on usage of Google Apps in Education.

Google Apps Primer for Small Business

2008-09-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps are a set of online applications (also know as Software as a Service - SaaS applications) which enable collaboration among your your enterprise users.

What services are included in Google Apps?

Google Apps services include - Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites, Google Start Page (additional in Premier Edition - Google Video). The Google services are customized for a business domain name i.e. your email are like - john@yourdomain.com (and not john@gmail.com).

Do I need to install, download any software or purchase any hardware?

Google Apps does not requires any software or hardware installation and maintenance so no more extra cost for your company. You only required to have a domain name and you can start getting benefit from Google services for free (standard edition).

Who is using Google Apps?

Many small business firms, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations have already adopted and benefited greatly from Google Apps services. Google Apps are well positions to help small businesses and non profits in their endeavor.

Why should I use Google Apps?

Here are few reasons

The small to medium size business (SMBs) and Startup Business take hard route to save company cost which also includes the software cost. Google Apps Standard edition (which is free) is a great way to save money.
Google Apps gives you fast and secure communication software - custom email address, calendar, spreadsheet, document tools, presentations, and more.
Google Apps GMail allows user to send and receiving mails and offers large storage capacity. Large number or mails archived, attachments or mail address can safely kept without worry that you are going to run out of space. Gmail’s also has a very strong virus and spam protection.
Google Talk is instant messaging facility integrated to Gmail. Text message as well as voice message can be sent worldwide instantly.
Google calendar can be used to share events, fix up meetings and organize schedules. You can even publish your company events on the web.
Google docs allows your employees to collaborate online over spread sheets, documents and presentations. Now one can create, edit and share their documents and presentations. And you can publish your document so that anyone can access your contents. They allow you to have option to restrict access only to your team or to some individuals.
Email can be delivered to your mail clients, hand held devices like blackberry, iphone etc without any additional charges

How Google Apps Mail is different from Gmail

Google Apps mail is for your domain - i.e. your email are like - john@yourdomain.com (and not john@gmail.com).

Whether I should use Standard Edition (Free) or Premier Edition of Google Apps?

Google Apps provide their service with some limitation. For most small companies, the free version will be adequate. You can consider to use upgraded version when your organization become bigger and more complex. You can see Google Apps comparison table for free edition versus paid edition on their website.

The key additions in Premier Edition are - higher mailbox size (25GB in premier edition v/s 7GB in Standard Edition), Ad free online email interface, Additional features in Calender, Additional Service - Google Video, and Additional administration features to integrate Google applications in your IT systems.

If you use free edition, you probably need to find good support. While using free edition you can still go for a trial of premier edition (which is 50$ per user) if you need. Google gives an option to Standard Edition users to try Premier Edition for one month free of cost.

What benefits organizations have derived from Google Apps?

There are many benefits but the prime benefits are

Lower costs
Reduced strain on IT departments due to streamlined operations and low maintenance
Higher business scalability through easily-deployed services
Availability of up to date version of software
More productive and efficient employees with best of class communication tools

I am setting Up Google Apps for the first time. What I should keep in mind?

Setting Google Apps is relatively simple. There is ample help available on Google's website. If you do not have a domain you can buy the domain through while registering with Google Apps. This will save you from additional setup work. If you already have a domain and you are not IT saavy - you can take help of a host of service providers available in Google Solutions Marketplace.

More Admin Tools for Google Apps Administrators in Gmail

2008-09-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Official Google Enterprise Blog: More administrative controls for Gmail with Google Apps

Google has recently launched some more administrative features in Google Apps which will help administrators of large companies in managing users easily.

In a small businesses who use Google Apps, it is easy for administrators to help employees configure user settings account-by-account. But this approach was not appropriate for larger companies having users in excess of hundres. I have seen difficulty my clients are facing - when they have close to thousand users.

Google is now offering a streamlined way for admins to configure account settings is essential for its users. For this Google has launched Google Email Settings API, for Premier and Education Edition.

Using Google Email Settings APIs administrators can programmatically update Gmail settings for their users in bulk by making requests to a GData feed. The imporatnt modifiable settings are:

labels
filters
signatures
vacation responders
"send mail as" aliases
interface language
email forwarding
POP
IMAP

For more details Premier and Education Edition customers can, check out the Google Email Settings API documentation.

2008-09-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

What is Android: Here is definition straight from Wikipedia - "Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux operating system, developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes Google-developed Java libraries,[2] but does not support programs developed in native code.

The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google has pledged to make most of the Android platform available under the Apache free-software and open-source license.

First commercially launched phone based on Android: T Mobile is the first company to commercially launch a phone based on Android on September 23. In an announcement on their website T Mobile have announced "The T-Mobile G1 with Google is the first commercially available phone to run on the 'Android' operating system, which empowers developers with tools to create and offer consumers applications that add value to their lives. This is one of many initiatives T-Mobile is working on to lead the industry in bringing real innovation to wireless customers." Expected to go on sale in October 22nd it will be priced at 199$ in USA - which is similar to iPhone.

How will I benefit from Android?: Some of the key benefits which have been highlighted are:

It will be very easy to use - Single Sign in to your Google Account, Easy to set (may not be required to touch settings), and login never expires are few usability features.
Push based: The email, calendar and contacts are fully synchronized as they are push based - New events are pushed in real-time to your phone and any changes you make on-the-go are immediately available on the web.
Preloaded with Google applications like - Search, Maps, Gmail with Contacts, Calendar, Google Talk, and YouTube.
Android will also allow users to run multiple applications at once and more easily share contacts and data among them.
It is unconfirmed but some reports say that users may be able to cut and paste text in e-mails.
Add on applications will be most likely free or at low cost (open source advantage). Google is planning to create an Android Market where - application, content providers can display their stuff and sell. The initial handsets will be enabled with beta version of this Android market.
It is tipped to have covered all featured of iPhone
Developers and Mobile providers are free to join and deliver applications - which means lower cost and more applications for mobile users

This (Android) is going to bring down costs and sweep the market. Soon the Android Market will have applications and content running in to hundreds and early adopters will start rating them - and the best will be highlighted soon. As a Google Apps user this is going to be a good news for you whether you already use Google Apps on a mobile or not. If you are already using - your existing providers will be forced to offer you better service at lower cost due to competition. If you are not a mobile user yet - well go ahead and try with the new offering. Or may be you can wait till early next year when there will be many more launches on Android platform.

Google Sites in Use

2008-09-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

I am regularly looking for examples of uses of Google Sites and in next few days I will be sharing some of the interesting examples of uses of Google Sites by users world-wide. Here are two interesting Google Sites:

Mr. Trombley - Download Center: A Math teacher for Chateaugay Central School, Mr. Trombley has putt up this site for students to access class worksheets

http://sites.google.com/site/ccstrombley/Home

He has even written a note on his blog

Indian Institute or Management Kozhikode (IIMK) students have used Google Sites to create a quick site related to Start-up Fair they are organizing.

http://sites.google.com/site/iimkstartupfair/

These examples (both from education) show an increasing acceptability of Google Sites. Education sector seems to be pioneer in adpting Google Apps and Google Sites as most of the examples I come across are from Education. OR may be they are the one who have made their sites public?

I request readors to share their views and their sites by writing comments to this post.

Show Iframe on Google sites

2008-09-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

Google Sites blocks IFRAME tags, JavaScript scripts, some DIV tags, and other essential XHTML elements that Google considers "unsafe." This post shows a way to get around it.

To show an IFRAME, thus bypassing security restrictions in Google Sites, simply add this magical line to your IFRAME tag:

igsrc = 'http://www.google.com/ig/images/no_image/no_image_gadget_thm.png'
class='igm'

This will fool Google into thinking that you are inserting a Gadget, even though you are actually inserting your IFRAME. ;)

Try Google Apps before switching

2008-09-21T04:18:00.000-07:00

Dhruvsoft (www.dhruvsoft.com) is offering a free trial of Google Apps. This will be a great opportunity to all those who want to evaluate Google Apps before they switch. You can know more about this at:

http://www.dhruvsoft.com/googleapps/29-google-apps/74-try-google-apps

They have create a trial domain trialmadeeasy.com where the user can login and check the features of Google Apps. If you contact them - they will even give you an online demo of Google Apps Admin Accounts to show how easy it will be to use Google Apps for your business.

Why Google Chrome

2008-09-21T03:55:00.000-07:00

Google has launched new browser Chrome. Why Google Apps users should use Google Chrome?

Google Chrome like many other free products (Google Apps, Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, Apple's iTunes etc) is another attempt to gain control over a critical aspect of your day to day computing. Google is obviously not doing charity to to give away free products like Google Apps and Google Chrome. Leave aside the great reasons the comic like strip Google has provided while launching the Chrome - there is an inherent reason why they have launched Google Chrome.

Considering that future is more in the cloud and most of the applications (including Google Apps) will be accessed through a web browser. If Google owns your browser, and it's the search engine you already use, and, perhaps, it's the online calendar and e-mail system you use, its docs (Google Docs), wiki (Google Sites) you use - then all the dots start to be connected. Suppose - using Google services become as comparable as Microsoft Office then you will have no reason to leave your browser (read Google Chrome) at any time in your day-to-day computing. Making Google Apps services faster and easy to access is very crucial for Google and depending on other browsers may not help them. That is the reason they have to come up with their own browser. Making the search integrated to url address bar has ensured that once you have selected Google as search engine - the others search engines will never get a chance. Google Chrome is part of a well laid out plan to remove supremacy of competitors.

Obviously, I can see my Gmail is faster in Google Chrome and Google docs and sites open really fast when using Chrome. However that is not the case with some other sites /applications I use - where I find Firefox to be better. But if you are a Google Apps user it will be more sense to use Google Chrome.

I am for now using both Google Chrome and Firefox and IE rarely. if you need you can download Google Chrome from:

http://www.google.com/chrome

Inline Google Docs for Wordpress

2008-09-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

Many of the Google Apps users have blogs based on Wordpress. This plugin would allow them to simply view some shared docs without having to leave their site. This plugin supports private Google Docs.

This will be a very useful plugin that I could visualize. Google has a very good ability to import Word and Excel spreadsheets. This plugin would allow you to display some work (Word and Excel) in your blog without having converting to HTML.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/inline-google-docs/

Create Templates in Google Docs

2008-09-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

It looks like a lot of people want to create templates and share them. There is a way to do that:

1. Create your Doc
2. Go to Share and select the checkbox "Anyone can VIEW this document..."
3. Copy and paste the URL to your website, blog, email, etc., appending &newcopy to the end of the URL like the one below:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pIM_J1gg-sMPaQvhL86Q-cw&hl=en&newcopy

You also can leave off the &newcopy. If you do, then this will open the Doc in View mode, and then the person can choose to make a copy (from the File menu). But that might confuse them, so using &newcopy is probably a good idea.

Track sites in Google Docs

2008-09-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Mysterious hacker shows how to create a webpage monitor in Google Docs that tracks the websites of your choice:

http://www.mystichackers.com/build-a-web-page-monitor-with-google-docs-and-track-changes-automatically.html

Upload Google Docs easily with gDocsBar - sidebar extension for firefox

2008-09-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

gDocsBar is a sidebar extension for firefox, a perfect companion for Google® Docs.

With gDocsBar, you can drag and drop multiple files into the sidebar to upload documents.

You can search and filter documents right from the sidebar. Now, gdocsbar comes with templates, webclips and smart folders.

Your Gmail credentials are sent to Google directly over SSL. Your passwords are stored in Firefox Password Manager.

http://gdocsbar.com/

Want to use Gmail for storing documents: GMail Drive 1.0.13

2008-09-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

Know more

A New Security Breach in Google Docs Revealed

2008-09-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

It will be a serious issues if documents stored by you in your Google Docs can be seen by someone else. Imaging what happened when your financial data is compromised. Google needs to tighten the security for its SaaS applications, otherwise many customers may move back to traditional systems. Read more about the security breach in Google docs in (ISC)²BLOG

HTTP://BLOG.ISC2.ORG/ISC2_BLOG/2008/09/SERIOUS-SECURIT.HTML

Google Gears now available for Safari for Mac

2008-09-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

Google Gears, the browser plug-in that lets you access your favourite webapps when you're not online, is now out of beta and available for the Safari browser for Macs (in addition to Firefox on all platforms). Gears gives you offline access to Remember the Milk, Zoho Suite, Google Docs, and more webapps.

Google Video launched for Premier Edition (You Tube for Google Apps)

2008-09-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Google Video for business, the latest addition to the suite of collaboration tools in Premier Edition is available now. Video lets employees easily upload videos and securely share them with a few co-workers or their company's entire domain.

Features of Google Video for business include:

* Community features: adding tags, comments and ratings

* Embed videos on web pages, including on Google Sites

* High quality video streaming

* 3GB of video storage per users account, which is shared by the entire domain

If you've checked the option to "Automatically add new Google services" on the Domain Settings page of your control panel, Google Video for business is already available to your users. If this option is currently unchecked, Google Video is not yet available to your users; you can activate the service from the US English version of the control panel at anytime.

Once activated, users can get started with video at

http://video.google.com/a/YOURDOMAIN.com.

Learn more about Google Video for business:

http://www.google.com/apps/collaboration

Read the announcement on the Official Google Blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/video-sharing-goes-to-work.html

Read the announcement on the Google Enterprise Blog:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/09/introducing-google-video...

A version for Google Apps Education Edition customers that allows faculty and staff to upload and share videos with students will be available on September 8 for free trial until March 9, 2009, at which point it will cost $10 per user, per year.

How to do simultaneous logins in Google Talk

2008-08-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Most of our users are using Google Talk. Before they started using Google Apps they had a Google account and were using Google Talk. Now after starting on Google Apps they have two Google Talk accounts and switching between two is making life difficult.

By following this hack you can have two simultaneous logins in Google Talk from one machine / PC. Or may be you have more than two if you want to operate Google Talk with multiple Gmail identities. If you have many Google Gmail accounts you also may want to run as many multiple instances of Google Talk. So there is no need to sign out and sign in. Use the following steps: You can use a Google switch /nomutex, to run Google Talk in multiple mode. Using this switch Google Talk operates in something called "Polygamy":

Step 1: Right-click on the desktop

Step 2: Select New

Step 3: Select Shortcut

Step 4: Paste this into the text box: "c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

Step 5: Click Next and choose a shortcut name such as My Account 1, My Account 2, or anything which related to your Gmail account for easy remembering which account is which.

Step 6: Click OK / OK

This will enable you for using multiple Google Talk from one PC

Create PDF files using Google Docs

2008-08-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here is one more useful tip for Google Apps users

Google Docs can be used to create PDF files. So if you want to convert your word doucyment to PDF you can use Google Apps (this is similar to Open Office functionality). Google Docs however doesn’t open up a PDF file for editing directly but a PDF file can be generated using a different approach.

To create a PDF file from a document use the following steps:

1. Create your document in MS Word OR using Google Docs
2. Upload the file to Google Docs (this step not required if created in Google Docs).
3. In the Google Docs Main screen, select the file (click on checkbox) and click ’Save as PDF' under the ’More Actions’ menu.

The PDF file will be downloaded to your computer. This is the original Word document which is converted to PDF format.

This is a really easy way to create a PDF file. So there is no need to search for free PDF converters on the internet. Just use Google docs to convert your MS Word files into PDF 9for free).

Now have custom URL (in your domain) for your site created using Google Sites

2008-08-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

Now Google Apps domain administrators can map public sites hosted on Google Sites to their own domains. Sites can be mapped individually to a specific URL, like http://www.example.com, and as a group under a specific URL, like http://sites.example.com/[name of site].

So in your company if you have a site each for HR, Marketing, etc you can now have URLs like:

http://hr.example.com
http://marketing.example.com

and these URL will be diverted to site created using Google Sites. However to do this you will need admin access. So only your domains admin can set these URLs from admin control panel.

Read more on Google blog
Google Sites Blog: Google Sites on your domain

Gmail Creates 'Never Send it to Spam' Filter

2008-08-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

Google Apps' Gmail, which lets users filter emails based on certain criteria (all email from a certain address, or featuring given keywords, can be automatically archived, labeled, or deleted, for example), have now added a new option to its filtering system called Never Send it to Spam.

Ticking this will ensure that an email with matching filter criteria will not b accidentally sorted into the spam folder.

Using Templates in Google Docs

2008-08-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

One of the fastest and easy way to create a document using Google docs is to use templates/ Google has over 300 templates - business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations - ready for use. You want an invoice, want to write a resume or a business letter - you have all templates available here and that too free

The templates are a very good new resource by Google Apps. This is going to make life simple for those using Google Apps and sure increase tha adaptability of Google Apps among user community. Release for English language only at present but soon coming in other languages too.

So now you have one more reason for dictching MS Office.

Read more:
https://documents.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=99064

SuccessFactors Announces Delivery of Integration with Google Apps

2008-08-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

SuccessFactors, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFSF), the global leader in on-demand performance and talent management solutions, today announced the delivery of five new capabilities integrated with the Google Apps(TM) suite of communication and collaboration products and other tools. The integration of SuccessFactors Performance and Talent Management suite with the products from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) enables companies of any and all sizes to reap the benefits of cloud computing (no hardware or software to download, install or maintain), and extends SuccessFactors' mission to help companies better manage, motivate and engage their people to drive better business results.

Google Integrations for SuccessFactors

SuccessFactors designed, developed and integrated the following five solutions with Google products. The first three are with Google Apps and the other two are integrations with other Google products. The integrations include:

SuccessFactors and Google Talk(TM) - to instantly communicate with a manager, members of a team, or others to discuss specific goals, performance reviews, and development/project plans
SuccessFactors and Google Calendar(TM) - to keep track of key events, deadlines against a goal plan, or key dates in the performance review process
SuccessFactors and Google Docs(TM) - for sharing knowledge and promoting collaboration by posting relevant, recommended documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from the SuccessFactors system, making them available to the internal and external audiences through Google Docs
SuccessFactors and Google Book Search(TM)- gives employees the tools to control their career development by providing clear visibility into the competencies they need to work on to prepare for future roles, along with relevant, suggested reading through Google Book Search
SuccessFactors and Google Maps(TM) - helps understand where individuals and teams are located, and to coordinate activities and make informed decisions on deploying talent

So now SuccessFactors users need not switch applications, or even browser tabs, to find information and collaborate with their colleagues. The Google Apps integration makes SuccessFactors customers more productive in one place and is a compelling example of the possibilities of cloud computing (aka SaaS - Software as a Service).

For more information, visit: http://www.succesfactors.com/google

Templates bring Docs to life

2008-08-04T03:23:00.000-07:00

Update from Official Google Docs Blog:

What do wedding planners, gas mileage calculators and photo albums have in common? They're all examples of templates available in the Google Docs Template Gallery that Sarah Beth Eisinger (Docs Templates engineer), Grant Dasher (intern), and I built and (happily!) released today. Read more

Forgot to log out? Now Close your active gmail sessions remotely

2008-08-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

In my earlier post I have written about how Google has recently release some new security features in Gmail. Here is one of the advantage of such feature:

One of the greatest benefits of cloud based applications (like Google e-mail) is the advantage of being able to sign in from anywhere -- your PC at home, from laptop while traveling, PC at work, or a mobile device, and may be some times you even log in from a public area such as an internet kiosk or cybercafe.

But what if you forget to log off from the gmail? In such scenario someone may see your active session - can not only can read your email, but they also can use your account to retrieve your passwords of not only gmail but all other services signed up using this account.

Google's new feature release has addressed this by enabling you to know if you're still logged on elsewhere and also gives you a chance to disconnect remotely.

To access this at the bottom of your (Google Apps Mail) Gmail inbox is a small notifier of other active sessions. The new feature, being rolled out to users in phases (so some of you may see it now and some will see it after few days). The feature shows information on the time and location of your recent activities.

Enterprise customers - your one more objection to use Google Apps is resolved. Better start using it now and have early mover advantage.

Google Page Creator is no longer accepting new sign-ups - What happens to Google Apps Page creator?

2008-08-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Here is what Google says about this:

We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google docs.

If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year. We are committed to making this transition as smooth and easy as possible, and we will post more details as we get closer to the transition time. You can also manually move your web pages from Page Creator to Google Sites or other service providers at any time.

http://pages.google.com/
http://pages.google.com/-/about.html#faq

I do not like Google sites as it does not looks like a website. So what happens to our websites created in Google Page Creator within Google Apps?

Addons may conflict with Google Services

2008-08-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

Some of the addons seems to be having a conflict with Google services. I came across following during last few weeks:

Skype addons was aborting the Google Start Page - "cannot connect with the server -- operation will be aborted."

We have found that some addons installed along with IE. like one of the addon called - "Skype (Mastermind)" is the culprit and is known to create issues with IE (see following link in skype forum): http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=113145

To avoid the issue disable this addon from you IE (Manage Addons option).

Google walks away with a large Microsoft Customer?

2008-08-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest word around:

There are rumors of high treason at the court of King Microsoft as the New South Wales Department of Education has turned to Google for its email needs. Said to be the biggest single customer around, with over 1.3 million users under its 'control' the department has ended its 5 year contract with Microsoft and signed a three year deal which will see it use Google's Gmail.

According to the agreement, before the end of the year Google will have set up email accounts for 1.3 million students and teaches and provide them with "a world-class package of services." Snatching the NSW Department of Education from Microsoft's was probably a tough job but represents a big win for the search and ad giant. Still, this victory didn't come cheap as Google is charging $9.5 million for its services while Microsoft got $30 million and for offering some 100 times less storage space per account.

Looks like Google is betting big on "Low Cost" to win new customers

How to Submit your site (created using Google sites) to Google Webmaster Tools?

2008-08-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

How do I verify my site created using Google Sites to Google Webmaster Tools?

You can verify your site via the meta tag verification in Google Webmaster tools. Follow the instructions (in webmaster tools) and paste the meta tag into the field labeled "Google Webmaster Tools verification" on Site settings -> Other stuff. Please note: your site must be marked as a public site in order for it to be verified.

How do I submit my site created using Google Sites to Google Webmaster Tools?

Once you have verified your site with Google Webmaster tools, Google Sites will auto-generate a sitemap xml file. Your sitemap will be generated at:

* http://sites.google.com/a/(your domain)/(site name)/system/feeds/sitemap for Google Apps.
* http://sites.google.com/site/(site name)/system/feeds/sitemap for sites under sites.google.com/site

Once these Sitemaps have been created, you can submit them to Google using Webmaster Tools.

Please note: your site must be marked as a public site in order for it to be verified.

New features in Google sites released

2008-08-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Google has released some new features that will give you some more control over your site as well as enabling you to take advantage of our Webmaster Tools. Here are key improvements"

(1) The first notable release is the ability to change the width of your sidebar and header, or turn them off entirely. You now have complete control over your site's width, including the width of the text boxes.

(2) The second part of this release I would like to point out is the integration with Webmaster Tools. With Google Webmaster tools, it is easier to see how Google indexes your content and if you enable the integration, you can also auto-generate a sitemap to submit to Google.

(3) Google has also made it easier to embed a doc and spreadsheet into Sites.When you want to embed one of your Google Docs documents, spreadsheets or presentations, you can now conveniently select it from a list rather than pasting the URL into the document.

(4) Google has also implemented the ability to "preview" as a vviewer, enabling the owner to see how the site will look before it's published.

New Search Engine Cuil launched

2008-07-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

Cuil (pronounced [kuːl], "cool") is a search engine that organizes web pages by content and displays relatively long entries along with thumbnail pictures for many results. It claims to have a larger index than any other search engine, with about 120 billion web pages. It went live on July 28, 2008.

Unlike other search engines Cuil's privacy policy states that it does not store records of users’ search activity or IP addresses.

Cuil is managed and developed largely by former employees of Google: Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM and others. The company raised $33 million from venture capital firms.

I tried searching few pages and liked few things

The concept of each entry with an image (seems to be better than dry Google results)
Auto complete while typing the search
Explore by category option

And the stuff that i did not like:

I am not happy with search results - while scrolling through results on cuil found same results repeating on each page.
No "cached" link?
No way of browsing similar pages
There is no advanced search / no help for advanced search - like if i want to search for PDF files only how to?

Try it: www.cuil.com

Official Gmail Blog: Making security easier

2008-07-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

Official Gmail Blog: Making security easier

Google has closed one of the big security risks associated with using its free hosted Gmail mail service. You can now select an option in your account preferences to make every session require an encrypted Web connection. Although this may make your Gmail slower as each time your mail connects to server and back it has encrypt and decrypt.

https for login

Gmail requires a secure connection for your login details, regardless of whether or not you start with the secure Gmail site address. However, when you start using the service, Google was taking you back to an unencrypted Web connection. The same was true when someone click on link form a different site. That was a big security risk as the messages would pass in the clear and unencrypted. This was making you vulnerable as someone could intercept your Google session token and have full access to your Gmail account. Although if you still type https in URL your connection was secure but user had to enter this ever time.

Google in its Gmail blog has released a new feature "a Browser Connection option at the bottom of its Settings > General view" that lets you select "Always use https," which is the protocol name for a URL that makes your browser start up a SSL/TLS encrypted connection with a Web server.

Another related feature: "Last account activity"
A related feature is "Last account activity" which provides you details of your las logins (access mode - browser or pop or mobile, ip address and time). So next time you are suspicious that someone is hacking your account check this. To see this option go to bottom of your mail page and click on Last account activity: .... Details

How to make Gmail open when I click on a "mailto" link?

2008-07-30T17:32:00.000-07:00

Here a question from one of users

"I no longer use Outlook and use only my gmail (Google Apps Mail). Is there an add-in or other means that I can open my gMail account when I want to send an eMail to someone on the web?

In other words, the web page says: "click here to send a message to ...xxx" and when I click Outlook opens. I can see that MS would try to force me to use Outlook, or Outlook Express, but how can I change that to my gMail account?"

Here is how to do this using Google Talk

Post your comments about this post.

Using Google Apps: Case Study

2008-07-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

Jason Slator writes about using Google Apps in his technology blog. Here are few excerpts from posting:

"To gain a level of integration we have to rely on the gadgets/widgets on the start page and, whilst usable, this is where this sort of technology shows its infancy as some widgets are better integrated than others and business widgets are mixed in and available together with the leisure and social widgets."

"We still have to explore Google Web Pages, Sites and Chat but at the moment I can’t see much value in migrating to Google Mail as Exchange Server and Outlook are working well and OWA is our current preferred solution for offsite email access"

"The applications have the benefit of feeling familiar, if a little cluttered at times, but a little more integration and intuitiveness in use would make the system more appealing - for example a plug-in for Office for loading and saving documents. In an ideal world a combination of Google Apps and Office Live Workspace would be an ideal answer. However, we have to remember this is an early example of a platform in development and Google describe the platform well as “a bridge between our business and Google products” and not necessarily a replacement (not yet anyway)."

Read full article

Google Apps Tips - Creating a Dashboard

2008-06-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

Creating a Dashboard

Whether you have a complex involving many members or simple project having handful of team members - a dashboard enhances the visibility and helps in tracking. In an addition to your project management tools small communication is the key to project success, particularly around sharing status and progress updates to keep everyone moving in sync through each milestone.

Since Google spreadsheets are shared on the web and have rich formatting capabilities, they're the perfect tool to help coordinate fast-paced, ad-hoc projects. Here is how to create your own - simple but powerful project dashboard:

* Start with creating a new Google spreadsheet and invite your project team to the document
* Create four columns: Milestone, Owner, Status, and Notes
* Meet with your team to collaboratively identify, record, and assign project milestones in the project dashboard
* As the project progresses, use fill to update the status cells with green, yellow, or red to indicate progress, and record any issues in the 'Notes' field

Add additional columns like due date, etc. based on your particular project's needs.

You can share your sheet with other team members to collarobate, with others within or outside organization to just view (need to publish). You can even add the same to your Google Sites Page.

How to Measure Site usage statistics for Google Sites

2008-05-31T03:49:00.000-07:00

Google Sites now provides a simple way to track site usage, by integrating with Google Analytics. This is available to Standard, Premier, Education and Team Editions using Language US English (New features are first released to US English)

Here is how to access this new feature:

Sign in to Google Sites
Open the site which you want to track
Click 'Site Settings'
Navigate to the settings page for 'Other stuff'
Check the box for 'Statistics' and paste your Google Analytics account ID in the box, and click 'Save changes'.

To get a Google Analytics account ID you'll need to sign in to your Google Analytics account with the site details.

Gmail adds support for 8 new languages

2008-05-31T03:40:00.000-07:00

Keeping up with its continuous development approach Google Apps mail has now added 8 new languages. This is available to Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

New Languages
Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu

Gmail now supports following languages

Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, UK English, US English, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

To access what's new - Sign in to Gmail, click 'Settings', and select the interface language you prefer.

For more information:
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/gmail.html

Google Apps Tip: Google Docs Color-coded comments

2008-05-28T00:44:00.000-07:00

When reviewing your co-workers online documents, you can insert color-coded comments to differentiate from the rest of the text.

How to insert color coded comments in a Google Document?

Place your cursor where you'd like your comment to appear, and click the 'Insert' tab along the top of the page. Select the 'Comment' icon from the displayed toolbar and let the ideas flow.

Using menu takes a lot of time. Is there are shortcut for inserting color-coded comments in a Google Document?

You can also use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-M, to insert a comment.

Google Apps Small Business Customer Success: Boshak

2008-05-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Boshak is a a unique tourist destination one and a half hours drive from Perth, Western Australia. Boshack has been featured on Getaway, and is a popular destination for travellers wanting to experience the Australian outback, see a working wheat/sheep farm, eat bush tucker, see native Australian wildlife and learn about the Aboriginal dreamtime.

Boshak has recently switched to Google Apps for their email, documents, calendering needs and are very happy with the experience. Following are excerpts from their experience published in http://om4.com.au a leading online marketing portal for business.

Link: http://om4.com.au/moving-email-google-apps/

Challenge

Multiple email ids - difficult to manage
Wanted to collrobate while working on mails, documents
Maintain corporate identity
Wanted an easy to use solution as users were not very conversant in using technology

Solution

Switched to Google Apps Standard Edition
Low cost to switch - Free Google Apps / Low cost service provider
Extensive user support by vendor to overcome any initial hiccups

Business benefits

Access from anywhere
Spam controlled
Consolidations - time saver
Collarobation on documents

"We moved to Google Docs about 6 months ago and this is also an amazing program as we run our business from 4 different locations with 3 different people needing to access emails and spreadsheets. We now have one log in each for all of this with our email included."

Deryck Brockhurst is the Managing Director of Boshak,

Easy to us

"The way to go for simplicity, accessibility and especially if you need to share docs emails"

Deryck Brockhurst is the Managing Director of Boshak,

Note: These excerpts are from http://om4.com.au/moving-email-google-apps/ and all rights are with om4.com.au

More features in Google Docs

2008-05-06T13:23:00.001-07:00

Looks like adding new features is a way of life at Google. Just seen a flashing message on one of help pages now again they have released some new features. It is really amazing the ease by which they are able to add new features. Just compare this to a PC based application like outlook - you will keep installing packs and not everyone will do. With Google apps everyone is upgraded and they (users) need not make a single click.

Here are new features:

Help menu in document toolbar
Help is really closer now. Google has added a Help menu just to the right of the document Tools menu. Check out especially the "Learn from other Google users" option, which takes you straight to the Google Docs Help Group.
Choosing the size for embedded presentations
Google has added an option to choose a size for your embedded presentations to the websites. While publishing you can select the size. Learn more.
Select multiple objects on a slide
Now you can select multiple items by holdding the shift key. You can now select multiple objects at once -- then move them around, resize them, copy and paste them and more. Learn more.

2008-05-06T07:00:00.001-07:00

Google has recently launched its first version of an Google.com for iPhone. Now they have launched some new features:

Customization of tabs: Now you can customize the tabs you want on Google.com. Go to the More tab and press "Custom tabs" to select your favorite three Google mobile products.
New and improved Gmail: Now you need not to refresh to get your email messages - the latest version of Gmail delivers messages to your inbox without the need for you to refresh it. Also, when writing an email, auto-complete of email address is now available.
New and improved Calendar: A calendar can be one of the most important things on a phone. Now Google Calendar is faster and also has a month view.
iGoogle for the iPhone: A new iPhone-optimized version of iGoogle that mobilizes all of the modules you know and love. Simply click on the iGoogle link from the Google.com home page or go to www.igoogle.com.

It's also pretty cool that the iPhone has an unlimited data plan so you never have to worry about cost when you're browsing the web. At present this is only available in U.S. To get to the latest Google on your iPhone, just go to Google.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch web browser.

Google Apps Hacks

2008-05-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we have introduced you to the book Google Apps Hacks! Here is summary again for those who missed and also at the end web address of a site offering download link.

Can Google applications really become an alternative to the venerable Microsoft Office suite? Conventional wisdom may say no, but practical wisdom says otherwise. Right now, 100,000 small businesses are currently running trials of Google office applications. So are large corporations such as General Electric and Proctor & Gamble. Google Apps Hacks gets you in on the action with several ingenious ways to push Google's web, mobile, and desktop apps to the limit.

The scores of clever hacks and workarounds in this book help you get more than the obvious out of a whole host of Google's web-based applications for word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint-style presentations, email, calendar, and more by giving you ways to exploit the suite's unique network functionality.

The following site gives link to a downloaded version:

http://knowfree.net/2008/05/04/google-apps-hacks.kf

Download Google's Help Files for Offline Access

2008-05-05T07:00:00.002-07:00

Most of the critics of Google Apps argue about the off line access. Google has recently added off line access to a variety of its services — Google Reader and some of Google Apps (e.g. docs) are available offline using Google Gears. Many ask - "But what about Help files?"

Google’s documentation is one of the best documentation available. Most of the company’s services have help centers with feature overviews, tutorials and problem solving guides. But of course you need to be online to access that wealth of information. You can now download the help files and read them offline. As it turns out it's pretty easy to grab Google's documentation and keep a local copy.

It is easy to append an extra word to the help center URLs and get a download of all the help files. It won’t work for every service, but if you append ?fulldump=1 to the address of a Google help center you should get a massive HTML file with all the info you need.

From there you can just convert the HTML to a PDF file and save it on your local disk for offline access. Check out following links for help file of each of Google service:

Gmail Help: http://mail.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Calendar Help: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/?fulldump=1

Google Docs Help: http://docs.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Spreadsheets: http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/?fulldump=1

Google Presentations: http://docs.google.com/support/presentations/?fulldump=1

Google Reader Help: http://www.google.com/support/reader/?fulldump=1

Google Video Help: http://video.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

YouTube Help: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/?fulldump=1

AdSense Help: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/?fulldump=1

Analytics Help: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics?fulldump=1

Google Desktop Help: http://desktop.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Picasa Help: http://picasa.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for IE: http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for Firefox: http://www.google.com/support/firefox/?fulldump=1

Clever ways to use Google Apps - New book Google Apps Hacks

2008-05-05T07:00:00.001-07:00

TITLE : Google Apps Hacks
AUTHOR : Philipp Lenssen
PUBLISHER : Make Books
ISBN : 059651588X
PUB DATE : 2008-04-16

The scores of clever hacks and workarounds in this book help you get more than the obvious out of a whole host of Google’s web-based applications for word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint-style presentations, email, calendar, and more by giving you ways to exploit the suite’s unique network functionality. You get plenty of ways to tinker with:

Google Documents — Share and edit documents with others in real time, view them on the run with Google Docs mobile service, and use Google Notebook for web research
Google Spreadsheets — Add real-time data to spreadsheets, and generate charts and tables you can embed in web pages
Google Presentations — View them on a mobile phone and save them as video
Gmail — Send email to and from a mobile phone, adjust Gmail’s layout with a style sheet, and a lot more
iGoogle — Create your own gadgets, program a screenscraper, add Flash games, and more
Google Calendar — Add web content events, public calendars, and your Outlook Calendar to this application
Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google SketchUp: the new 3D modeling software tool
Picasa, YouTube, and Google Video — discover new ways to customize and use these media management apps

In addition, Google Apps Hacks outlines ways you can create a simple web site with nothing but Google tools, including Page Creator, Blogger, Google Analytics, and content from other Google apps. This amazing collection just might convince you that Microsoft Office is not the last word in business applications. The price is certainly right.

How to Setup Google Apps on BlackBerry smartphones

2008-05-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Gmail – The fastest way to use Gmail on your BlackBerry is with the installable Gmail application. To download and install Gmail for free, visit m.google.com/a from your BlackBerry web browser. Then, launch the application with the blue "M" icon () from your BlackBerry home screen or from the applications folder. If you also have a personal @gmail.com account, there's a separate free application (with a red "M" icon) so you can be signed in to both accounts at the same time.

Google Talk – There's a handy Google Talk application that lets you see who's online and instant message with contacts from your BlackBerry. To download and install Google Talk for free, visit www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk from your BlackBerry web browser. Then, launch the application with the Google Talk icon () from your BlackBerry home screen or from the applications folder.

Google Calendar – You can sync information in Google Calendar with your BlackBerry calendar, so whether you add new appointments from your phone or from your computer, you always have access to your up-to-date schedule. To download and install Google Sync for free, visit m.google.com/sync from your BlackBerry web browser.

Google Docs – To access your documents and spreadsheets when you're not at a computer, you can sign in to Google Docs from your BlackBerry web browser. Just visit docs.google.com/a/your-domain.com, but remember to replace "your-domain.com" in this address with your actual domain name.

Add two-factor authentication to Google Apps for your Domain using open source software

2008-05-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sometime back while surfing net I came across this posting giving step by step instructions to Add two-factor authentication to Google Apps for your Domain using open source software. The two factor authentication is important as most of us travel these days and increasingly use public Wifi networks - exposing ourselves to middle of work attack.

Google has provided paid options for two factor authentication. To ead my earlier post on this topic - click here

Now you can use open source software Gheimdall and two-factor authentication from WiKID. The step by step instructions are provided at howtoforge website - click here to go to howtoforge

Google Mobile Updater

2008-05-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

Now you can keep your BlackBerry up to date with Google's ever increasing mobile product suite. It is very easy and simple! Just go to mobile.google.com in your BlackBerry browser, click "Download all" to get Google Mobile Updater and then select the products you want on the menu of your BlackBerry...

You can also get the applications stack (the bunch of applications - as Google wants to call it) through your PC by surfing to the mobile site:

http://www.google.com/mobile/updater/stp-js.html

now enter your phone number. An SMS text with download instructions will then be sent to your device.

Once you've downloaded the Mobile Updater, you will have the option to install all or some of Google's available mobile services. These include

Faster Web Search: In under a second, you can start entering your query without waiting to load the Google home page. This saves you valuable time when you are trying to find the address of a nearby restaurant or the latest price of your favorite stock. Some of the key BlackBerry applications from Google are:

Gmail
Google Sync, which lets you sync your Google Calendar with your BlackBerry
Google Reader, a mobile RSS reader
Google Docs, a Web-based documents application
Google Maps mapping application;
Google News

Icons for each service that you select will download to your BlackBerry home screen for easy access. Click the Update icon to check for new versions of your software at any time.

New features in Google Docs

2008-04-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Google is fast - shortly after the offline version of Google Docs (through Google Gears) they have continued with their fast development cycle and have launched some of the really good new features:

More sharing options in Docs list
Now you can both add and remove people's access and set advanced permissions from the Docs list (not implemented for spreadsheets). Check at Share tab in any document

Presentation speaker notes
You can now add speaker notes to your slides. These notes will be visible to you and your viewers in presentation mode or when you print your slides.

To include speaker notes, click the View Speaker Notes button at the bottom-right of a presentation while editing. This will bring the Speaker notes, where you can add and format notes for the current slide.

When in view presentation mode, you'll be able to view your notes by clicking the View speaker notes option at the top-right of your screen, directly above the chat module. Your collaborators and viewers will also be given the option to view your notes.

There are also options to print your speaker notes alongside your slides. Just click the File > Print menu item to access the print functionality, then click the checkbox to 'Include Speaker Notes' in your preferred layout.

You can export your notes to .ppt or .pdf as well; however, we don't support importing notes from .ppt at this time.

Insert videos into your presentations
In the Edit toolbar you'll see the new "Insert video" option which allows you to embed videos into your slides.

Save presentations as .ppt
Now you can save your presentations as PowerPoint files in addition to basic text and PDF.

Printing of documents
Choose File > Print to webpage to print your documents directly from the browser.
Print Settings - now a separate File menu option - only apply to regular printing (via PDF)

These are great features and will take Google Docs closer to MS Office (In fact some of the features are better than MS office)

Cloud Computing Developments at Microsoft

2008-04-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Learning from the trend now Microsoft is seriously considering offering its MS Office application online like Google Apps a Cloud Computing application. Industry sources point out that Microsoft conducting tests for technology which will enable Web hosting service providers to offer the Office suite via an emerging technology called application streaming. Such a development means that Microsoft, with the huge data centers, will also start to stream Office directly to its customers as well. Microsoft is already beta-testing a low-end Office bundle, code-named Albany, that it will offer on a subscription basis.

Microsoft's cloud computing concept Live Mesh platform - is whereby all of our data and applications are stored on the internet as opposed to on the PC. Live Mesh is essentially a web-based operating system, letting users connect all of their devices (home PC, laptop, work computer and, in the not too distant future, handhelds and games consoles) into their own personal mesh. Files and applications can be placed into a "Mesh folder", which lives on the internet and can be accessed by all devices. The Mesh is updated with any changes made to the files or folders the next time the users is connected to the web.

As the competition hots up in the SaaS space - customer is going to benefit. Some of the industry sources indicated that Microsoft may price the application at $5 per month. This may start a price war benefiting the customers in long run. As there is still time of about 1 year for Microsoft to fully come out of closed beta it is testing with 10000 users - Google may speed up some of the new feature roll outs of Google Apps.

Offline Access for Google Docs

2008-04-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

Now you can work on your documents off line when you do not have an internet connections. So you can work on your document while you are waiting at reception or traveling to California.

For offline access - Google Docs is using Google Gears, another open source technology (technically a browser extension) that enables web applications to run offline. So even when you aren't connected to the Internet, Google Docs will use information stored on your computer's hard drive rather than relying on information sent across the network. When you're offline, your edits are stored on your own computer and when you re-connect, your changes are going to be synchronized Google Docs' servers and made available to collaborators.

How to Enable Offline Google Docs

Here are instructions from Google: To install or enable Gears for Google Docs, click the Offline link in the upper-right corner of your Docs list. (If you do not see this link ask your administrator to enable new features)

Once clicked you will see the following dialogue box, here click the Get Google Gears now button.

During the process you will be asked to allow https://docs.google.com as a trusted site. Check the box next to 'I trust this site.

Allow it to use Google Gears.' Then, click Allow.

Once you've enabled Google Gears, you'll be able to edit your existing documents anywhere, even without an Internet connection. It will also create a shortcut at your desktop to access offline.

How to access offline?

To access Docs offline, just open a browser and enter the address http://docs.google.com or simply click the Google Docs desktop shortcut, which will look like this:

Cool! I am getting used to this and like this a lot.

Have Google Apps integrated to your mobile device and office PBX

2008-04-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Esna Technologies is now offering Unified communications for google Applications - Mobility, Presence, Messaging and Google applications all integrated to your mobile device and office phone system.

The Telephony Office-LinX UC gateway for GOOGLE ties the Gmail hosted services to the enterprise telephony infrastructure. Users can link their office desk phone and mobile phone into GOOGLE applications.

When a user receives an urgent email or voice mail, the UC gateway for GOOGLE will turn on their telephone message waiting light. Users can use any telephone to login to their GOOGLE applications with speech and access, manage and respond to all their email, voice mail and fax messages. Office workers leveraging thin clients can simply use a browser with any OS and login to Gmail™ to gain access to their voice messages, faxes and recorded conversations.

Here are some of the key features:

Full unified messaging with GOOGLE applications, Gmail and your office PBX. Light up message lights in the office, initiate call notification on email and fax messaging, and the ability to login to Gmail over the phone to access, manage, and compose messages.

Integrate GOOGLE applications with both legacy and IP-based phone systems such as Mitel, Iwatsu, Nortel, AASTRA, Cisco, Avaya, Toshiba, etc.

Ability to integrate multiple PBX with GOOGLE applications at the same time. Perfect for large distributed organizations with branch offices or large campus environments.

Integrates office call logs into a user Gmail™ folder so when users login to Gmail™ they can see who called them, time and date stamp and even duration of conversations.

The ability to automatically record office conversations and have them deposited in Gmail™ for full indexing, archiving.

Integrate click-to-dial from GOOGLE applications interface with the office PBX, and registered mobile devices. Users can highlight a number and call from anywhere within GOOGLE applications. This will initiate for both internal and external phone calls. Esnatech UC used intelligent least cost routing by leveraging the office PBX for all call creations.

Import GOOGLE contacts into UC server so users have remote access to contacts over the phone to initiate phone calls and message replies. This also leverages least cost routing rules of the office PBX.

Now any business regardless of size or budget can increase employee productivity and effectiveness while dramatically improving customer satisfaction by simply investing in a Telephony Office-LinX UC gateway and subscribing to GOOGLE applications! No need for a new phone system, no need for any changes to your office hardware.

For more information visit: http://www.esnatech.com/google/googleapps.htm

Salesforce(.com) for Google Apps

2008-04-19T05:27:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Google on April, 14th announced their global strategic alliance to make it easy for companies of all sizes to run their business in the cloud with Salesforce for Google Apps.

Salesforce for Google Apps is a simple, yet powerful combination of essential applications for business productivity (email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging) and CRM (sales, marketing, service and support, partners) that enables an entirely new way for business professionals to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web. Salesforce for Google Apps offers a complete way for businesses to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing hardware or software infrastructure. Salesforce for Google Apps includes:

Salesforce and Gmail™ – Businesses can now easily send, receive and store email communication, keeping a complete record of customer interactions for better sales execution and improved customer satisfaction.
Salesforce and Google Docs™ – Create, manage, and share online Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Presentations within your sales organization, marketing group, or support team for instant collaboration.
Salesforce and Google Talk™ – Instantly communicate with colleagues or customers from Salesforce and optionally attach Google Talk conversations to customer or prospect records stored in Salesforce.
Salesforce and Google Calendar™ – Expose sales tasks and marketing campaigns from Salesforce on Google Calendar. Built by Appirio, this application is one example of a new category of partner extensions to Salesforce for Google Apps.

All this at no extra cost to Salesforce.com customers!

Using Panorama Pivot Table for Google spreadsheets

2008-03-31T06:25:00.000-07:00

Panorama Pivot Table for Google Spreadsheets in Google Apps (a Gadget provided by Panorama) is an interactive table that automatically extracts, organizes, and summarizes your data.

You can use this report to analyze the data, make comparisons, detect patterns and relationships, and discover trends. In just a few steps any users can find answers such as the best selling region, and best selling product or analyze results of an academic research. Interact with the data and look at it in various ways in a simple drag and drop environment.

Check an online tutorial on how to use Panorama Pivot in your Google Apps Spreadsheet

http://www.panorama.com/google/pivot-table/tutorial/

Let us know how useful this feature is for you? Leave your comments

Newest Gmail features now available for Google Apps users

2008-03-31T04:41:00.000-07:00

Official Gmail Blog: Newest Gmail features now available for Google Apps users

The latest features are first launched in Gmail followed by in Google Apps mail. Some of latest Gmail features available now to the Google Apps users. Now you can:

(1) Chat in a group from within mail in Google Apps: To start a group chat, click "Group chat" from the "Options" menu when chatting. Enter the names of the people you want to add, and, bingo, you're in your very own chat room. All the familiar features such as chat archiving and taking the chat off the record still work as well.

(2) Improvements in contact Manager: I am not yet happy with the improvements - we need more in this contact manager.

(3) colored message labels: Really a cute feature and more user friendly, try using it more and your will love it.

(4) Keyboard shortcuts improved: Click on this link for latest shortcuts:

http://google.com/support/a/users/bin/answer.py?answer=6594

(5) Book mark email: All emails now have dedicated URLs, so just by adding a browser bookmark while viewing a message, you can return to it whenever you want, just like a regular web page--although you will still have to log in to Gmail if you've signed out.

New Features in Google Spreadsheets: Notifications & Gadgets

2008-03-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Notifications:

When working in collaboration with others now you can set notifications if others users who have access to same spreadsheet (of Google Apps), made any revisions. Cool! No need to look at document again and again – just set the notification.

To set notification just click on a new link enables by Google at the top bar called Set Notification Rules

Gadgets:

Now the power feature (of Google Apps spreadsheet) for doing stuff like - map your spreadsheet data? Pivot around it? Plot it on a fancy chart? Now you can create any visualization you want by choosing from Googles library of gadgets. At present some 20 Gadgets are available and Google has give API for developers to create more Gadgets - so in no time you will see loads og Gadgets there (like the ones available for Start Page).

Now how to insert a Gadget:

Select Insert > Gadget. The Add a Gadget window appears, where you can select gadgets from a number of categories, including charts, tables, and maps.

Click Add to your spreadsheet to insert a gadget. When you click a gadget in your spreadsheet, a gray border appears around the gadget, along with a Gadget drop-down menu. Click Gadget to open the menu and select Edit, Delete, Publish, or Add to iGoogle.

Note: If you have developed any new gadget for spreadsheet you can share will us.

Case Study - A mid size implementation of Google Apps

2008-03-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Was going though a case study published in Computerworld (http://computerworld.co.nz) detailing the experience of a company De Bertoli Wines of using Google Apps in a corporate setup. Here is my take away:

Company: De Bertoli Wines
Location: Australia
Size: 570 employees
Pilot Started: in mid of year 2007 with 10 users
Ramp up: in September 2007 when entire quality department started using apps to collaborate internally and with staff at offshore packaging plants
Present Status: Trial expanded to 130 core users

Positive

Pleased with Google Apps’s collaboration features and version control
Impressed with its integrated calendaring capabilities

Negative

Insufficient back-up on-site (off-site being Google's server)
Low level of support for Standard Edition (of course you need to pay to get support - may be they should have tried with some of the Google Partners)

Conclusion

Some great collaboration features here. However they need to understand enterprise market and start working towards that. Onsite backup is something where I think Google can start another offering or tie-up with someone?

FAQs when evaluating Google Apps for your enterprise - Part 2

2008-03-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

I keep getting many inquiries from prospective clients who are evaluating Google Apps to migrate from their existing mail systems. Here are some more common questions clients ask when evaluating Google Apps and my answers to them.

What about managed public folders that have an email address? We have a number of folders with email addresses like "info@" and "support@" that only specified staff can access. We also like to set up rules on those public folders so some emails are forwarded to staff.

There are email lists where in mail are forwarded to one or many users. No such option as Public folders.

For public folders there can be a workaround. Create separate ids for each public folders. Also create an email list adding users who have to access this public folder (again for each public folder). Then create a filter in email id and assign a tag (name of that public folder) and forward the mail to mailing list. This way mail will be delivered to all users with the tag of public folder. Alternatively the content of mail can be shared though Google docs.

Resource scheduling for rooms and equipment. How to do that?

Resource feature is available in Premier version.

However in Standard version you have a workaround to achieve same (Google may not like it). Each resource is created as a secondary calendar and scheduled in auto accept mode.

www.google.com/.../answer.py

What about delegated access. Can I "send as" as a specified email address (like "info@...")? Can I delegate control of my inbox to a secretary?

You can add multiple accounts in your id and use "send as". I am not sure of delegate feature available as yet - however it will not be a long time when this is implemented.

Can I get access easily to a ex-employee's inbox?

Passwords are set and reset by admin user and hence ex employee mail box can be accessed.

What about email restore? If somebody accidentally deletes old emails can I restore them? Can I restore an old employee's inbox from a year ago?

Google keeps the trash for three months only. So for standard version users that is the time available to recover (if you have not emptied your trash)

Postini - Policy Management and Recovery is an additional service with Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) which will help you in doing exactly same.

Calendar may be available offline very soon?

2008-03-15T05:08:00.000-07:00

According to a post by MG Siegler Google Apps is soon launching an off line version of calendar. To read his article click here.

Already launched the synchronization facility with MS Outlook recently - the off line feature may completely eliminate the need of an Outlook Calendar. Lets wait for this feature to be released and see what is in store there.

FAQs when evaluating Google Apps for your enterprise

2008-03-15T04:55:00.000-07:00

I keep getting many inquiries from prospective clients who are evaluating Google Apps to migrate from their existing mail systems. Here are some of the common questions clients ask when evaluating Google Apps and my answers to them.

1) EMAIL: Is there an email client or is it web mail only? If there is no client (or we can't use one) then how I will read / respond to email without being connected.
Google's email has POP and IMAP access and you can use it with following mail clients:

Mail Clients for POP

* Outlook Express
* Outlook 2002 / Outlook 2003
* Entourage
* Entourage
* Eudora
* Eudora for Macs
* Netscape Mail
* Apple Mail
* Mozilla
* Thunderbird

(http://www.google.com/support/a/careerfc.com/bin/answer.py?answer=12103&topic=10233)

Same way you can set IMAP mail clients for most used clients

2) CALENDAR: Can I view my co-workers' availability when scheduling a meeting (like using scheduling assistant)?

You can view coworker's calendar if they share it with you. They have option to share with other persons.

3) EMAIL: Are there rules and out of office assistant type features with Gmail?

You can set Vacation responder (sends an automated reply to incoming messages. If a contact sends you several messages, this automated reply is sent at most once every 4 days).

4) GOOGLE APPS DEPLOYMENT: How does using Gmail this affect permissions and setting up of new accounts? Do we lose integration with ActiveDirectory?

Google provides APIs (for Premier Edition) which can help you in doing this:

http://code.google.com/apis/apps/

5) DOCS / SITES: There are a lot of powerful collaboration tools available within Exchange that many companies don't take advantage of like Public folders, sharepoint integration etc. Similar features in Google Apps?

You can use following services of Google Apps for collaboration:

* Docs (Users can upload, create, edit and share documents online, They can share with one or more users.)
* Sites (Interactive and collaborative sites which can be used within your company or shared outside. User can create, edit and share with others and can even give others permissions to edit)

6) GOOGLE APPS DEPLOYMENT: How to factor in the support cost of getting everyone ramped up on a new mail system.

Enterprise need to do a thorough cost benefit analysis before plunging on something which affects almost every one in enterprise. Extensive planning, risk mitigation (may be for some time run on both Google and Your Mail server) and thorough execution are required. May be one can start with a pilot on a subset of users and if satisfied can go with complete migration.

7) CALENDAR: How will we do meeting room scheduling?

Each resource like Meeting Room, Projector etc is created as a secondary calendar with auto accept. While scheduling the resource calendar can be checked for availability and if available they are invited.

Add Extra security Layer: Getting over with security concerns

2008-03-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

Arcot a Google Enterprise Partner has launched its On-Demand Authentication Service which is now available to Google Apps Premier Edition customers (noth new and old). In a press release company has indicated that the new service provides an extra layer of access security that eliminates the risks of stolen passwords with on-demand / cloud / SaaS applications.

http://www.arcot.com/press/2008/03132008_a-ok_google.html

Arcot A-OK is immediately available to Google Apps™ Premier Edition (GAPE) customers for a nominal cost of one dollar per user per month. The price includes 24 x 7 email and telephone support. Customers can order Arcot A-OK On-Demand authentication service at:

www.arcot.com/google

Looks like they are trying hard to get over security concerns.

Can I show a public holidays calendar on top of my own Calendar?

2008-03-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

Yes you can do that. And the good news is not only one you can show multiple calendars at the same time. Cool! And you can assign your choice of color codes to each calendar. Wow! Here is how to do this:

Click on Settings (at the top right side of your calendar page) --> and select Calendar Tab. Here you will see of all your personal and selected public calendars.

In Other Calendars section click on Add Calendar button. Now you will see all the public calendars. Here you can search for the desired calendar and from the search results select the Calendar you need and Add Calendar

Once added you can view two Calendars simultaneously by selecting the desired calendars from left side navigation bar:

In the above image the public calendar is shown in Green and personal calendar in red color.

New Feature in Google Docs: Forms to fill spread sheets

2008-03-10T23:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, this is a POWER FEATURE. Now you can create a form and invite people to fill it out. The people you invite are not required to sign in, and they can respond directly from your email message or from an automatically generated web page. And the answers will be automatically added to your spreadsheet. Cool!

Here is how you can do this:

On Your spreadsheet click on share tab
Now you see a new option in Invite people
Start editing your form (the UI is very intuitive)
It is simple and with all the features of a simple form

So now if you need to take feedback from multiple people and collate it in a spreadsheet - this is the best way to do. If you are looking for a small survey / feedback in your organization - well this is the way to go. I have even created a form and inserted into my web page for client inquiries.

Now, I am looking for all of you to suggest new ways to use forms. In my next post about forms I will share your contribution with all.

Google Docs now in 40 languages

2008-03-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Google has just added two right-to-left languages, Arabic and Hebrew, in all features of Google Docs except for spreadsheets. And that brings our grand total languages supported by Google Docs to 40. Wow!

And changing your language is as easy as few click. Just click on settings link at top right of your Google Docs view, and you have following page open. Just select the right options and here you go. bingo!

Google Apps V/s Microsoft Office Live - a quick comparison

2008-03-08T04:26:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has launched Office Live (http://www.officelive.com) applications like Google Apps based on SaaS (Software as a Service) model. I was just comparing the Office Live with Googles Apps and here are some important points:

Links
Office Live: http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/
Googles Apps: http://www.google.com/a

we have done a quick comparison of free editions for small business

Item	Office Live	Google Apps
Link	http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/	http://www.google.com/a
Edition	Free (Small Business)	Free (Standard)
Services offered
Mail	Yes	Yes (Gmail)
Chat	No (?)	Yes (Talk)
Calendar	Yes	Yes
Documents	Yes (Document Manager)	Yes (Docs)
Web Site	Yes	Yes
Collaborative Workspace	Yes (Workspaces)	Yes (Sites)
Contacts Manager	Yes	No
Project Manager	Yes	No
Domain	Free for first year and after that US$ 14.95 (high in longer term) every year	Can purchase domain from partner for US$ 10
No of free emails	Maximum 100	Maximum 1000
Mailbox	??	6GB
Documents	Can store and access online but editing required MS Office (Not an online application just a storage and viewer) so effectively is is not free	Create, Edit, Access and store online (all)
Collaborative Workspace	More stress on editing & sharing documents in collaboration online	More stress on wikis (Document sharing, collaborative editing is available in Google Docs)

Microsoft is facing the heat and is forced to launch this. Well I hope Google will keep up with the competition.

Now you can do Google Calendar Sync with your Outlook

2008-03-08T04:10:00.000-08:00

Google has just launched a new feature to sync your Google Calendar with outlook. The feature called Google Calendar Sync allows you to sync (yes it is short for Synchronize) calendar events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. What more you can even set

the direction of information flow
frequency of synchronization

However there are few limitations (Oh No!) Well, at present the sync is only available between primary Google Calendar and your default Microsoft Outlook calendar. So if you have multiple Calendars - wait is longer.

To start using this you will have to download a small utility from Google site:

http://dl.google.com/googlecalendarsync/GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe

Once downloaded click on the exe file and agree to (whatever - no one reads that) terms. Complete the installation. On completion you will have a window open which will ask you for:

Your Google Apps Mail id
Password
Sync Option
Time (Sync every ___ Mins) / Minimum 10 mis is required

To see complete instructions visit

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955

Common Questions: Delegate Emails to Assistant

2008-03-06T04:43:00.000-08:00

Can my assistant, also registered as a Google Apps user send emails on my behalf?

Yes, you can, here is how:

And all you need to do is to add another email address in Settings --> Accounts

You may need to verify this setup (an obvious security feature) and once verified, you are done.

Now when your assistant is sending mails on your behalf she just needs to select appropriate sender while composing mail. And more so she can add multiple email address to her account - so if she is assistant to many managers - she can manage.

This feature is also useful if you have setup multiple email accounts like contact@yourcompany.com OR careers@yourcompany.com - you need not login to all of them to respond to mails. Just add them to most frequently used if and wow - you are on run.

Common questions: Calendar

2008-03-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

I want my assistant to be able to keep the calendar updated for me.

You can share the calendar with her to make changes. You can share one or more calendars with specific users and specify the permissions for each one of them.

To share calendar click on settings, then click on calendars tab and edit the sharing for calendar you want to edit.

Google Talk "Chat Back"

2008-03-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

Recently unveiled feature of Google Talk - "Chatback" is here. So if whether you have a online profile, blog or a , now you can give visitors a feature of "Chat with Me" even if they are not Google Users.

Unlike guest book which are a common features on websites 'chatback' will be a powerful interactive real time messaging tool. I have just integrated it to this blog - see yourself in action and chat with me if I am online.

Personal websites - Chat with me, Corporate websites - Chat with a sales adviser now, OR chat with our tech support guy now. Well these will be some of the common uses of this feature.