Google Docs Gets Lots of Updates Google Docs added lots of new stuff, including saved searches, offline Google Gears access for spreadsheets and presentations, custom document stylesheets (using CSS), speaker notes in presentations, and embedded YouTube videos in presentations.
Move Your Life To Gmail With Gmail Uploader Google released last month the Gmail Uploader, a free application that moves your email and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (on Windows XP and Vista only) to a Google Apps Gmail account. Considering the huge number of limitations (only three email programs, two operating systems, and one very specific and less popular edition of Gmail), you may never get the chance to use it, which is a shame, because most new Gmail users would love the easy migration method.
Google Charts Now Does QR Codes
Google has been trying out QR Codes (a type of 2D bar codes) in its print ads, and now they’re making it easier to generate them on the web. Before, you’d have to use a web app or software to create a QR Code, then save the image to use on your website, but now the Google Chart API can be queried to get them automatically. Right now, all you get are website URLs, though hopefully Google will extend the API to handle more complex data.
Here’s an API-generated image for this site, using the URL http://chartserver.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://google.blognewschannel.com/:
Blogger Adds Future Posts
Google’s Blogger has added the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future by specifying a date yet to come for your post. This feature was tested in Blogger In Draft, and is yet another feature to make its way into the ever improving Blogger.
Google Invests In New Clearwire Google entered into an agreement with Sprint and others (Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners), investing half a billion dollars in a new formation of wireless ISP Clearwire. The new company will be 51% Sprint-owned, taking Sprint’s Xohm WiMax business. Google’s a wireless provider of sorts, now, and will help get open devices, including Android devices, on the network, and provide search and applications for the network.
Google Me - A Documentary About Search
This documentary features a guy searching for others with this same name as him. A concept we’ve heard before, though it seems to have resulted in an interest project.
Google’s Head of PR Goes to Facebook
Elliot Schrage leaves for Facebook, costing Google its vice president of global communications and public affairs. Of course, Google’s corporate PR policies haven’t been that smart the last few years, so maybe this isn’t great news for Facebook.
Google Maps Interface Slimmed Down
Google has finally trimmed some of the cruft building on Google Maps, combining and simplifying an interface that was getting too complicated and cluttered.
Blogger Gets Integrated Analytics
Google has integrated Google Analytics into Blogger for Blogger users that are interested, giving access to stats inside the Blogger Dashboard along with special stats tracking relevant to blogs. They’re also letting Measure Map users roll over their accounts into Google Analytics now.
Add Images To Gmail’s Interface Xoopit is a Firefox plugin that adds dynamic image preview to Gmail. You see a strip of images above your email, and there’s some sort of social networking theory at work.
H-1B Visa Situation the Usual Giant Disaster
Read at Techdirt about the H-1B (foreign guest worker) visas, which are once again running into problems due to the government not providing enough visas for American tech companies to bring skilled workers to this country. As usual, the visas for the entire year ran out in a single day, and the Department of Homeland Security is doing what it can to keep those jobs in the U.S. by allowing certain industry grads to stay in the country longer on their student visas.
Google Earth Adds Street View Google Earth now has Street View built into it, in order to see street level photos of buildings and pedestrians. Not only that, but you can blow the Street View full screen, in order to gawk at total strangers having their privacy invaded in the utmost fidelity.
Google Most Valuable Brand Again Google has been named the most valuable brand by market research firm Millward Brown Optimor, value at $86 billion and beating out GE and Microsoft ($71 billion apiece). Google’s brand value grew 30% over the last year, though Google has now won three years running.
Earth Day Search Logos
Search Engine Land has a bunch of logos that ran on Earth Day, including this one from Google:
Google Stock Earnings Benefit From Failing Dollar
Google’s earnings report, released last week, showed it beat Wall Street’s expectations by $101 million, sending the stock way up. However, Valleywag explains that, due to the sinking dollar, Google’s earnings were $202 million higher than they would have been if the dollar were stronger, meaning the surprise extra growth didn’t exist almost at all.
Google News Shows Quotes Google News has a new feature that lets you search for people who are quoted in news articles. Just throw a name into Google News and you’ll see a quote from them at the top. Click their name, and you’ll see a page full of quotes in various news stories they’re in.
Google-Monopoly (The Game)
Box HQ has put together a version of the popular Monopoly board game that replaces everything in the game with Google-related items. For example, the properties are all web companies (Microsoft and Yahoo replace Boardwalk and Park Place) and jail is the Deadpool. You can just print out the PDF and get started, or go all out and modify a Monopoly game board to turn it into Google-opoly. One problem: there aren’t enough I’m Feeling Lucky and Google.org cards.
Google Finds New CIO Google has named a new Chief Information Officer, with Benjamin Fried from Morgan Stanley’s Application Infrastructure group taking over next month. Fried worked on Google’s IPO four years ago, giving him some experience with the company. Fried takes over for Douglas Merrill, who left for EMI earlier this month.
If you haven’t used Google Website Optimizer yet, perhaps the benefits of A/B Split & Multivariable Testing and Intuitive Reports will woo you. The goals, of course, are to increase sales, improve landing pages, get more leads, determine cost per acquisition (CPA), increase time spent on site, estimate guesswork from your site design, and more.
Lots of Google Doodles
Zorgloob’s got lots of Google Doodles you may not have noticed over the weeks.
AdWords API Price Dropped Google has droppped the prices on using the AdWords API. Search Engine Roundtable has the chart of revised prices, with the cost per API unit dropping as much as 70% on some services.
AdSense Ad Review Center Available To All Google has released its Ad Review Center for Google AdSense to all publishers. The Ad Review center allows AdSense publishers to control site targeted advertising on their website, including banning and approving targeted ads.
Download YouTube Videos As MP4 Ionut shares the URL parameter that will let you download videos from YouTube as MP4 files, perfect for loading onto a portable media player. Just use a URL like this one, except change the letters “ID” with the video ID code:
A Funny Google Interview Story Read this story about one guy’s experience interviewing for a job at Google. I guarantee you won’t see where it’s going.
(via Digg)
Arrest Caught On Google Maps Street View
One unfortunate fella was being arrested by authorities, and what happened to pass by? The Google Maps Street View van, that’s who! As a result, he wound up with that moment in his life, one he’d probably like to regret, recorded into Google Maps and now pictured on a number of blogs. Whoops.
Google Presentations has finally added a feature that most thought should have been there at launch: You can now save your presentations as PowerPoint files*. Previously, Google’s slideshows were trapped inside Google software, only able to be saved as a mostly useless PDF, but now you can take them and continue editing them in PowerPoint, or in any software compatible with PowerPoint’s PPT files.
* - of course, this being Google, they only let you save as .PPT files, not the newer Office 2007 .PPTX files
Google Letting Apps Run On Their Cloud Google has announced a new service, Google App Engine, which lets web developers build their internet applications on top of Google’s technology. Developers will be able to use the Google File System and the Bigtable distributed data storage system in their applications, resulting in a strong backbone to compete with Amazon’s S3 service.
It’s free during the preview period, but the number of accepted applications and available resources are limited in the beginning. Let’s hope Google doesn’t leave it in a beta limbo for four years and make things impossible for some budding Web 2.0 companies.
Ex-Googler Bret Taylor has a very interesting article about opening up data sources so application developers can better take advantage of them, and so they can be free for innovation. Google could make App Engine a no-brainer for app developers if it has access to data source normal Web 2.0 companies normally go through hell to get access to.
Google Selling DoubleClick Performics Google has made a very popular decision, announcing it will be selling off the SEO business of Performics, a business of DoubleClick it received in the recently completed acquisition. Performics handled SEO and affiliate management for its clients, and a search engine doing SEO would have created a giant conflict of interest. The reaction has been almost nothing but positive, as many are glad to see Google eliminated this before it becomes a problem. However, Performics affiliate business will remain at Google, possibly creating a new area of the market for Google to dominate.
Googlers Leave For Facebook (and other places)
Some Googlers are jumping ship, heading for seemingly greener pastures (with stock options that aren’t already underwater), like Facebook. About 40 Facebookers, or 10% of Facebook’s entire workforce, used to be Googlers, showing that a definite shift is underway. Google’s director of social media, Ethan Beard left the company become Facebook’s new director of Business Development. Facebook’s new chief chef is Josef Desimone, formerly one of Google’s makers of free food, but Valleywag’s hearing that he won’t be missed.
A much bigger move than a chef changing jobs is that of Douglass Merrill, Google Chief Information Officer. He’s leaving for music giant EMI, becoming their new president. Now, leaving from a major exec position at a top Silicon Vallley company to become president of a big music company is almost certainly a step up, but given the music industry’s woes, you’d think Google could have had more to offer him than a top company in a failing industry could.
New Version of Google Talk in Testing
Google has finally remembered it has an IM client, releasing a Labs test of a new version of Google Talk. The first version of Google Talk was released over 2 and a half years ago, but Google has barely updated it at all in the meantime. The new version, dissapointingly, drops the calling feature, implying that Google has abandoned the original intent of the “Talk” name, but it does add tabbed browsing. I still use Talk every day, but I have no faith at this point in Google actually maintaining the software like it should.
Google Finance Adds Stock Screener
Google Finance now has something called a stock screener, essentially a type of sort/search site for the stock market, letting you narrow down through criteria to find stocks with specific attributes. For example, you can specify stocks within a range of market caps, dividend sizes, 52-week gains or losses, and others, and combine the criteria to discover the perfect stock. This being Google Finance, it’s all accomplished with fancy AJAX sliders.
I used it to discover that there is only one company on the market bigger than Google that also does not pay off a dividend: Berkshire Hathaway. Good company to be in, but Google hasn’t been as good at the market as Buffet in many months.
Entire Internet Goes Crazy Over April Fools
As usual, April Fools day was the internet’s Christmas, with many major and minor websites getting in the holiday spirit, most with unfunny fake news stories. A few were interest or stood out:
YouTube turned all the Featured Videos on its front page into links to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. The video, already the center of the Rickrolling meme, is now the unofficial anthem of April Fools day, with multiple pranks involving it somehow. The video pulled 6 million views in just one day.
Phillip listed a ton of others from Google, including a retread “We’re going to space” joke from Google (this time with Richard Branson and Mars and YouTube videos, but even less funny than when they did it in 2006), scratch-and-sniff Google Book Search, Google Talk auto converting everything you say into acronyms, a paper airplane template in Google Docs, custom email time in Gmail, Google Calendar’s Wake Up Kit (which pours a bucket of water on you if you ignore the alarm) and I’m Feeling Lucky button (random blind dates), Orkut renamed Yogurt, and more.
Blogger launched “Google Weblogs”, essentially a look at what a blog service by Google would have looked like in 2002, before Google discovered UI design
Andy talked about a Google USB Search Watch. Yes, a watch, as in what you wear on your wrist.
Google Docs Finally Gets Gears Offline Access
Google Docs, the most obvious candidate for offline access, has finally been enabled to work with Google Gears. You can now access and edit your text documents (but not spreadsheets or presentations, yet) without an internet connection, provided you’ve installed the Google Gears plugin. Wonderful news, and hopefully the start of a wave of Google products taking advantage of Google’s offline platform.
Here’s a video about it:
Google Spreadsheets Adds Gadgets Google Spreadsheets has added a directory of Google Gadgets you can use to extend its functionality. It includes charts, new table functionality, pivot tables, maps, search results, organization charts, and many other features Spreadsheets lacks. It also now has email notifications, autocomplete and a new visualization API. Unlike Docs, Spreadsheets is one area where the majority of users won’t be satisfied with an underpowered Microsoft Word, and any way Google can get advanced features in there, the better.
Google’s Search Lead Continues To Grow comScore saw Google share of the search market grow in February (surprising no one), reaching 59%. Yahoo fell to 21.6%, Microsoft slipped slightly to 9.6%, and Ask added .1% to reach 4.6%.
Viacom Will Not Get Punitive Damages Vs. YouTube A judge ruled that if Viacom prevails in its lawsuit against Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted videos, it would not be entitled to punitive damages. Instead, Viacom will have to prove actual damages, with each successfully proven “willfull” violation costing Google up to $300,000, and other costing as little as $750. Gonna have a hard time getting $1 billion out of Google that way.
Ionut notes that Google is already running April Fools “jokes” around the world. In Japan, there’s something about a joke regarding words that are similarly pronounced. In China, the company blog says they’re launching a human-powered search engine (watch out, Mahalo). In Australia, they’re letting you search the future. And in the United States, they’re possibly firing hundreds of hard-working advertising people — wait, that’s not funny!
But seriously, on the one hand, I’m hoping Google’s April Fools joke is good, on the other I’d rather see all those DoubleClickers keep their job. The “other hand” is weighing a lot more on my conscience than the humor hand, but I suspect that among those writing the pink slips, Google “hilarious” joke will be the only thing they really care about tomorrow.
Google Earth Getting Street View? Webware reports that they’re hearing Google will add Street View, its popular novelty feature in Google Maps that lets you see street-level photographs of businesses, making it available in the Google Earth desktop software. Their source is very non-specific, but the rumor does sound very believable, since there’s no good reason for Google Earth users to lag behind Maps users for this long. Webware says the addition could come in the next few weeks.
Barack Obama Rendered in Google SketchUp
Someone used SketchUp, Google’s 3D modeling software, to create this model of Barack Obama’s head. The whole thing is 400 polygons of rendered facial features, and I gotta say, it creeps me out. At least Obama’s a decent looking guy; I can’t imagine how creepy a 3D rendering of Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton (with giant eyes!) would look.
Sync Google Talk With Twitter Timothy Broder wrote a script that takes your latest Twitter message and makes it your Google Talk/Gmail Chat status message. It’s a simple thing, perfectly useful and good, just like a baby angel.
Crack Deal in Google Maps?
Is this really what this Digger thinks it is? Well, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to conduct a business transaction through your car window with a guy standing in the street. I think.
Does Google Chief’s $1 Salary Mean Anything?
For another year, Google’s head honchos will be taking a $1 salary, supposedly putting the interests of the business ahead of money. It’s a simple token gesture, offset by the fact that the guys taking the pledge, founders Page and Brin and CEO Schmidt, are billionaires, though it, in theory, would make them more focused on the health of the stock price. All three lost billions of dollars in the last few months as the once high flying stock tanked, though you won’t see them sweating it.
The salary/publicity stunt has been criticized as meaningless, and Valleywag has pointed out it means the super-rich taking the salary are contributing six cents to help Social Security and one penny for Medicare, meaning that none of their mega-riches are going to help those served by important government programs.
Google To Layoff DoubleClickers Tuesday Valleywag reports that Google intends to hold its first round of layoffs of DoubleClick employees, trimming headcount at its acquisition to get the most value out of the buy. The layoffs should start this Tuesday, the first day of the second financial quarter of the year.
Of course, that day is also April 1, the day Google usually publishes a funny prank to amuse web surfers. If Google tries to be funny while firing hundreds, if not thousands of good people, laying them off in the middle of a recession when the job market isn’t going anywhere, I don’t think I’ll be laughing a whole lot.
Barry Diller Wins IAC Trial
In the case for control of IAC and the right to decide the company’s future, Barry Diller has defeated John Malone and won the right to break up the company into five seperate firms. Considering the hard work Diller has put into screwing up Ask.com the last few months, his victory is everyone else’s loss.
Google Israel Goes Black for Earth Hour
Google’s website in Israel turned its background black Thursday, marking off Earth Hour, some sort of awareness campaign where people turn off their lights for an hour to save the planet. While the message was nice, it was still strange to see Google ignoring its own research that clearly showed a black Google wastes more energy than a lit Google.
YouTube Showing Advanced Video Stats YouTube has launched a new feature, called Insight, which shows you more advanced stats for your own uploaded videos. It features a Google Finance-type graph that shows viewing over time, so you can see which days viewing spiked, that sort of thing. Click About This Video on your videos page, or add “http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_insight?v=” before any video ID (it won’t work if it isn’t your video).
Video Ads Make it Into Google Search Google has started showing video ads in its search results, adding a “watch commercial” or “watch demonstration” or “watch testimonial” link beneath AdWords ads. Click the link, and a video expands and plays right there in the sidebar. The video is tiny (160×140) and is about 30 seconds long, and the advertiser pays if the user watches the video, not if they click the link to go to the ad’s landing page. I saw one of the ads in action, and if they don’t cost too much more than regular ads, they seem like a good deal.
Google Documents Revamps Interface
Google Docs’ word processor application has changed its interface, adding drop-down menus and getting rid of the old tabbed toolbar interface. The old interface was a poorly implemented middle ground between the old interface paradigm common in document apps like the older versions of Microsoft Office, and the new Ribbon used in Office 2007, and Google finally wised up and junked the confusing system.
The new interface is pretty familiar to anyone who has been using Microsoft Word since the Windows 3.1 days, with drop down menus and a simple toolbar. The new menus do include a list of the keyboard shortcuts, making it easier to use those timesavers, but the changes don’t bring anything new to the table. Guess this is one area where Microsoft can claim to be bolder and more innovative.
Blogoscoped also found this, an Easter Egg (or possible prep for April Fools Day), making fun of the old Microsoft Office feature, Clippy. It’s funny, but Clippy is a remnant of Office’s past, and Docs is looking more and more like Office used to, so maybe the joke’s on Google.
Google Japan Parametron Doodle Google ran this Doodle logo in Japan last week, honoring the anniversary of some Japanese computer:
YouTube Releases API for Customizing Player YouTube released an API for customizing its embeddable player, letting you change the look of it to match the look of your website. You can write completely customizable video player, changing any element and putting together anything your mind/code can come up with.
How To Always Get Higher Quality Videos From YouTube
Now that YouTube is offering videos in different qualities and choosing for you automatically the best one for your connection, you may feel like you are missing out and not getting the best version every time. Turns out there’s a new preference option under Account > Video Playback Quality that lets you tell YouTube to always play higher quality videos, never do it, or keep deciding what’s best for you. Use this new power with great care, young one.
Google Sky Makes It Into Google Maps
Google Sky, a pretty cool but almost forgotten feature in Google Earth, where users could see the constellations and multiple star layers in Earth, is now available in your web browser. Just head to sky.google.com and you’ll get a tricked out version of Google Maps with much of the features of Sky in Google Earth, though I just can’t figure out if the cool time slider is there. While this pales in comparison to Microsoft’s in-development WorldWide Telescope project, it’s light and easy and available now, so check it out.
Google Book Search Gets API Google has released an API for Google Book Search, letting application developers query Book Search and return if a book is available in Book Search and if it has a scanned copy. Using this, some interesting mashups can be created, like a site that shows you if a book is available in your library, available to read online at Google, or showing you how to purchase it at Amazon.
MapQuest Offers Unlimited API
While MapQuest, purely on name and longevity alone, is still in some areas the number one mapping site on the net, it is certainly losing the battle among power users and critics to newer services like Google Maps and the like. One way MapQuest could distinguish itself and show off the abilities of recent upgrades would be to get mashup developers to start using its API, and a recent announcement may help. MapQuest is now letting API developers have unlimited free use of the API.
While Google and its ilk limit use of their API to certain number of views or users per day, MapQuest’s API is both without limits and without costs, making it in some ways the only option now available for super-popular mashups. MapQuest’s API comes with many popular or unique features, including aerial/hybrid views, smooth zoom transitions, a Google Earth-like Globe View, speed and friction settings (possibly perfect for iPhone flicking), and advanced shape overlays. If, in order to avoid API key errors, enough mashups make the switch, users could start noticing that MapQuest is getting a lot better these days.
Google announced last week Google Gears for Mobile (or specifically, Windows Mobile), bringing its promise to offline phone applications, even as the promises of Gears for computers has still not been realized. You can check out Gears Mobile here or watch this video:
Web-based office suite Zoho and personal finance site Buxfer are the first to use Gears Mobile (yes, not even Google’s products support this yet). Considering the lack of progress getting web apps to use Google Gears, especially the dissapointing support for Google’s own products, it’s amazing there’s already a mobile version before there’s, say, a Gmail version. It’s nice that, for once, Google is supporting Windows Mobile first, but considering the myriad of phone platforms not supported, and the many online apps not supported, it’s little more than “nice”.
Anyone want to bet that Gears for Windows Mobile is mostly just a developer platform in order to have Gears-supporting apps ready to run on Android, whenever Android happens?
Google has finally made its first release based on Jotspot, which it acquired back in 1985 (or 17 months ago, or something). Google Sites is Google’s new simple webpage creation tool, capable of making pages with a single click based on a variety of templates, but it isn’t the latest part of the open-to-all Google Docs. Google Sites is instead a part of Google Apps, which means you need to sign up as part of a workplace, school, or other institution.
Users can upload up to 10 megabytes of files (paid users get up to half a gig) and pages can be edited by collaborators. It integrates with other Google Apps and Google products, letting you embed anything from Docs, Picasa Web Albums, videos, and Google Calendars. Check out some sample sites here, or watch this video:
Some people are mad that Google Sites “nofollow”s all outgoing links. After all, if they’re supposed to be your web pages, shouldn’t they “count” on the web? By doing this, Google says it doesn’t trust its ability to keep crap spam users from signing up for Google Apps, which is something it should be able to do.
Google fixed some of the UI in Google Docs word processor application, replacing the all blue bar of tiny icons with a larger toolbar with more traditional and easier to read buttons. The interface is cleaner than before, cleaning up some of the cruft that had developed on the tab area as Google added new features and tried to cram them in.
One curious decision: Google removed the Cut, Copy and Paste buttons from the toolbar. As a power user, I approve this decision, since I never use those buttons and users have got to learn how to use the CTRL shortcuts. However, everything we know about user interfaces says that users still use those buttons even if we don’t want them to. In Microsoft Word 2003, Paste is the number one used command on the toolbar, and Copy is #3.
I like the idea of killing those buttons, but how about a smart interface that removes it after the first time the user invokes CTRL+C/X/V? Without a Paste button, Docs is no longer safe for grandma to use, not that there were a whole lot of less experienced users taking advantage of Google Docs in the first place.
Apparently, Firefox (and in some cases IE7 in Windows Vista) wouldn’t allow Docs access to the clipboard, thus making the buttons useless and forcing Google to issue a popup explaining the error and instructing the user to use keyboard shortcuts. However, how many users who needed those toolbar buttons are using Firefox? Google needs to pay attention to all potential users, not just those familiar with keyboard shortcuts.
You can now add a Google Talk badge to your blog/website, letting your visitors chat with you at any time right in the website. As long as you are signed into your Google Talk account, even if visitors do not have an account of their own, they can just start chatting with you, with multiple conversations coming in tabs. Visit the Google Talk Chatback page to get the HTML and get started.
(via Amit)
Microsoft’s got something planned for release in this area in the next few days, too. They don’t seem happy with Google’s announcement, from what I’m hearing.
Gmail Chat, Google’s instant messaging application inside of Gmail, has added the ability to show your status as Invisible. This way, you can be signed in, see who’s online, and send instant messages, but no one can see you’re online (and interrupt you while you’re trying to get some work done.
As Ionut points out, since Google Talk has been abandoned and ignored, if you use it and Gmail Chat, you lose this feature, since it won’t work in GTalk. How much longer before Google Talk gets an update or an end-of-life announcement?
iGoogle has added a preferences page, letting you change your language, location, page layout, page theme, and click to share any Gadget on any tab of your iGoogle home page. The preferences don’t have anything that you can’t do from the page itself, though they do make things easier for users who may have trouble figuring out how to edit the page.
One obvious ommission from the preferences is the ability to remove a Gadget from iGoogle. Considering that it lists every single “installed” Gadget alongside a Share link, adding a Remove link should have been obvious. I’ve had tha experience of poorly written Gadgets breaking my iGoogle page and leaving it inaccessible, and an easily bookmarkable preferences page with the ability to fix my problems could have saved me months of frustration.
(hat-tip: Atul)
Google Dics Spreadsheets has a new feature, which lets you create a form that allows anyone to enter data into your spreadsheet. The idea is that users can create a spreadsheet, create a form for it, and send the form to anyone with an email address. They can enter data in the form right from their email, without requiring the person responding to log in or have a Google Account.
The forms are really easy to create. In fact, a form can be created without a spreadsheet, and a spreadsheet will be automatically created for entry of the form data. Also, a Google Gadget has been released that tracks responses to your form, though there is not yet a way to embed the form in a web page. Possibly, Google only wants the forms to be sent to specific people, not posted on blogs and other pages all over the web.
As Duncan Riley points out, though Google Docs doesn’t have a database program, a huge portion of database users only use the database software as a fancy spreadsheet, and this new feature means Google Docs can now replace Microsoft Access for that group. It isn’t perfect, but nothing in Google Docs is, and once again Google manages to corner the market on “good enough” for the average simple user.
Google released this video touting Google Apps Team Edition, its new branding for Google Apps as a collaborative work product. The idea with Team Edition is that you sign up with your work or school email address, instead of the IT admin having to set it up, and then you invite co-workers or classmates to collaborate.
Message Filtering - checks incoming email, filtering it for security, anti-virus, anti-spam and messaging threat protection. Protects against Directory Harvest Attacks and Denial Of Service attacks, with signature-based real-time virus, phishing and spyware detection & blocking. Cost: $3 per user per year.
Message Security - provides everything in the Filtering package, plus outbound email processing for viruses and policy controlled content, and email encryption. Also manages file attachment permissions (like limits on file sizes, blocking), content-based rules, compliance lexicons (like blocking social security and credit card numbers) and regular expression matching (data pattern matching rules). Cost: $12 per user per year.
Message Discovery - provides everything in the Filtering and Security packages, plus one year of message retention, auto-purge, and extendable retention; archive searching, exporting, discovery flag, storage and audit reports. Also, individuals get access to their personal archives with intuitive search features, and message consolidation is available for data from multiple sources. Cost: $25 per user per year.
Sounds good, and the prices seem reasonable, though I don’t know how it compares to other companies and their prices. The Discovery package has some important features, but few additions over the Security package, and feels like it should be five bucks cheaper. Non-profit and educational institutions get a 66% discount, so schools and charities can get it for pretty cheap.
Companies and organizations that use the free Standard Edition of Google Apps can pay to add these services in order to protect their communications and meet important goverment regulations, and those that pay $50 per user account per year can increase their costs up to $75 per user/year with the full package.
If a company is upgrading its software every three years, is $225 per employee using Google Apps cheaper than Microsoft Office and an Exchange Server? Google may be slightly cheaper or slightly more expensive, but there’s no doubt that it isn’t blowing anyone away on price with Google Apps. At least there’s no need to maintain and support the system with Google, so long as Google can avoid any bad uptime problems.
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The Weather Channel has been added as a mapplet to Google Maps, letting you click to display weather data in any Google Map. You can add it by going to MyMaps in Google Maps, and browsing the content directory for The Weather Channel Interactive Weather Layers to activate it. Now, whenever you use Google Maps, you’ll have the option on the MyMaps tab to use the layer to view current temperatures, cloud cover, weather radar in the U.S., and have points of interest flagged for you.
In addition, Google has chosen the Weather Channel to provide weather data to Google Earth, with a Weather Channel layer available at all times in the Google Earth sidebar.
(via Loren)
