SMB users enthusiastic as they try out Google Apps
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Users at small businesses had good things to say about the free, Web-based Google Apps for Your Domain beta which became available this week.
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Apps Team Edition hits US, prepping for UK Google Apps today sprouted a new limb to lure more US business users and school kids away from collaboration software rivals Microsoft and IBM.â¦
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The two form an alliance to spread a little more Google in the small-business world.
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InfoWorld - Google has begun inviting mobile Web site developers to display Google ads on their sites as part of a limited beta test.
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With the launch of its enhanced suite of Web tools, Google has the enterprise squarely in its sights -- but are its offerings compelling enough to lure big business?
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InfoWorld - Google believes that its consumer-grade Web applications represent the future of enterprise IT. But while Google is quick to trumpet its products&#39; innovative features, the search giant hasn&#39;t said much about their security. Until recently, that is.
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(InfoWorld) - Call it the second Internet bubble, a Web 2.0 revolution, or just a resurgence in really useful tools for busy end-users -- Web applications are catching on quickly. The advantages are clear for applications that work well on the Web: Anytime and anywhere access to your data, good application speed over a broadband connection, automated backups, and streamlined user interfaces that are far easier to use than the bloatware of yesteryear. Well-known services, such as Plaxo.com and Basecamp.com, offer to mobile users the added benefit of being able to tap into their contacts or projects from a smartphone. One of the most compelling reasons to use applications on the Web is that they are almost all free -- at least for now. Here are a few new -- or at least lesser-known -- Web sites that can serve as good replacements for equivalent desktop software. In this roundup, I'll cover the features that make each one noteworthy and offer a few ideas for other candidates worth exploring. Gliffy Gliffy is a flow chart and diagram application that works exactly like Microsoft Visio. To create a flow chart, you just drag icons onto the document area. You can then use arrows and other pointers to create the chart. Like many full-blown Web apps, Gliffy allows you to collaborate with other users by sharing your flow chart in a public workspace. Brainstorming sessions, marketing demos, or just a clear plan on how to implement a hardware or software rollout in a large company become quick and easy -- there's no desktop client to install or site registration to think about. Although Gliffy lacks the pizzazz of a commercial application -- some of the icons for creating a networking flow chart, for example, look too simplistic -- the Web application ran without any problems in both IE7 and Firefox. It does lack a way to quickly align objects or rotate them in set increments using a modifier key. As with most Web apps, Gliffy stores your diagrams automatically and introduces new features without requiring an upgrade. Priscila Melendez, a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, is a Gliffy user. "I used Gliffy when working on a marketing effort to share network security diagrams with other team members who were off-site," Melendez said. "The ability to share the images created and then to be able to save and use them in publications and documents makes this a great collaboration tool. I believe the way diagrams can be generated and shared is the greatest asset, especially as more companies are starting to open up to telecommuting." ThinkFree Anyone who relies heavily on a word processor for business communication, project documentation, or even just quick cover letters probably already knows the features they like best. For me, one feature that is obviously missing from Web word processors -- including ZoHo Writer and Google Documents -- is the inline spell checker. ThinkFree, billed as "the best online office on earth," distinguishes itself by offering a spell checker -- and it even has custom dictionaries. When you misspell a word, ThinkFree adds a red underline that you can click on to select the correct spelling. It might seem trivial, but because this feature is missing from many other online word processors, it's a definite plus. Of course, ThinkFree Office offers a bevy of additional features: 1GB of storage for documents, Microsoft Office read-and-write support, a global search for both public and private documents and two options for word processing -- a quick edit function with a limited (but more intuitive) feature set, and a power edit mode with more advanced functions. ThinkFree supports word processing, spreadsheets, and online presentations. It uses Java, which means it should support multiple browsers, but at press time, it didn't work with the latest version of Firefox 2. In Internet Explorer 7, all three beta apps worked without any crashes. YouSendIt One of the nagging problems of Web e-mail is that there is no progress indicator that shows you when a large attachment is transferring to the recipient. In Microsoft Live Mail and Gmail, you just wait until you return to the inbox. Even in Microsoft Outlook, the progress bar isn't terribly accurate about how long it will take to send a large attachment. And it's also a guessing game as to whether the recipient can receive a large file or not. One solution to this problem is YouSendIt. The free version allows you to send a 100MB file to any recipient -- neither the sender nor receiver has to register for an account. What I like about YouSendIt more than other options like DropSend.com and MailBigFile.com is that it actually works. I tested about 10 files, each one to a different recipient, and they all worked flawlessly. Other services tend to stall or lose track of the upload. YouSendIt offers scaled membership levels for different transfer capabilities. The $4.99-per-month Plus version, for example, can send attachments up to 2GB in size. There's also an enterprise-level version with extremely high bandwidth so that once you transmit the file, it will become available as a fast download for other corporate users. GrandCentral Think of GrandCentral as a more intuitive and Web-enabled alternative to fixed mobile convergence, allowing you to use one unified phone number for work, home, and cell phone. Granted, it's not an enterprise application with an application programming interface that you can tie into corporate networks, and there are no security features for corporate compliance. But for sales agents or other mobile workers who want more control of their voice communications, GrandCentral works perfectly. Once you understand the benefits of unified messaging -- that people trying to contact you call one number, but all of your phones ring at the same time -- you can go well beyond this core functionality to personalized greetings by phone, call recording, call screening and blocking, and a unique feature called RingShare that plays something different than the traditional "ring ring" sound for callers while they wait for you to pick up. You can even program it so different groups of people hear different sounds. Xdrive Some laptop users have learned the harsh reality of magnetic-media storage: Your local disk can fail, and if you don't have a recent backup for Outlook, your business documents and even seemingly trivial settings like Internet Explorer bookmarks, there's no way to retrieve lost data. Some external storage drives, such as the Western Digital MyBook, provide an Internet storage option, but they're hard to configure and use. Xdrive.com has a new beta service called Web Backup that offers more control over online backups. Just register at xdrive.com (AOL users, just log in with your AOL account) and click on the Beta button and then click Web Backup. You can configure Xdrive to archive documents, photos, and even IE favorites with just a few clicks. Unlike competitors like Mozy.com, it runs entirely on the Web, so you can use it on any computer to archive the contents of that PC. Xdrive is entirely free and comes with 5GB of storage. You can also upload a large file and then share the link with a co-worker so he can download it. An ancillary service called Xdrive Shows is an online presentation system for photos of business slides. Web apps or Web 2.0? You might wonder: what's the difference between a Web application and Web 2.0? Some would say "not much." But Web 2.0 is a broad term that implies usefulness and social engineering. Twitter.com is a good example of a Web 2.0 site because it doesn't look like a desktop application running on the Web, yet it's useful and has a distinct social aspect. Meanwhile, a Web application is less about connecting with friends or even connecting to other Web services and more about being productive. Some people believe that sites like Twitter.com could be part of a short-lived fad and that they don't appeal as much to the business user. John Brandon is a freelance writer and book author who worked as an IT manager for 10 years.
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Some biggies, too Interop Rapid innovation, not big R&amp;D dollars, is driving adoption of Google apps at 1,500 new small-to-medium business customer sites per day and a few big companies such as Proctor &amp; Gamble and GE.â¦
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The logic behind Google (GOOG ) Desktop Search is simple enough: Why shouldn&#39;t the best tool for finding things on the Web do equally well at helping people search their own computers?
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(InfoWorld) - Google touted on Thursday its building-block approach for application development, which features mashups and open source software. Mashups link different Internet applications to form a new application. They are becoming the model for developers to build applications, said Jeff Huber, Google vice president of engineering, during a keynote presentation at the Google Developer Day 2007 event in San Jose, Calif. Other building blocks in the company's application development model include ads and standards, Huber said. Google expects developers will use technologies such as a MySQL database, a Linux OS, and programming languages such as Ruby, Python, or PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). "By being able to leverage these building blocks, youâre able to create amazing applications [in] probably a tenth the time," as was previously possible, Huber said. Google with its developer tools seeks to make the Web better; this may result in boosting traffic to the Google home page but not necessarily, according to Sundar Pichai, Google director of product management. The newly announced Google Gears project, for example, involves an extension to make Web applications work offline, Pichai noted. "To us, we believe we benefit, users benefit, and everyone benefits if the Web works better," Pichai said in an interview after the morning keynote. In addition to formally unveiling Gears during the morning presentation, Huber touted two other products: Google Mashup Editor, an online editor for building mashups with a few lines of XML, and Google Mapplets, for putting online gadgets on maps. With Mapplets, an application could be built such as one that searches for hotels near an airport, according to Google. Google's free event in San Jose attracted 1,500 persons. Meanwhile, a total of 10 Google Developer Day 2007 events are being held throughout the world on Thursday, including in places such as Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Moscow. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the company's president of technology, briefly addressed the audience in San Jose. The Internet, he said, has reached the point where systems can re-create themselves, such as a mashup editor that creates Internet applications using Internet applications. A compiler, meanwhile, can compile itself, Brin said. "For the Internet to be truly self-sustaining, you really need to get the person out of the loop, and that's why we corralled all of you here in one room today," Brin said in jest. On a more serious note, Brin thanked the audience. "We want to do as much as we can to repay the community that creates such a fantastic ecosystem for us to work in," Brin said. The explosion in interest in Google of late can be attributed to its brand awareness, said blogger Frank Taylor, author of the Google Earth Blog and an attendee in San Jose. "Obviously, they just have a huge brand awareness and an ability to reach many people through their search engine," Taylor said. Even when other companies do the same thing as Google, Google gets more attention, he said. Google also is attracting top talent, said Taylor. Huber called 2006 a spectacular year for the company, with its introduction of technologies such as its AJAX search API, the Google Web Toolkit, and Google Project Hosting.
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Analysis: New Google browser plug-in offers offline access to Web-hosted applications, intriguing developers.
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InfoWorld - Google is pushing further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.
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Google give users the opportunity to try new ways of using its search engine, according to the company's Tech Lead on the project.
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Google launches Apps Team Edition that lets anyone collaborate on Google Apps with anyone else in their e-mail domain, solving some of the security concerns corporations have with hosted apps and broadening the reach Google's cloud computing can have.
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Company looks to juice its application server business with a version tuned for smaller organizations.
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Google&#39;s short message service (SMS) is accessible immediately to beta testers. The service will enable users of mobile phones and other handheld devices to send text message queries and receive
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Google has partnered with Capgemini to provide large businesses with IT support for Google Apps Premier Edition.