Google Apps

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ZDNet has posted a video of an internal Microsoft ad, reportedly shown at the Microsoft Exchange Conference, comparing Office 365 to Gmail. As you could imagine, Microsoft bashes Gmail pretty bad with the concept of Google reading people’s mail to serve up better ads.

Except Google Apps for Enterprise doesn’t do ads.

This video is obviously trying to sell Office 365 over Google Apps. Microsoft told ZDNet the video isn’t theirs, but we wonder who else can make such awesomely bad videos.

Photo credit: Lasse Engelbracht on Flickr

Google’s been steadily improving its mapping application for Android and the web. Over the past 30 days, Google updated Maps with ‘My Places’ tab and added offline maps and stop-by-stop public transit navigation to Google Maps for Android. Starting today, the search giant wrote in a blog post, public transport directions are available for the London Underground in both web and Android apps, including all Underground, bus, tram and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) lines:

Let’s say you’re at Trafalgar Square, and you want to visit Madame Tussauds. With a simple directions search, you’ll see all the possible public transport connections. In Maps, click “Get directions” in the left-hand panel, and then the train icon to see public transport directions. Enter your departure location next to A, and your destination next to B. These can be either street addresses or names of popular places, businesses or restaurants. When you’re done, click the “Get directions” button and suggestions for your trip will appear below.

Mobile Maps utilize your phone’s location in order to figure out an optimal rout  to your destination, but you’ll also have be presented with multiple alternatives. On Android devices public transport directions are available with Transit Navigation (Beta) in Google Maps, meaning your phone can even alert you when it’s time to get off the tube at your destination.

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Gmail is admittedly the world’s most popular web-based email service, but it’s still ranked third as both Microsoft Live Mail (formerly known as Hotmail) and Yahoo! Mail command larger user bases. As of November 2010, Gmail had 193.3 million monthly users, according to Wikipedia. So to help you initiate the uninitiated, Google has created a new mini-site called Email Intervention, accompanied by a nifty little video included above. A notice on the website says:

You’ve probably already improved the lives of your friends and family members by helping them switch to Gmail, but what about that one friend who still hasn’t made the switch? It’s time to take a stand and stage an intervention.

Email Intervention is basically a simple web site where you select people from your address book and have them receive a nicely formatted email message (see below) asking them to jump on the Gmail bandwagon. The message includes Google’s intervention video featuring Dr. Richarc Muscat, Intervention Specialist, but you can replace it with your own footage. Of course, only Gmail users can send glorified invitations to Gmail using the website tools. The Gmail blog is even more straightforward in attempts to convince folks to make a switch:

On the Gmail team, we affectionately refer to them as “email interventions.” We hear about them all the time: the cousin who finally switched from an embarassing address like hottie6elliot1977 to a more professional elliot.d.smith@gmail.com, a co-worker who helped his dentist switch after he heard her grumble about having to pay for IMAP access, etc.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE1il5znICA]

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GSA shares Google’s love for electric cars so they helped launch Electric Vehicle Pilot Program in May. Pictured above: GSA’s administrator Martha N. Johnson behind the wheel of a patriotically painted electric car.

Another day, another big enterprise, education institution or government agency goes Google. Today, it’s the US General Services Administration’s (GSA) turn. The search company has made public on the Google Enterprise blog that in just six months GSA has managed to migrate over 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government.

“By moving to the cloud, GSA hopes to serve as a model for other federal agencies”, Google writes. Just the move to Gmail-hosted email will save them $15 million over five years. The switch was gradual as hundreds of early adopters at GSA later provided assistance to their colleagues in making the switch. This is in start contract to the traditional approach involving a large IT department, outside consultancy firms and expensive support and training staff.

GSA teams are now enjoying the Google Chrome for Business browser to run web apps such as Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Sites, Google-hosted videos and other custom-built applications running off the Google Apps infrastructure. Last month,  the state of Wyoming transitioned all 10,000 state employees onto Google Apps for Government.

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For reasons yet undefined, Google Books has been removed from the iTunes App Store. Was Google in violation of Apple’s new in app purchase terms of service? Is this because Harry Potter is coming out next week?? We’ve reached out to Google and Apple for answers.

Google has released an update to their calling feature inside of Gmail, allowing users to make multiple calls. If you’re on a call and make another call, the current call will be put on hold and you can switch between the calls with the resume button. Even better, when getting an incoming call while on another you can put the current call on hold.

This new feature works on voice, video, and phone calls. If a call is placed to a physical phone number there can only be two calls at once. How long until you can conference calls and do everything else a phone can do?  Bye bye telephone!

Another landmark statistic for Google today is the announcement of 10 million Google+ accounts. The service that just launched, which has been based on invitations to gain new users, has passed the 10 million profiles mark in just over two weeks. In addition, per Business Insider, the service has been home to one billion shared items. It is not clear what this one billion marker specifically means, but likely means that one billion items have been shared between users.

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A pair of updates late yesterday brought out minor but useful improvements to Google’s web-based email and mobile version of their online productivity suite, Google Docs. In Gmail, you will soon be able to conveniently switch between several predetermined inbox styles. In addition to Classic and Priority Inbox, new styles will include Important First, Unread First and Starred First, sorting your messages accordingly. We in particular are going to love the Unread First style as this has has been for far too long a glaring omission of the Gmail web interface.

True, you’ve been able to filter all unread messages by typing in “is:unread in:anywhere” into the search field – even save that query as a handy shortcut in the lefthand column using Quick Links from Gmail Labs. However, the new inbox styles are going to be much more convenient and within reach in a new tab above the message window. “After you’ve settled on a style you like and used it for about a week, these tabs will go away”, Google explains in a blog post. If you change your mind later, switch to a different inbox style from the drop down menu next to the Inbox label or from the Settings page. Google Docs for mobile also got a little love…

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Google+ user Ufuk Kayserilioglu was able to use his Google Apps account in Google+ for a short time today — sorta. As he notes below, he was able to sign into Google+ with a Google Apps account with some accidental trickery.

I discovered it by accident: I was logged into Google+ with my Google Account and into my Google Apps account (on the Paralaus domain), as secondary, with multiple sign-on. For some reason Google decided to log me off all my Google accounts. At that point, I made the initial login with my Google Apps account and secondary with my Google Account. I was unaware that Google+ was open on another tab. I tried to reshare something publicly, and was confused that it was saying Paralaus where it should be saying Public. Picking that options told me that only “People on Paralaus can find and view” my post. It was then that I realized I was able to use Google+ with my Google Apps account in a hybrid mode where I was not fully logged in but some elements were available; almost as a preview. ;)

Our own Seth Weintraub would love to see this feature come to Google+, as I’m sure many of you would too. While this was just a ‘preview’, we do expect Google Apps support to come very soon.

via Google Operating System
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Google has always integrated products, into products, into products. Google+ is no different, where we see many of Google’s product incorporated into this invite only product. One of these is Picasa, who historically only had a storage limit of 1GB, but now that Google+ is on the market things have changed. ReadWriteWeb has posted a break down on what pictures count torwards what storage.

As it turns out, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re signed up for Google+, photos up to 2048×2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes long won’t count towards this free storage limit. And Google will automatically resize photos for you when you upload them to Google+, so they stay under the free size limit.

That means only photos uploaded directly to Picasa Web Albums over the 2048×2048 size will count towards the 1 GB of free storage, explains Google. And when that limit is reached, photos will be automatically resized.

Meanwhile, for non-Google+ users, there are slightly stricter rules: photos up to 800×800 and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards free storage. Again, when the 1 GB limit is reached, larger photos will be resized down.

To sum this up, any Google user can now upload unlimited pictures to Picasa as long as they’re under 2048×2048. If they’re above 2048×2048 you are given 1GB of storage, but they’ll be resized. Google+ users can upload photos up to 2048×2048 that won’t count towards the limit, and Google will automatically resize them to stay within the limits. Get storing!

Related articles

• Free storage limits – Picasa for Google+ users (picasa.google.com)
• Google Takeout lets you pull your data out of the cloud (NewGeekGuide.com)

Matching Google+, redesigned Maps, Search, and Calendar, Google has released a redesign for Gmail. The theme of this redesign is to remove the clutter, something some of you might think Gmail suffered from. F0r now, we notice new colors and an overall buffer of the page. To get your hands on these new designs select the ‘Preview’ or ‘Preview Dense’ theme from the settings.
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Google+ was announced earlier in the week, but currently it is invite only. Last night Google opened invites for all users and later closed it down. Some of you may have been lucky and received an invite from us, but others not so. On his personal blog, David Di Franco has posted a guide on how to bypass the invite system, for now.

1. View your “Circles” page.
2. Click “Add a new person” to add someone to your circle.
3. Select your person from the list. If they are not appearing, simply input their email address.
4. Add the person to your circle. After doing so, go to “Home” where you can view the stream.
5. Compose a new post, but make sure the box is checked next to “Also email…”
6. Click “Share” and you’re set. Now the person will see the post in their inbox, which will grant them access to Google+.

We can’t guarantee this will work, but if you have a friend with Google+ ask them to give it a try. I’m buuuusy….

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At this point, it seems pretty obvious that Google means business with the Google Plus platform. Besides all of the other areas Plus has engulfed, it looks like Google is heading into the gaming realm.  The following code snippet was found in the web page code

“have sent you invites and more from Google+ Games”

So now Google is taking on Microsoft’s Xbox and Apple’s Gamecenter. Perhaps Google might want to lower the barrier to entry..
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Because we love our readers so much, we’re going to give out 50, and maybe a few more, Google+ invites. To get your invite email me submit the tips field above. In the mean time, check out our notes on the new Facebook killer. For those of you who have it already, what do you think?

Update: Vic says the gate is closed today.  However, it will open up again soon.  We have your names and will try to get as many people as we can in!

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Google has announced on their Google+ information page that their new social networking service will be available as a native application for the iOS platform. Google does not provide a launch date for this application, but says it is “coming soon” to iPhones running iOS 4.0 or later. There is no mention of an iPad application at this time, but you’ll be able to run it in 2X mode like other iPhone apps. (via iPhone Italia).

Cross posted with 9to5Mac.com

Google Operating System is reporting that Google is testing five new inbox styles in Gmail, on a select group of users. The new inbox styles include classic, important first, unread first, starred first, and Priority Inbox.

This new feature is most likely to help users get introduced to Priority Inbox. All of these features could be accessed by going to Priority Inbox settings, but Google makes it easier with their  first tabs interface inside Gmail. As we all know, Google likes to do these select testings a lot. Today we reported that they’re testing a new black navigation bar on top of their search pages. Are you seeing this new feature in your Gmail?

Google has announced today that schools using Google Apps will see their storage increase from 7GB to 25GB. The 25GB can be used across all Google Apps, including Mail, Docs, and Calendar. This update makes me wish my school was using Google Apps. Yes, that’s right..this applies to both teachers and students. That’s a lot of space, but who really needs that much? New Educational Google Apps accounts will see the storage added automatically and existing users will see it in a few weeks. It’s summer anyways.

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For those of you who use Google Sites to host your website, a new feature is available that allows your site to appear beautifully on the mobile web. Google announced, today, that Google Sites will automatically be rendered for mobile devices. Google will do the following to make your website appear better: align the header layout and top bar, smart handle sidebars, horizontal navigation, and dropdown links. This feature can be activated in the general settings. Besides presenting your site better, Google has also reformatted its own sites.google.com for mobile browsers.

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Add Wyoming to your list of big corporations, institutions, states and governments that have switched over to Google’s cloud-based productivity suite. Governor Matt Mead tells us that the state of Wyoming has transitioned all 10,000 state employees onto Google Apps for Government. Complementing Governor’s appraisal, the search firm puts together a splashy (and expensive) promo clip with nice aerial footage of Wyoming’s scenery. Apparently the switch will save taxpaying Wyomingites approximately $1 million annually.

Box has added today the ability to create and edit Google Docs inside of their service. The popular cloud storage solution favored by six million people would previously require folks to create documents at the Google Docs website or using a desktop program before uploading them to the Box cloud. Being Google Docs, other users can also collaborate with you right inside the Box service. Once done,  you can share files with your other computers and those you are working with. Check out these new features in a short clip after the break.

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Listen, the recession has obviously helped Google Apps hit the ground running, but the number of high-profile organizations adopting the Google-hosted suite of productivity web apps is growing at an alarming rate (if you’re Microsoft, that is). Lately, Google has won over the #1 hotel chain and today we learn that The McClatchy Company, the country’s third-largest newspaper publisher, has made the switch.

“Historically, each newspaper has operated independently with on-premise software and their own various business operation departments and specifically IT. To date, our technology has been both destandardized and decentralized”, says Terry Geiger, director of corporate IT with The McClatchy Company. Blame that on Microsoft’s technology, he says…

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