JotSpot re-launched as Google Sites

JotSpot, the company that was purchased by Google a while back has re-emerged and has been integrated into a service called Google Sites

Google Sites is the latest offering from Google Apps, a suit of products designed to improve communication and collaboration between employees, students etc…With Google sites you can create a team website, gather information, including videos, calendars, presentations and gadgets, and share it for viewing.

Scott Johnston, Senior Product Manager (former VP of Products at JotSpot)

In the last 10 years, the way all of us work has changed. We’ve grown accustomed to always being connected through email and instant messaging. Consequently, people are working together in teams more often, with larger groups, and with others who may be in different parts of the country or the world. We are shifting our focus from personal to team productivity. It’s less about “you” and more about “us.”

But with this explosion in collaboration, how do you bring together everything your team needs to work? How do you take information, whether it is on your desktop or online, and share it with specific groups of people — your team, the company, the public?

Meet Google Sites, the newest addition to the Google Apps product suite. It was designed to allow you to easily create a network of sites and share them with whomever you choose. Google Sites lets you pull together information from across Google Apps by embedding documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos, and calendars in your sites. Of course, we also harness the power of Google search technology so your search results are always fast and relevant.

Here is a Google Sites Tour

Tags: Google, JotSpot, Sites

Orkut Social apps coming soon

Orkut, Googles Social Network announced back in November of last year that the platform was open to developers. Over the last few months they have been busy building social applications that should make the Orkut experience better. And as such they have announced that the apps will be available to a subset of orkut users starting in a couple of weeks, and to all Orkut users several weeks after that.

If you are a developer and want to have your apps available to “Orketeers” in the last week of February you can find out more on how to submit your app here and for the latest news check out the orkut developer blog.

Here is a video on Orkut’s policies on OpenSocial Applications

Tags: Orkut, OpenSocial, Apps

Google Adsense for Video now in Beta

Google have today announced the release of Adsense for Video

In a very short time, watching videos online has become a common pastime, and the imagination of artists and other content owners continues to fuel this trend. Meanwhile, across the industry, advertisers and video publishers continue to look for the best solution that balances the needs of video fans with the need for video sites to generate the revenue that enables them to continue to be creative as they grow.

We have two major goals: to make it easier for publishers to monetise video online, and for advertisers to learn how to reach the video community. Towards these ends, today we’re also launching a single destination with an overview of various options to expand online video opportunities called Google Video Advertising Solutions. We hope this will be your starting point to understand how to leverage the Google Content Network and YouTube to make the most out of the online video experience. You can also see our overview videos for advertisers and publishers — because isn’t video the best way to experience video?

Google have been working with a number of video partners such as ehow, expertvillage as well as social video aggregators such as Revver, blip.tv and GodTube.

There are some criteria that publishers have to meet to participate in AdSense for video, which you can learn about on the Inside AdSense blog.

Tags: Google, AdSense, Video, Revver, blip.tv, expertvillage, GodTube

Digsby is here…well almost

Thats right after 2 years of development Digsby has arrived. The service is an IM client that helps you organise everything under one roof! It lets you log in to your existing AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk and Jabber accounts, merging everything into one buddy list. Add your email and social network accounts and almost everything you need to know about your online world is just one click away!

Here is the current feature list for the download.

Instant Messaging

One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber Accounts. Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag + drop tabs out into their own windows for important conversations. Rename contacts with an alias so you don’t have to remember buddy names like “giantsfan123″. If one of your friends has more than one IM account you can combine them into a single merged contact to eliminate duplicate buddies. Send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window. The InfoBox lets you check everyone’s status message and profile just by moving your mouse down the list. Changing your status has never been easier - just one click right on the buddy list! Multitask while you chat. Minimize the IM window and you see popups of new IM’s. Best of all, you can reply right from the popup and get back to what you were doing. Log conversation history and find the information you need in our search enabled log viewer. And so much more.

Email

Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby. Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts. The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click. Perform actions such as “Mark as Read” or “Report Spam” right from the email InfoBox. Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.

Social Networking

Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook or MySpace account (other network support coming soon). Receive alerts of events such as new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc. The social network InfoBox gives you a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to. Everything from new photos, to status updates, to upcoming birthdays is just a click away.

Personalise

Customise digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel. Change the way your conversations look with themes - everything from simple AIM style windows to 3D conversation bubbles. Complete control over the layout of buddies on the buddy list. Change everything from buddy icon size and position to whether or not to show a snippet of a buddy’s away message. Sort your buddy list how ever you want! You can organise buddies manually, by status, by service, by name or by log size to place those you communicate with most at the top. You can even choose a secondary sorting method. Customisable notification system lets you choose what events you want to be alerted about and how.

Other

Digsby offers complete synchronisation between computers and installations. Everything from the skin you choose to your pre-defined status messages follows you from place to place. You can place a widget on your blog, website, or social network profile and chat with visitors right from digsby. Manage multiple simultaneous file transfers from one simple transfer manager.

Having said all this however digsby is still currently in private beta so if you do want to try this out drop them an email and they will send you an invite.

Tags: digsby, IM+Client, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google+Talk, Jabber, Facebook

Google Apps Team Edition

Google today announced Google Apps Team Edition as the simplest and fastest way for groups of employees and students to collaborate within an organisation using Google Apps. Once users verify their business or school email address, they can instantly share documents and calendars securely without burdening IT for support. Team Edition can easily be switched to Google Apps Standard, Premier or Education Edition for communications and collaboration across the entire company.

 

“More than half a million businesses have already chosen Google Apps to collaborate and share information across the organisation,” said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of enterprise, Google. “With Team Edition, groups of individuals at school or work can just as easily get the benefits of Google Apps by simply signing up online.”

 

Once a user has signed up for Team Edition using a verified business or school email address, they can instantly invite others to join, or easily identify people within their organisation already using Google Apps, to collaborate and share documents. Together, teams of people within a business or school can:

• Work on the same document, spreadsheet or presentation (instead of emailing changes in multiple copies of the same attachment)

• Publish documents and calendars for the team to view and update

• Access information from any computer, even mobile phones with Google Apps, there is no hardware or software to buy, install or maintain, so businesses can quickly begin to collaborate with minimal up front investment. Google Apps Team Edition currently includes:

• Google Docs to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations

• Google Calendar to arrange meetings, set schedules, and publish event information

• Google Talk for instant messaging and free PC-to-PC voice calls

• Start Page where users can access their Google Apps services and customised content

“Our business has been tripling every year, and we needed better tools to help us keep up with the growth. So we started using Google Docs and Google Calendar with our personal accounts to do things like coordinate customer visits and work together on documents, even when we’re travelling separately,” said Paul Laurie, co-founder of Walking Tree Travel (walkingtree.org), an organisation that leads educational trips abroad for high school students. “We’re thrilled Google Apps Team Edition now allows everyone at Walking Tree to be connected automatically.”

 

Google Apps Team Edition lets colleagues and departments at work, or study groups at school, immediately begin sharing information within a domain. In addition, the Team Edition can easily be upgraded to Google Apps Standard, Premier or Education Edition for full administrative control, such as the ability to set default sharing options, decide which applications are available on the network, or determine who has access.  When organisations switch to Google Apps Premier Edition, they also receive business integration capabilities and 24/7 support, including phone support for critical issues.

 

To sign up for Google Apps Team Edition or learn more, go here 

Tags: Google, Apps, Team+Edition

Google and Postini Announce New Security Products

Google today announced a series of security products Powered by Postini that deliver message filtering, encryption and archiving for any business environment. Google’s new security services work with any mail system, including Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, and Novell Groupwise, and with pricing starting at $3 per user per year can accommodate the budget of any business. Customers can sign up online and immediately begin to improve the security of their email.

 

“As threats rise in volume and complexity, and compliance requirements pile up, IT is struggling to find the resources to keep up,” said Scott Petry, director of product management, Google. “Now, Google can take care of this for you. Organisations of all shapes and sizes can get access to Google’s industry leading security and compliance technologies.”

 

Companies of all sizes are seeking solutions to the challenge of security and compliance. For instance, outbound message filtering helps prevent sensitive data from going outside the company firewall, which could result in identity theft or compromise a client’s personal information. Also, increasing industry regulations are creating demand for better message storage, with quick and easy retrieval.

 

Businesses can choose the Google security and compliance services that best suit their needs:

 

Google Message Filtering

 

    * Postini’s industry-leading service for filtering incoming spam and malware

    * for companies looking to handle the growth of spam, virus and other email threats, and want to shift the burden off of on-premises resources

    * $3 per user per year

 

Google Message Security

 

    * includes Google Message Filtering, plus enhanced virus detection, outbound processing, and content policy management

    * for companies worried about growing external security threats and internal risks, such as email data leaks or content compliance violations

    * $12 per user per year

 

Google Message Discovery

 

    * includes Google Message Security, plus one year of message data archiving, retention, and discovery

    * for companies seeking to reduce security exposure, and improve legal discovery readiness and message compliance

    * $25 per user per year for one year of archived data (additional years of data retention available separately)

 

The new packages are part of the Google Apps platform and are available immediately at www.google.com/a/security, direct from Google, and through channel partners, and can be deployed within hours. The Google Apps suite also includes Gmail(tm) email services, Google Docs(tm) for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Calendar(tm) shared calendaring, Google Talk(tm) instant messaging, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page. Policy management and 90-day message discovery services are also available at no additional charge to Google Apps Premier Edition users.

Create your own iGoogle Themes

Google yesterday announced the release of the themes API, so now you can create your own iGoogle Theme

Posted by Kevin Tom the iGoogle Product Manager

“Since we launched themes on iGoogle last March, we’ve enjoyed seeing how people have connected with them. For instance, we’ve gotten fan mail for the “fox in the teahouse” theme, and seen some great blog posts generated when folks discover the Easter egg for each theme.

Users and developers alike have been clamouring to know when they can develop themes for the iGoogle homepage, and we’re happy to say that today is the day! Whether you like outer space, cartoons, dogs, or anything else, you can now create your own theme and help personalise iGoogle for millions of people.

The Themes API lets you customise many portions of the iGoogle page. Your theme can also update the page’s design based on variables, such as the time of day or location. This makes it easy to create a narrative that unfolds throughout the day, a landscape that changes as the sun rises and sets, or an abstract image that becomes more complex.

Anyone who can build a website can create an iGoogle Theme. We worked with designers Yves Behar, Mark Frauenfelder, Troy Lee, and John Maeda to create some custom iGoogle designs to show some great examples of the types of themes you can create.”

Here are some examples

Earth-light by Yves Behar

Simplicity is Complex by John Maeda

Adventure in Lollipopland by Mark Frauenfelder

Supermoto Mayhem by Troy Lee

The theme directory can be found here

Tags: iGoogle, Themes

Feevy - Content Display Widgets

Feevy is a dynamic blogroll for your blog or website. By adding a html tag to your site you can show the latest posts from your favourite blogs in one column and put them in order according to the latest updates.

Every feevy you create has its own feed and you can make as many as you want, feevy is also compatible with Flickr, Picasa, Google Video and Jumpcut.

Since yesterday there are more than 6000 bloggers using feevy. We are reading now more than 24000 different sources and serving them to you in your blogs.

Tags: blogroll, flickr, Google, Picasa, Jumpcut, Feevy

Microsoft, Google, & Yahoo! Pay Millions to U.S.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have entered into settlements with the US to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling. The total amount of the three settlements is $31.5 million.

Microsoft’s settlement, totalling $21 million, consists of $4.5 million to the US and a $7.5 million to the ICMEC

The Google Settlement of $3 million, was for on-line gambling advertisements between 1997 and December 2007.

Yahoo agrees to $4.5 million worth of online ads (Valued at $1.5 million per year) for a public service advertising campaign. To begin in Jan 2008 it will be designed to inform and educate users that use online or telephone sports book making in the United States may be subject to arrest and prosecution.

Tags: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, ICMEC

Google Ads being Hijacked

A new Trojan that replaces Google text ads with ads from different providers has been spotted by BitDefender.

This malware uses the “hosts” file (located in the “%WINDIR%\System32\drivers\etc” directory) to redirect the initial query to the Google Adsense servers to a malicious host. This file is used as a first step in the name / IP translation process and if an entry is located in this file, the domain name server is not queried. The malware creates an entry redirecting pagead2.googlesyndication.com to a rogue server.

This server, rather than displaying advertisements from Google, display advertisements from a third party services. This damages both users (because the advertisements and/or the linked sites may contain malicious code - a very likely situation, given that they are promoted using malware in the first place) and webmasters (because they take away viewers and thus possible money sources from their websites).

To check if you are affected, you should issue the following command (from the command line or from Start -> Run):

ping -t pagead2.googlesyndication.com

The response should look similar to this:

Pinging pagead.l.google.com [6x.xxx.xxx.xxx] with 32 bytes of data:

where the x’s represent digits. If you are not infected, the first digit will be a 6 (as in the example). If you are infected, the first digit will be a 9.

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