JotSpot re-launched as Google Sites
February 28, 2008
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.
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
Orkut Social apps coming soon
February 23, 2008
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
Digsby is here…well almost
February 7, 2008
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
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Social Networking
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Personalise
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Other
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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.
Google Apps Team Edition
February 7, 2008
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:
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Work on the same document, spreadsheet or presentation (instead of emailing changes in multiple copies of the same attachment)
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Publish documents and calendars for the team to view and update
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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:
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Google Docs to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations
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Google Calendar to arrange meetings, set schedules, and publish event information
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Google Talk for instant messaging and free PC-to-PC voice calls
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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
Create your own iGoogle Themes
January 17, 2008
Google yesterday announced the release of the themes API, so now you can create your own iGoogle Theme
“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
Send an address to your iPhone
January 1, 2008
Want to send a street address from your computers web browser to your iPhone? well now it can be done in two clicks with the new iPhoneSender, a nifty new web browser add on.
The software makes it easy to send a Google map link to an iPhone highlight the address, right click and send, the link is then sent to a chosen email address. The iPhoneSender converts the address into a link that will launch the Google maps application on your iPhone.
The iPhoneSender is a free download and works with both Safari and Firefox
Search Salad - The healthy way to search?
December 29, 2007
Searchsalad provides search results from Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Wikipedia as well as non-search sites such as eBay, Kelkoo, Engadget, Review Centre, CNET, YouTube, Blinx and Ciao giving coverage for web, images, audio, video, news and maps across all the sites.
The downside to having all this search stuff is the load time is quite long, and I personally don’t like each search result being in a box with sliders which means you have to move them around to read the whole result. Saying that though you can have a blended view with the “toss” button.
The video search tool is okay but for the moment by the looks of it only gets vids from YouTube, and the audio does the job but some of the search results I tried go to holding pages. The maps section is a little bit weird, don’t see how people would want 3 maps from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all pointing to the same location?
Overall not bad for a one off search, but would not replace my normal searching. Give it a try at searchsalad.com
Feevy - Content Display Widgets
December 21, 2007
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.
Microsoft, Google, & Yahoo! Pay Millions to U.S.
December 20, 2007
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.
User Generated Content on TV Becomes a Reality
December 17, 2007
Oregan Networks, has today released a technology feature that makes it possible for consumers to access and control Adobe® Flash® streaming video directly on TV, thus broadening entertainment and communications options for the mass market audience of TV viewers. Oregan Media Browser now seamlessly delivers user generated content, such as YouTube and MySpace, as well as facilitating search of such media via universal and specialized search engines, including Blinkx and Google.
With its implementation, Oregan addresses the critical issues that have obstructed a larger scale uptake of Flash video on TV: video streaming latencies, and high memory and CPU power requirements. To achieve a smooth TV viewing experience during progressive streaming of Flash video content over broadband, Oregan’s media player works behind the scenes, improving the ‘Quality of Service’ by intelligently caching the stream as it arrives, thus enabling the video codecs to perform more efficiently.
Oregan’s success to date has been defined by its core offering: a slimline media streaming engine which utilizes Oregan’s advanced W3C standards-based TV browser as a user interface technology. The company’s philosophy is based on the principle that a user interface on TV is ultimately a means to locating and consuming desired audio-visual content, regardless of source. This approach has motivated the technologists at Oregan to develop an ‘intelligent’ media browser that streams and efficiently renders commercial rights-managed high-definition content and user-generated video, regardless of whether it’s part of a home video collection or is delivered in real-time from one of the social networking sites or commercial movie rental services.
