August proved to be a busy month, as Google Apps continues to churn out bountiful new enhancements and features. The rate of innovation at Google just keeps on speeding up, as it decisively proves the benefits of software-as-a-service to businesses. Microsoft, with Office Web Apps, seems to drag in contrast, its enterprise legacy seemingly in tow.
Talk about Google Apps users being left out from the coolest new updates to Google services. First, Google Apps users did not have access to all Google services, and the doors were rather belatedly opened; Google Voice is still not a part of Google Apps and so on. It has happened again.
Google announced its most exciting new feature a few days ago, and Google Apps has been left out again. Gmail users can now place calls using the Gmail chat feature. Previously, different Gmail users could have a voice and video chat online, but this new feature extends their reach to land lines and cell phones. If that wasn't enough, calls placed to US and Canada numbers are free "at least till the end of this year"!
Andrew Gradwell is the director of cloudhypermarket.com a one stop shop specializing in cloud-based IT services. They provide an in-depth comparison and advice on the costs and features of a wide variety of services from all the major vendors.
The Google Bee apoligizes for being late on this one. Some may argue that Google's real focus is the enterprise market, and what it really wants is a piece of the multi billion pie Microsoft is hogging right now. However, as a reiteration of its interest in the SMB maket, Google started its "small business blog" a couple of weeks ago.
This new blog follows the success of the "small business series" on the official Google blog, and Google felt a separate blog was warranted.
A few months ago, Google Apps added the ability to store multiple file types to Google Docs. Not quite the GDrive that the market was expecting, but a nifty and useful feature nonetheless (Memeo did in fact launch a service called the GDrive for Google Docs later).
Now, Google has introduced the ability to convert the files stored in Google Docs to Google Docs online formats. There are two ways to do this:-
Kevin Tea has more than 30 years senior journalistic and marketing communications experience, working with some of the leading newspaper groups and blue chip companies in the UK. Working with the European Commision; contributing to Webweaving, where Bill Gates also contributed; or managing various tech e-journals are some of the feathers on his cap. Currently, his time is distributed between offering a wide range of consultancy, PR and marketing communications services as an independent consultant and covering the web2.0 collaboration market at web2andmore.net.
Well, Google Wave hasn't quite died yet, but it has stepped into its final stages. A little over a year after Google Wave was born with much fanfare, Google announced a few days ago that it would discontinue development on Google Wave as a standalone product, citing low adoption as a reason. The site will continue to be supported till the year end, after which Wave will truly be buried and nailed. Its technology however, will continue to be extended for use in other Google products.
I can't help but be a little heavy hearted at Wave's demise, partly due to the fact that i hastily registered related domains in anticipation of Wave's runaway success. This apart, Wave was a great product, and almost everybody said so the time it was launched. It was the first true "real time" collaboration platform. It introduced the revolutionary concept of character by character co-authoring, a feature since integrated in Google Docs. It blurred the somewhat artificial distinction between email, documents and IM. It promised to be email for the modern era.
Google Apps keeps adding these little conveniences. Remember trying to log into two Google accounts from the same browser, and the only way to do it was to either sign out from the first and sign into the second, or simply open another browser. A minor annoyance.
Now Google lets you sign into two accounts from the same browser. All you need to do is enable multiple sign in by visiting google.com/accounts and clicking the link next to "Multiple sign-in." After you sign into your first account, you can sign in to two additional accounts from the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of Gmail as follows:-
Googleappsbuzz, as the name suggests, is designed for anyone who is interested in Google Apps, especially for businesses - users, potential users, experts or just lay geeks who can't get enough of Google Apps. This site will bring you up to the minute opinions, news, reviews, expert reviews, resources, articles, how-tos, videos on the subject.
The Google Bee (that's me) would love to get your feedback, or hear from you if you think your resource deserves to be included in the site. You can contact me at gb (at) googleappsbuzz (dot) com.
