All Entries Tagged With: "google apps"

Google Integrates Google Voice Into Gmail

Last night, Erictric reported that Mountain View, California-based Google was reportedly testing a voice-calling feature in Gmail. Turns out that the rumor was actually true. The company just announced on the Google Voice Blog that Google Voice has officially been integrated into Gmail.

As of today, Gmail users can make and receive calls using Google Voice. The new Google Voice feature is initially being made available to Gmail users in the United States only. The roll out will be gradual, which means not all users will see the feature at once. It will take a few days before Google Voice in Gmail is available to everyone in the U.S.

Once available, Gmail users will be able to see a new “Call Phone” option in the chat window on the left side of Gmail. Users will have to install the voice and video plug-in in order to make phone calls. Unfortunately, the Google Voice feature will not be made available to Google Apps users quite just yet. Google promises that they will launch the feature more broadly in the near future.

Google Makes Multiple Account Sign-In Official

A couple of days ago, Erictric reported that Google had finally enabled a “multiple account sign-in” feature, which as the name suggests, allows users to sing into more than one Google Account simultaneously in one browser. However, it’s not until today that Mountain View, California-based Google has officially announced the feature on The Official Gmail Blog.

Just as we had explained before, users must enabled the feature first from their Google Accounts “Settings” page. Once that’s done, users will have the ability to sign into multiple accounts by clicking on the “Multiple sign-in” link. Up to three accounts are supported, and users can easily toggle back and forth between them.

Google advises users to take the following three things into account:

• 1) Not all Google services support multiple account sign-in yet. For the services that don’t support it (like Blogger and Picasa Web Albums), you’ll be defaulted to the first account you signed in with during that browser session.

Google Introduces Google Apps for Government

This morning, Google held a special press event at its Mountain View headquarters to introduce its new edition of Google Apps exclusively for governments. According to The Official Google Blog, the new Google Apps for Government was designed and created with the help of the federal government, the City of Los Angeles, and the City of Orlando to include the necessary measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

Google goes on to explain that its new Google Apps for Government is the “first suite of cloud computing applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. government.” This should make it easier for federal agencies across the country to compare their security settings with those of their existing systems.

Google Launches Political Campaign Toolkits for Politicians

Google announced today on the YouTube Blog the introduction of its new You Choose 2010 Campaign Toolkit and Google Campaign Toolkit for politicians. Both toolkits are designed to help politicians get their message across using various Google products and services. As many of you might be aware, politicians are nowadays are utilizing online media to run their political campaigns. For instance, President Barack Obama has successfully made use of YouTube to run his campaign as a candidate and address the nation as president.

Unified Search Soon Coming To Google Apps

During a recent meeting at Google I/O 2010, Google’s Director of Enterprise Products, Matthew Glotzbach hinted to a potentially incredible feature for Google Apps products: unified search. What is this, you ask? Simple. Let’s say you type in a search query within the Gmail search. Instead of getting results strictly pertaining to Gmail, users would be able to view matching results from the Google Apps Calendar, Google Wave, and so forth.

Glotzbach agreed with the reporter who mentioned that Google Apps should contain this feature, and noted that we may soon see a “unified search layer” — which certainly would add new levels of convenience for users of Google Apps.

Still, we can’t say when this is definitive and even if it will ever make its debut, but its completely worth taking note of.

[ via TechCrunch ]

Google Apps For Education Surpasses 8 Million Users

Google Apps for education has apparently surpassed 8 million users (students), according to a recent Google blog post. The California-based search giant marks the milestone just 60 days after it announced that Google Apps was being utilized by 7 million students — with over a million students adopting the services in just two months.

By comparison, approximately 16 million individuals in the United States are college students, allowing Google to have reached over 50% of the upper-level educational market.

It should be noted that the announcement comes nearly at the end of the school year for both colleges and K-12 school systems alike. You can certainly expect to see more schools adopt the services over the summer as they look for ways to improve and cut costs for the following school year. Don’t be surprised if Google publishes another post in the coming months noting even more users on the platform.

Google Calendar Down Yet Again [Updated]

Not too long after the Google Calendar outage we reported in late April, another issue has struck the calendar in the cloud. First recognized by Google at 11:30AM, Google announced on their Apps Status Dashboard that something fishy was going on:

“We’re aware of a problem with Google Calendar affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Calendar. We will provide an update by May 6, 2010 12:00:00 PM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.”

Another update was was posted at 12PM Eastern noting that Google continues to investigate the issue, followed by most recently at 12:28PM, with an identical notification posted.

University of California Ditches Gmail

A major university — the University of California [Davis] — is ditching Google’s email solution, Gmail, in search of something better, reports InformationWeek. The campus’ IT staff are reportedly completely dissatisfied with the amount of privacy and security Gmail provides for their needs, citing that the service will not keep email correspondences private enough.

The source of the suspected vulnerabilities? Google Buzz — Google’s social item sharing service, which originally created huge privacy issues for users.

“Outsourcing e-mail may not be in compliance with the University of California Electronic Communications Policy,” said school officials, not noting what their next course of action could be.

What do you think, is UC taking overreacting?

Google Working On Gmail To Google Apps Account Linking

If you’re like us — using personal Gmail accounts and using a Google Apps account — it can be a real hassled maintaining and getting yourself organized, logging into two accounts daily and working will two very similar yet differently configured environments.

A panel on Gmail taking place recently at SXSW (South by Southwest) let loose some fairly interesting information with regard to the future of those who use both Google Apps and Gmail. That information is that the Gmail is working on issues with multiple namespaces. Putting this into perspective, the panelist expressed their frustrations with both using their “@google.com” email addresses along with their “@gmail.com” email addresses.

Really, that’s all we know. Something’s coming, but we haven’t the foggiest as to how it will come about, or when.

Best stay tuned.

[ via TechCrunch ]