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Supercharge Your Business With Google Apps

By Fei on August 26, 2010

By Zack Stern
August 26, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – All businesses need basic services such as e-mail hosting, document sharing, and file editing. The ways to set up these functions vary greatly, however–pick the wrong method, and you’ll waste time and money.

For example, you don’t need to cover the costs of your own server, since the various Google Apps for businesses shift these tools into the cloud. Plus, the online approach makes your organization more mobile, since it allows you and your staff to connect from any computer and from most smartphones.

Google’s offerings for businesses differ from the company’s consumer applications. But that’s just the beginning. In this article I’ll reveal tips and tweaks that can supercharge Google’s tools to improve your business’s productivity. Whether you are just beginning to explore Google Apps or are already a subscriber, these tricks will help you get the most from the services.

Google Apps Collaboration Tools

In addition to handling your e-mail, Google Apps can help people in your business collaborate. Many tools are available, covering everything from scheduling to document creation to videoconferencing. And though you save everything in the cloud, Google maintains good security to protect your data.

Google Calendar can help you keep appointments and share scheduling with groups. The business service is similar to the consumer version, but oriented toward clusters of employees. You’ll be able to share workday details with coworkers so that they know when you’re free for a possible meeting, for instance. The tool can send meeting invitations and update itself as recipients verify their attendance.

Google Docs imports and edits basic office-suite files, including .doc, .ppt, and .xls files in its word processor, presentation tool, and spreadsheet app, respectively. Multiple staffers can share documents, each person editing them without worrying about losing someone else’s changes (as they might when downloading and uploading documents to a file server). Google keeps a complete history of each contributor’s updates, and colleagues can even edit files at the same time. This setup can serve as a great group note-taking space for a conference call or during a presentation.
Google Sites, available in each edition of Google Apps, acts as an intranet Website. You can use it as a company bulletin board for everyone, store HR policies, highlight an upcoming event, or otherwise organize information. Google Sites and Google Docs can store any document type, so you can use them for simple file sharing, too.

Google Groups, available in the Premier Edition, acts as a center point for collaboration. Groups allow staffers to send messages within mailing lists at your company, such as a sales-team list. In addition, members can share a calendar and documents as a group. When new people join the group, they gain access to the message history as well as to the rest of the information, so that they can get up to speed with in-progress plans.

Google Video, another Premier-only service, is essentially your company’s own version of YouTube. You can post private, internal videos for training, collaboration, or any other use. The tool also hosts your public videos, eliminating another subscription or service that you might need.

Using Gmail for Business

The main difference between consumer Gmail and the version available through Google Apps is easy to spot: custom domain names. Instead of an @gmail.com address, you get @yourbusinessname.com, which makes a major difference in your branding, even if you operate a sole proprietorship. I know I always assume that bob@bobsmithconstruction.com (or even @bobsmith.com) represents a more established business than does bobsmith@gmail.com.

If you already own a domain name, such as for your Website and current e-mail, you’ll point its MX records to Google. Essentially, when computers contact your domain registrar to locate your mail server, the MX record creates a forwarding address to Google so that mail still flows properly to you. If you don’t own a domain name yet, Google can register one for $10 a year, configuring it automatically.

Small businesses might be content with the free Standard Edition of Google Apps. It supports up to 50 e-mail addresses, each with 7.4GB of storage space. Each e-mail address can send messages to 500 different recipients each day. Unless your business has a wide volume of daily contacts, those limits should be fine. But like consumer Gmail, this mail service includes ads, which might be a reason to move up.

The paid, $50-per-year-per-user Premier Edition eliminates ads and increases those limits. Each address can send to 2000 recipients per day, and you get 25GB of storage per e-mail address.
With the paid or free version, you can share contacts within your company, pooling resources from Web-based or mobile Google Apps.

Next: Tweaking Gmail, Calendar, and Voice

Turn Off Ads in Premier Edition Gmail

If you use the paid, Premier Edition of Google Apps, you might be annoyed to see text ads in your mail service. Relax. Here’s how to turn them off.

When logged in as an administrator, click Manage this domain at the top of the page. Pick Domain settings, and check the box in the middle of the page for Hide all ads for [your domain]. Click Save changes. That’s all it takes, although I’d rather Google assume that paid users want ads off by default.

Follow Business Leads Within Gmail

What happens to your important but misaddressed e-mail, such as when a new client tries to reach out to your business but misspells your name? You can create e-mail aliases for suspected misspellings, catch all misdirected e-mail, and make a group e-mail address for certain teams.

While logged in as an administrator in the Dashboard, click Email. Pick the Email addresses option. Click the user’s name. Scroll down, and click Add a nickname. Enter an alias there–I added “zach.” Click Save changes.

Other misaddressed messages might be junk, but you can catch them just in case they’re important. Go to Service Settings, Email. Scroll down to the ‘Email routing’ section. Click the radio button for Route to catch-all address, enter your username, and click Save changes.

Google Groups can manage internal communication, but you can also use Groups to receive messages from anyone. That way, you could have a sales@yourbusiness.com address that forwards mail to everyone on the team. Just click the Groups button and select Create a new group.

By default, only members of the group can send messages, but you can change that here. Scroll down and click the checkbox for Also allow anyone on the Internet to post messages. Now customers can contact all of your sales staff via one address.

Customize Google Calendar Meeting Reminders

You can set Google Calendar to remind you about meetings in a handful of ways: e-mail, pop-up window, or SMS to your phone (including a plain, dumb handset). Here’s how to configure the defaults to remind you to prepare well in advance and to ping you just before the meeting time.

Within your personal Google Apps account–not the administration dashboard–visit the calendar. Click Calendar settings and Notifications. You can click Add a reminder or remove to layer more or less. Try setting the first default to e-mail you a reminder 1 day in advance. Set another reminder (or two) to send you a text message just before meetings. (First, if necessary, click Set up your mobile phone to receive notifications.) Click Save.

Do More With Additional Apps

The e-mail, calendar, document, and other tools bundled with Google Apps can act as the cornerstone of your business operations. But additional, third-party apps can add more tools, even interfacing with your contacts, calendar, and other data. Among these extras are project management programs, CRM tools, time trackers, and more.

Visit the Google Apps Marketplace to find a mixture of free and paid add-ons. When you find something of interest, click Add it now, and follow the prompts. When you click the button to enable the app, it will be activated for all of your users, saving installation time versus traditional software.

Custom-Route Unknown Google Voice Callers

Google Voice permits people to reach you by phone wherever you may be. The free service assigns you a single phone number that rings all of your phones. You can have it ring your home number, the office, your cell phone, a temporary location, or anywhere.
Being reachable is great when you’re working, but it’s frustrating when you’re away and you don’t want strangers to call. You could temporarily shut off your mobile-number forwarding, but that would block people you want to be able to call. Instead, manage where calls ring depending on the caller, with calling groups.

First, scale back the default places that Google Voice will ring. Uncheck various lines in Settings, Voice Settings, Phones. Think of these preferences as your away mode, when you don’t want to be reached by strangers. I recommend leaving just your office line enabled. Then click Groups, and edit those profiles. In the Friends group, for example, edit the default to ring all of your phones. Click Save. (Add people to the groups in the Contacts area.)

Now when your friends or members of other groups call, they’ll be routed to certain lines. When strangers call, they’ll reach you at your desk but not at home after-hours.

Apple Kickback Scheme: Don’t Let This Happen to You

By Fei on August 17, 2010

By Tony Bradley
August 17, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – A global supply chain manager for Apple has been arrested as a result of allegedly accepting more than $1 million in bribes and kickbacks. Apple’s investigation focused on personal Web-based e-mail accounts on the accused manager’s Apple-issued laptop, and provides valuable lessons for enforcing policies and protecting data.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Paul Shin Devine is facing both a federal grand jury indictment and a civil suit from Apple following an investigation which implicates Devine for leaking confidential information to key suppliers to enable them to negotiate better contracts with Apple. In exchange, the Apple suppliers made payments to various bank accounts set up in the names of Devine and his wife according to the indictment.

Apple suspected Devine was violating corporate policy and launched an internal investigation that uncovered suspicious e-mails on his company laptop using personal accounts on Hotmail and Gmail. The e-mails divulged sensitive and confidential information to key Apple suppliers.

Apple deserves some kudos for discovering the alleged improprieties, however had Apple been more proactive about enforcing corporate policy and monitoring employee communications for sensitive data Devine’s actions could have been detected and prevented much earlier. There are some lessons IT admins and security professionals can learn from the Apple kickback scheme.

Most companies have acceptable use policies in place that govern the use of company-owned computers, networks, and communications, and policies related to protecting sensitive and confidential data. What most companies lack, however, are the tools to monitor or enforce those policies. Unethical employees quickly find ways to exploit the honor system.

One solution would be to implement Windows Rights Management. File and folder permissions are typically the only security measure in place to guard sensitive data. Some employees have access, and some don’t. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t restrict or control what authorized employees do with the data once they access it.

Windows Rights Management Service (RMS) provides IT admins with significantly more control over what happens to data once it is accessed. Rights can be configured to restrict whether the data can be modified, printed, forwarded via e-mail, or other actions–and access can be set to expire. More importantly, the RMS restrictions stay with the file even if it is saved to a USB drive or stored on a user’s personal computer.

Companies can implement more comprehensive monitoring using applications like Spector 360 or Spector CNS from SpectorSoft. These tools can capture every e-mail–including Web-based e-mail–online searches, instant messaging chats, keystrokes typed, Web sites visited, applications used, files accessed and more. Monitoring and restrictions can be configured for the company as a whole, or by department, group, or individual users.

Another option would be to use tools like Zgate or Zlock from Zecurion. Zgate monitors e-mail and social networking communications to detect and block attempts–whether intentional or inadvertent–to transmit sensitive or confidential information, and Zlock restricts the use of peripheral devices for storing or transmitting such data.
With Windows Rights Management in place, Devine might have been prevented from forwarding protected information via e-mail. Tools like Zgate or Zlock would have kept Devine from saving sensitive information to a USB thumb drive, or printing hard copies, or blocked attempts to communicate it via e-mail or social networks. Software such as Spector 360 would have captured every detail of Devine’s actions–allowing Apple to thwart the alleged unethical behavior much sooner, and giving it the tools to quickly and easily conduct an extensive investigation at the push of a button.

Implementing tools to automate monitoring and proactively protect corporate data does not necessarily mean that the company has to act as Big Brother or spy on every action of employees. Having such applications in place, though, gives IT admins access to the details if needed, and provides the tools quickly detect and identify suspicious behavior before it becomes a federal case over $1 million in kickbacks.

Should you trust Google?

By Fei on July 7, 2010

By Paul Venezia
July 07, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – It’s not the first time that I’ve had this question on my mind, but reading Matt Prigge’s post last week — which echoed my own sentiments about cloud computing — led me to contemplate why we seem to consider Google’s cloud more trustworthy than others.

Nobody pushes cloud computing harder than Google: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Apps, Google this, Google that. It’s all based on a framework of remote resources and an amorphous blob of processing that’s been tuned to spit out whatever we happen to be looking for, accept whatever documents we create, and send email and IM messages. And unlike so many other cloud service providers, Google seems to be accepted in this role, while others inspire skepticism.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Read about Google's adventures in Wi-Fi snooping in France. | Check out Neil McAllister's comparison of Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps. ]

Most people have heard Google’s corporate motto, “Do no evil,” which has been challenged again and again, from censorship in China right up to Google Street View cars detecting and cataloging nearby Wi-Fi networks. Google claims the latter was inadvertent, but the company is still in hot water for it.

Nonetheless, Google is going a step further. To feed Google Places, it’s placing cameras in certain public places and establishments, so you’ll be able to view the interior of a restaurant, say, before heading out for dinner. And this seems perfectly fine to most people. I wonder what the reaction would be if Microsoft or Oracle tried the same thing? Would it be all roses and sunshine, or would people look at some crusty, beady-eyed Oracle guy and send him packing?
Somehow, Google has convinced the world that the company isn’t, in fact, evil. That’s despite the fact that Google is the most powerful force on the Internet today — a position that companies with different corporate mentalities might wield like a truncheon.

But Google steps lightly and presumes nothing. The famously sparse home page remains free of ads and clutter — a design so beloved that when Google introduced a Microsoft Bing-like background image a few weeks ago, the Internet exploded with outrage, and the situation was quickly reversed. But screaming about background images is like yelling at a prison guard for the quality of the food: You’re still under lock and key, even if the consistency of the pudding improves.

Recently I’ve noted how much Facebook knows about you, but make no mistake, Google knows plenty, too. Based on IP information, they know your searches, naturally, but they also know everything you do with Google tools. Planning a trip? They know where you’re going and how you’re getting there if you use Google Maps and directions. Correlate that information with keywords in messages in your Gmail account and you can determine times, companions, specific destinations, the whole works. Use Google Maps on your smartphone and, technically, they could track your progress.
Given the paranoia about so many other intrusions such as government surveillance, snooping bosses, predators, whatever, it’s amazing what Google has gotten away with. We’ve taken the candy, and in return we’ve given up significant levels of privacy to some huge corporate entity that we inexplicably trust not to betray us.

Maybe we trust Google because it has been benevolent in the past — in not “monetizing” when it could have, in promoting open source here and there, and in providing whimsical perks to its employees. Sure, now and again we’ve sucked air and said, “Oops, that was kinda evil.” But strictly speaking, the company hasn’t screwed over enough people to dent its public image. The idea that Microsoft — or even Apple — could ever make that same claim is almost comical.

Google also has the benefit of being constantly available. Can you even recall the last time that Google Search was unavailable or down? Some apps have had snafus in the past — notably Gmail — but the Google main page has always been ready for service, fast as you please. And that impeccable reliability may have more to do with why folks trust Google with their details, documents, pictures, videos, and so on than anything else.

Me, I don’t trust the cloud. I don’t know that I ever will. Yet I have a Gmail account and I use Google Maps and a variety of other Google tools all the time. At this point in the evolution of the Internet, it’s impossible not to. Let’s just hope that those in control of our information can truly be trusted to do the right thing. Hope, in the end, is all we can do.

How to use Gmail to safely access email from abroad

By Fei on June 22, 2010

By Rosemary Hattersley
June 22, 2010

LONDON – If you can’t bear to be parted from your email inbox when you venture abroad, it’s important to ensure that the wireless connection you’re using to get online is secure.

However much we try and get away from it all when we head off on holiday, few of us can last the duration without touching base with relatives or colleagues. The occasional text message shouldn’t rack up too much of a bill but, given the prevalence of cheap internet access at bars and cafs, it’s tempting to log on and get an update on what’s happening in the wider world.

Unfortunately, convenient connectivity can extract a hefty price. Very few internet cafs and Wi-Fi hotspots have more than rudimentary security, making them prime targets for wireless snoops. But after a great day at the beach or visiting an iconic destination, many of us are far too relaxed to worry whether someone has an ulterior motive for hanging round a web caf for hours at a stretch.

It may be expensive to call your bank from abroad to check your balance before making an extravagant souvenir purchase, but using a free Wi-Fi connection to check your balance online could be pricier still. Wi-Fi sniffing and keylogging are rife in some parts of the world, so you really shouldn’t be entering password-protected sites or conducting confidential transactions of any sort.

Worryingly, even the commercial Wi-Fi operators offer few guarantees that your data is safe if you log in with them. You may have signed up and got a password and username in return, but not all hotspot services are as secure as they might be. Business users should be cautious about using such services in an open setting – especially if your rivals are likely to be logging in at the same hotspot.

There’s a lot to be said for disposable email addresses that you use for a single purpose, whether that’s as the spam-catcher for the mandatory registration email for a competition you want to enter, or so you can safely conduct conversations from a potentially insecure location without compromising your inbox and contacts.

Here, we look at how to secure your Gmail account for use abroad.
Use a Gmail account to access your email abroad

Step 1. Use a webmail system with HTTPS for the whole session. Most use HTTPS when asking you to log in, but they usually switch back to HTTP after authentication. The two exceptions are the web version of Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. Unless you use one of these, your mail won’t be secure.

Step 2. If your email isn’t encrypted, everyone on the same Wi-Fi network can read the content of your messages. In certain cases, a person can steal your session cookie and log into your webmail without your password. If you check your work messages using local software, you may or may not be using encryption.

Also see:
Security Advisor Broadband Advisor
If you can’t bear to be parted from your email inbox when you venture abroad, it’s important to ensure that the wireless connection you’re using to get online is secure.

Step 3. If you need to access your whole Gmail inbox while you’re away, POP email is your best option. Go to Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP and tick ‘enable POP for mail that arrives from now on’. Click Save Changes. Messages in your inbox will be readable from Google’s servers even if you aren’t connected to the web.

Step 4. Even if you don’t usually use Gmail, it’s worth signing up for an account and having emails redirected using it for the duration of your trip. Sign up at the Google website, then go to Settings, Accounts and Import and enter details of your other webmail account. Enter the password and choose how Gmail should handle the messages.

Step 5. If you wish, you can use the custom ‘From’ option in Gmail to make it appear as though your email is being sent from your regular email account. Go to Settings, Accounts and Import and click ‘Send mail from another address’. Enter your email address details, click Next Step and follow the prompts.

Step 6. If you anticipate having to wade through a lot of emails, adding a filter to the message list will let only important mail get through. Go to Filters, Create a Filter to set up a new rule. When you return from your trip, turn off the email forwarding service in the Settings, Accounts menu.

How to Use Google Buzz

By Fei on February 15, 2010

By Patrick Miller
February 15, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – On Tuesday, Google announced Buzz, a new social networking service integrated with Gmail. On Wednesday, you probably mashed your F5 key waiting for it to arrive in your Gmail account–and maybe you even tried to cut in line. By Thursday, you were likely worried about the privacy issues. Well, if you’re buzzing about Buzz, we have the tips you need to make it work for you. And if you’re wishing it would buzz off, we’ll show you how to remove it from your Gmail account.

Keep Buzz Out of Your Inbox

Google Buzz’s default settings send you an e-mail notification every time someone mentions you in a post with an @ reference or replies to one of your buzzes. Since all this stuff also shows up in your Buzz stream anyway, the redundant reminders get annoying fast.

Fortunately, Buzz e-mail notifications are easy to eliminate with Gmail’s filter tools. Just click the Create a filter link at the top of the page, to the right of the search field. In the ‘Has the words’ field, type label:buzz and click OK. In the next screen, select Skip the Inbox and Mark as read to ensure that the message doesn’t show in the inbox or set off your Gmail notifications (alternatively, you can choose to delete the notifications entirely).

(For more Buzz filtering tips, read “Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users.”)

Hide Your Followers

While Twitter users adore broadcasting their follower counts to the world, Buzz users have plenty of good reasons to keep such information private–particularly since in Buzz, the following/follower lists are not attached just to a cryptic pseudonym but to publicly viewable account names complete with a first name, a last name, and in many cases an e-mail address and links to Picasa and Blogger accounts.

Combined with Buzz’s opt-out privacy policy and automatically suggested followers, this arrangement can lead to uncomfortable situations for some users, such as one user who ended up automatically adding his landlord, another who involuntarily added a one-time contact from a Craigslist transaction, and still another whose list somehow included her abusive ex-husband. If you don’t want your contacts to be a matter of public record, you can hide your following/follower list by going to your Google Profile, choosing Edit Profile, and unchecking the Display the list of people I’m following and people following me box.

Learn to Love the Side Menu

If your Buzz feed is getting out of hand, look for several management features embedded in the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of each post. For other people’s buzzes, you can choose to mute a particularly active buzz that you don’t care about, or stop following that person. For your own buzzes, you can mute, edit the content of a buzz, delete some of the comments, or delete the buzz itself.

Prep Your Contacts List

Buzz’s privacy settings are based on your Gmail contacts list, so if you haven’t already set that up you’ll want to go through it before getting too busy with Buzz. You can do so via the Contacts menu on the left side of the Gmail window (just click the New Groups button to the left of the Search Contacts field), or through the Buzz input box’s privacy settings (click the Public button and pick Private to get the option to publish to existing Contacts groups or create a new group).

You’ll probably want to create a few commonly used groups before diving into Buzz–having to spend a few minutes dealing with the privacy settings each time you want to post a new buzz to a new group kind of kills the spontaneity of it all. (Also, the Buzz Web app doesn’t let you specify new groups–you have to do it from the normal Gmail page.)

Tie Your Sites Together

Now that you have your Buzz feed under control, it’s time to start tying in your various social networks. When Buzz first surfaced in your Gmail account, you created a Google Profile (if you didn’t have one already). At that time, you should have had the option to link other networks to your Buzz account–Flickr and Picasa accounts for sharing pictures, for example, or your Blogger feed. As of this writing, you can officially link only Blogger, Flickr, Picasa, your Google Reader Shared Items, GChat status, and Twitter accounts to your Buzz feed, though WordPress blogs can connect to Google Buzz with a little more work.

To add these sites, just click over to the Buzz tab in your Gmail and click the X Connected Sites link to bring up a window that lets you pick which ones to add. If you have an account or a page you want to link that isn’t showing up, go over to your Google Profile, click Edit Profile (in the upper-right corner) and add it to your Links list there.

While you’re connecting these sites, you can also set them to share only to certain groups of friends, which is worth doing if you don’t want buzzes about your public tweets, photos, and so on to be indexed by Google as part of your Buzz account.

Keep in mind that if you’re an avid user of Google Reader, all of your Shared Items will also be posted as buzzes. This means that anyone following you through Buzz and Reader (which is bound to be a decent amount of your follower base, considering that Buzz pulls from your Google Reader followers) is going to get hit with twice the posts, so you might want to consider keeping them separate until Google comes out with more-integrated sharing functions.

Buzz by E-Mail

You can Buzz via e-mail by sending a message to buzz@gmail.com. This works only with messages sent from your Gmail address, though, so SMS and MMS items sent through an e-mail gateway won’t do the trick.

Since you can’t define privacy permissions within an e-mail, you need to set them in advance. Start by sending a test e-mail to buzz@gmail.com; once it goes through, you’ll see that the Connected Sites option now includes privacy settings for ‘Posted via Buzz@Gmail’. Set it to Public or Private as you wish.

At the moment, only the e-mail’s image and subject heading will show up in the buzz. Anything you put in the main e-mail field will not.

POP/IMAP mail-client users will want to read Gmail’s desktop client support page for help in making sure that they’re sending from the right address (for more, see “Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users“).

Touch Up Your Text

Though Google Buzz’s input box lacks the rich text formatting options of an e-mail or blog post, you can still use a few tricks to make your text stand out. Bracketing your text with *asterisks*, _underscores_, and -dashes- will turn it into bold, italicized, and struck-through text, respectively.

Grab Some Add-Ons

Already, a handful of Buzz add-ons to help you integrate Buzz into your social life have surfaced. Firefox users should check out Buzz It, which lets you share your current Web page in Buzz via Gmail (useful if you want to keep your Google Reader shares separate from your Buzz shares.) Chrome users have Chrome Buzz, which adds a menu item that keeps tabs on your Buzz feed so that you don’t have to keep checking back to the Gmail page. And WordPress users can add their buzzes to their WordPress blog with the Google Buzz ER sidebar widget.

Push Your Buzzes to Twitter

You can peruse your Google Buzz feed just as you would read any other RSS feed by going to the URL http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/username/public/posted, where username is your Google account name. This is a feed of all your public buzzes, which can then appear in any application that can use RSS feeds–handy if you want to see buzzes in an RSS reader, for example.

Combine this feature with TwitterFeed, a service that lets you use RSS feeds to publish in Facebook and Twitter, and you can get Google Buzz to publish your buzzes to Twitter. The arrangement isn’t perfect–the RSS feed refreshes every 30 minutes–but considering that there’s no native support for Buzz-to-Twitter publishing, it’s worth trying out for now. You’ll want to set TwitterFeed to post only the description, or you’ll end up with a lot of tweets saying “Buzz from your username”; to do so, under Advanced Settings in the Create Feed page, set ‘Post Content’ to Include description only.

Kill Buzz Dead

Gone through all this and still don’t like what Buzz has to offer? You’re not alone. Unfortunately, truly getting rid of Buzz takes some doing.

You can disable Buzz by scrolling down to the bottom of your Gmail page and clicking the tiny turn off buzz link, but that won’t get rid of it completely–you’ll still have followers and connected sites, you just won’t see them from the Gmail page. (Logging in through the mobile Web app, for example, should still work fine.)

Before you eliminate Buzz entirely, you need to go through a few steps. From the main Buzz page, click the Following X People link and unfollow everyone; then click on the X followers link and block everyone. Next, you need to delete your Google Profile: Go to Google Profiles, select View My Profile, Edit profile, scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and select Delete profile.

Once you’ve done that, disable Buzz from the Gmail window. You’ll have successfully killed your Buzz.

Should You Move Your Small Business to the Cloud?

By Fei on February 2, 2010

By James A. Martin
February 2, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – Cloud computing. For some, the term is wildly nebulous. Not long ago, even Oracle’s Larry Ellison publicly asked what the heck people meant by “the cloud.”

For others, cloud computing instantly raises concerns about security and reliability. After all, Gmail, a popular cloud-based e-mail service that has endured some high-profile outages, didn’t earn the nickname “Gfail” for nothing.

Before you dismiss the cloud as a lot of vapor, though, listen to what three small-business people told us about their experiences with it:

• “We saved over $4000 in up-front costs by moving to an entirely cloud-based solution [for e-mail, Web hosting, virus protection, and more]. We were also able to substantially reduce our power bill and the costs needed to maintain and upgrade hardware.” –Bob Everett, president, Bottom-Line Consulting, a three-person firm offering various small-business services.
• “As a non-IT person, I find cloud-based applications easier to set up and use than many [computer] applications, and I don’t need to rely on internal IT support as much for assistance.” –Cristina Martin Greysman, executive vice president, business development, Vuzit, a six-employee software company.
• “A power surge nearly destroyed our in-house e-mail server. Had we not recovered it, a great deal of historical knowledge and valuable information would have been lost forever, not to mention the lost productivity for days or weeks. Now we have a secure, redundant, cloud e-mail system we can access anywhere, anytime, with a consistent interface, and it’s made our business stronger.” –Kevin Hart, partner and founder, Hart-Boillot, a ten-employee marketing and communications agency.
To be sure, cloud computing has its shortcomings (more on that later); but small businesses looking to cut computing costs and improve efficiency during this long recession are finding the many benefits of Internet-based software and services increasingly attractive. In fact, companies with 100 or fewer employees are expected to spend $2.4 billion on cloud computing services in 2010, up from $1.7 billion in 2009, according to Ray Boggs, vice president of SMB research for IDC.

Here’s what you need to know about cloud computing: what it is, pros and cons, suggested services, and tips for applying it to your business.

What Does Cloud Computing Mean?

For decades, engineers have drawn a cloud to depict a network (such as the Internet) whose inner workings were unknown to them. From there, cloud computing evolved as a term to describe free or subscription-based services delivered in real time over the Internet.

Cloud computing can refer to software as a service, such as Salesforce.com for customer relationship management (CRM); to file storage, synchronization, backup, and other utility computing, such as Dropbox; and to infrastructure as a service, including Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, which delivers customizable computing capacity over the Internet.
For further discussion of what the cloud covers, see “Cloud Computing Explained.”

Examples of Cloud Computing Services for Small Business

We queried dozens of small businesses about the cloud services they use, and why they use them. Among the most popular services were these:

• Google Apps ($50 per user per year) and Google Docs (free) are offerings from the Google cloud empire. Google Apps is a business-class version of Google Docs and includes souped-up Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs (for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and forms) components along with administration capabilities.
With either Google Apps or Google Docs, your data remains in one place no matter where you access it from, according to Brian Armstrong, founder of BuyersVote, a product review site that relies on Google’s premium services. Despite Gmail’s periodic outages, Armstrong says, Google’s cloud tools are “actually more secure on the whole because, although you’re trusting your data to an external provider, Google works hard to secure a ton of data; and it’s the sort of attention to detail that you probably don’t have time or money for in your local IT department.”
• Box.net (free for 1GB of storage; $10 for an individual plan; $15 monthly for three or more users) is an online workspace service for file sharing and collaboration. Paul Rosenfeld, cofounder and CEO of Fanminder, a mobile marketing firm with 12 employees, calls it “incredibly easy to use and powerful”: “Having a virtual team makes it nearly impossible to coordinate workflow without their tools,” Rosenfeld says.
• QuickBooks Online ($10 to $35 per month), unlike QuickBooks installed on PCs, makes collaboration easy across a small team. “It enables our bookkeeper, accountant, and outsourced CFO to all look at the same up-to-date information to advise us on our financial situation,” says Nicolas Boillot of Hart-Boillot, whose company uses the service.
• Skype is popular for its free video chats as well as for the low-cost calls to landline and cell phones that it makes possible. Brand Thunder, a browser customization firm with 11 members, uses Skype for all-team meetings, says Patrick Murphy, the company’s founder and CEO. Though Skype call quality varies, the service “allows easy and open communication between team members, despite their being geographically dispersed,” he says.
• Highrise for CRM and Basecamp for project management ($24 to $149 per month each, depending on the level of service you choose) both come from 37signals. A number of small businesses we contacted recommended these services for their feature sets and ease of use.

The Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud-based services can help small businesses dramatically reduce their software and other computing costs.

For example, Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business will cost $199 for a downloadable version and $279 for a boxed version. By comparison, Google Docs, which offers office productivity tools via the cloud, is free. (Microsoft is currently working on Web-based versions of Office 2010 apps.)

Storing files on a secure, reliable, cloud-based service helps eliminate backup worries and gives you anytime access to your files. Usually, cloud-based services are simple to use–the only things you need are a computer (or in some cases, a mobile handset), a browser, and an Internet connection. And such services require no maintenance from the user.

Easier collaboration with colleagues in distant locations is another oft-cited cloud benefit.

“If you’re the kind of small business that has employees who work from different places–or has remote employees, board members, or vendors who need access to your data–cloud computing is the only way to go,” says Rosenfeld of Fanminder.

These benefits enable small businesses to “stay focused, be more collaborative, and bring products to market more quickly, because they’ve got access to the kind of infrastructure that only large companies used to have,” says Judith Hurwitz, president and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates and a coauthor of Cloud Computing for Dummies .

The Cloud’s Dark Side

The biggest misgiving that most businesses have about the cloud involves security, according to two recent surveys.

In a December 2009 Forrester Research survey, 51 percent of SMB participants said that security and privacy concerns were their top reasons for not using cloud services.
Similarly, respondents to an IDC survey in late 2009 said that their biggest worries about cloud computing were, in descending order, security, availability, and performance.
It’s not difficult to find instances of security breaches in cloud computing, of course. On the other hand, you can’t entirely eliminate risk from any computing environment. Intruders may hack into files stored on your business’s own servers or hard drives. Hard drives may fail. Unencrypted information stored on laptops may lead to identity theft or lawsuits when the laptops go missing.

Cloud computing security lapses are “like airplane disasters,” says Rosenfeld. “Trillions of transactions happen without any problem every day. You only hear about it when something goes wrong.” Rosenfeld adds, “I know enough both to worry about [cloud computing] security and to not give it too much thought.”

Here are some other commonly cited concerns about cloud computing:

• Privacy: How much data are cloud companies like Google collecting about you, and how might that information be used?
• Availability: Will your cloud service go down unexpectedly, leaving you without access to critical customer records, e-mail, or other information for hours or more? Gmail outages are widely reported, but Salesforce.com and other well-established services have gone dark on occasion, too.
• Data loss: Some online storage sites have shut down abruptly, sending users scrambling to recover their data, sometimes with only 24 hours’ notice. And T-Mobile Sidekick users were unhappy to discover that their personal data had been erased from their devices–especially when Microsoft said that the data loss was irrevocable. (A few days later, Microsoft announced that it had recovered most of the data.)
• Data mobility and ownership: Will you be able to share data between different cloud services? If you decide to stop using a cloud service, can you get all of your data back? What format will it be in? How can you be certain that the cloud service will destroy all of your data once you’ve severed ties with it?

• Tool robustness: Cloud-based tools frequently aren’t as powerful as software applications. Google Docs, for instance, lacks a number of features that Microsoft Office has had for years, such as the ability to track changes in a text file.

Tips for Moving Into the Cloud

Once you’ve weighed the pros and cons, you may be ready to take your first steps into cloud computing. Before you do, consider these tips from small businesses that have already made the transition.

• Start small. Cloud computing is a different way of working from what most people are used to, and building familiarity and trust takes time, says Trevor Doerksen, CEO and founder of MoboVivo, a 12-member video content portal/software company. Doerksen recommends starting small–for example, by having two or more workers collaborate on a Google Docs file. Once team members grow more comfortable with the new work environment, you can start adding more cloud services to the mix.
• Think big. Can the service you’re considering scale to meet your needs as your business grows? If not, keep looking.

• Make sure you can export your data in standard formats. You’ll want to be able to export in the formats used by Word, Excel, and other programs you use. That way, you can back up (and access) your data locally or move it easily to another service later.

• Read the agreement closely. To use the service, you’ll most likely have to accept an endless service-level agreement or other contract at the outset. Read it carefully to ensure that you know what you’re paying for, what the service provider’s privacy policy is, whether there are fees for early termination, and so on.

• Get creative. Look for ways to use free or low-cost cloud tools instead of more-expensive ones, suggests Doerksen. For example, his team uses free Google Docs spreadsheets as a basic CRM system, rather than springing for a paid CRM cloud service.

• Evaluate more than one service before deciding. Most services offer a free trial, and “you can usually figure out in 10 minutes whether the service’s user interface will drive you mad or is easy to use,” says Rosenfeld.

• Consider open-source cloud services. This arrangement encourages third-party developers to build add-ons that make a cloud-based service even more feature-rich. Plus, it allows you to create your own tools for using the service that are unique to your business.

• Don’t be afraid. It makes sense to cautiously approach any big change in how you do business, and this certainly applies to moving to the cloud. But many feel that the business world is already making the transition to cloud computing, and–given the lousy economy–now is a good time to make the transition.

“I can’t think of any company that shouldn’t try it,” says Doerksen. “If you don’t, you’re missing out on an opportunity to prepare your business for the future.”

10 Great Google Chrome Extensions

By Fei on January 27, 2010

By Jared Newman
January 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – With Google releasing a stable version of Chrome that supports extensions, it’s a great time to install some of these enhancements for the Web browser. Google says there are now 1,500 extensions to choose from, which you can find can find and install here. To get you started, here are 10 of my favorites:

RSS Subscription Extension: This extension displays an icon whenever you’re on a page that can be subscribed to in an RSS feed reader.

SmoothScroll: Craving that glide you get with Apple’s multi-touch interfaces? SmoothScroll delivers, with options for scroll speed and frames per second. It works great with multi-touch track pads.

Google Translation Bar: Next time some gadget blog links to an obscure Japanese Web site, you can check it out yourself without visiting Google Translate directly.

IE Tab: Not all Web sites care that Chrome is your favorite browser, and they’ll only run in Internet Explorer. For these occasions, IE Tab emulates Internet Explorer within Chrome. Tip: The extension lacks a “Back” button, but you can navigate by right-clicking.

Instant Image Editor: Pixlr is my favorite cloud image editor — it’s a lot like Photoshop, but for free — and Instant Image Editor opens online photos up in Pixlr by holding “Alt” and right-clicking.

Bit.ly: Click the Bit.ly button, and a window appears, containing a shortened link of the page you’re on. I’m removing the Web site proper from my bookmarks.

Google Mail Checker Plus: I prefer Plus over the basic Gmail checker because it lets you preview and manage new messages directly from the current browser window. No need to switch windows just to toss some spam in the trash.

Shareaholic: See a Web page you like? Shareaholic lets you blast it out over several social networking sites and aggregators, including Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

Google Weather: And I’ll be deleting Accuweather from my bookmarks as well. This extension brings up a four-day forecast in predefined locations with one click, and it provides links to Web sites if you want to go more in depth.

Nothing: “This extension does nothing,” developer Salmonella writes. Works as advertised. Good for a chuckle, and nothing more.

Eleven Years of Google: A Look Back

By Jon on October 4, 2009

By Chris Brandrick
October 3, 2009

Google has come a long way in its eleven-year history, from its humble beginning as a Stanford University research project in 1998, to the global, multi-billion dollar online presence Google enjoys today.

Earlier this week, the company celebrated its 11th birthday and choose to mark the occasion with an all new Google Doodle, a fun take on their colorful identity. The unique logo illustrated Google’s eleven years in operation by adding an extra L to the company’s name to form a number eleven.

Google’s actual founding date is subject to debate. There are those who think that Google should bring out the cake on the September 4, the day in 1998 that Google filed its incorporation papers and officially became Google, Inc. Still others think that Google should recognize September 15, 1997 as its founding date, as that is when Google registered the google.com domain. But despite the debate, Google has celebrated its anniversary on September 27 for the past few years now, making the date somewhat official.

Any birthday offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past, so just what has Google been up to in the last eleven years?

Early Days: 1998
With 1997 behind them, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dropped the original BackRub moniker in favor of Google, a play on the mathematical term “googol.” With the Google.com domain registered and a healthy $100,000 investment from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the two Stanford students rented out a $1,700 a month garage space in California’s Menlo Park.

With a makeshift office in place, Google made it official and filed for incorporation as “Google Technology Inc” on September 4, 1998. As the rest of year played out, Google began to receive positive support in the press, and the company also hired their first employee, Craig Silverstein.

Money And Moving: 1999
Thanks to its growing workforce, the fledgling company moved twice in 1999. Google outgrew its modest garage and relocated briefly to a more suitable location in Palo Alto. In June, the company released its very first press release, detailing how the firm had secured $25 million of funding.

During the second half of the year, as the company reached forty employees, Google moved once again to offices in Mountain View, with an in-house chef included. This year also saw Google drop the exclamation mark from their logo and settling with its now world-famous branding.

Growth & Expansion: 2000
2000 was a year of growth, as along with the search engine reaching a milestone of one billion pages indexed, the website also expanded to support over fifteen languages including Chinese, French, German, Japanese and more.

How things change. This year (2000) also saw Yahoo! reveal that they will be using Google as their default search provider. At the time this was a big deal, as Yahoo! was once one of the darlings of search, which Google had originally set their eyes on to compete with; mission accomplished? Of course today paints a very different picture as now both Yahoo! and Microsoft are collectively attempting to compete with the search giant that Google has become.

Before the year was out Google also found time to launch the immensely successful AdWords program, and their Toolbar browser plug-in. With the year drawing to a close it was pretty clear that the search engine was on a meteoric rise, as Google was now handling nearly 100 million search queries a day.

Going Global: 2001
With the search engine now available in over twenty-five languages, it only seemed right that the company would expand on a global level with the opening of its first international office in Tokyo. 2001 also saw Google hire ex-Novell chief executive Eric Schmidt, who started at Google as the Chairman of the Board, before quickly moving on to become the CEO.

With the Google search index approaching three billion webpages, it seemed the perfect time to tackle a new type of search: Images. Google launched its Image Search service in July, and initially had an index of over 250 million images.

Getting Geeky: 2002
The year 2002 saw Google launch a range of new products, including the shopping tool Froogle, the experimental Google Labs, and the popular Google News service, a product of the company’s so-called “twenty percent time“. Geeky Google also decided to offer a Klingon translation of the site for all those Star Trek fans out there, bringing the total number of supports languages to over seventy. Spiderman, Warcraft 3 and pop star Shakira were amongst the most common search terms of the year.

The Written Word: 2003
2003 was one verbose year for the search-engine giant. It began in February when Google acquired Pyra Labs, creators of the Blogger service, which allowed the masses to publish their thoughts online with ease. Soon after the acquisition, Google’s company name was announced as a recognized verb, to “google it” had become synonymous with search, however Google strived to steer clear of dictonaries and protect their strong brand.

In December the controversial Google Print was launched: Now known as Google Book Search, the service allows users to view excerpts from thousands of books in digital form. Classic books and their film adaptations, such as Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter, were some of the most searched for terms on Google in 2003.

Email, Google Style: 2004
Without a doubt 2004 biggest Google news was the introduction of Gmail. The beta launched on April Fools Day, but Google made sure that Gmails was no joke, offering a then-unheard-of 1GB of storage along with a speedy user experience and the beauty of Google’s search technology built right in to your inbox. The service launched as a strictly invite-only affair, which resulted in an online gold rush of those hoping to land an invitation. After five years, Gmail finally disposed of its beta status early in June of 2009.

2004 also saw Google move to its Mountain View, California “Googleplex” headquarters, where the company still resides today. In addition, Google opened a research and development center in Tokyo and a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. With over three thousand employees, a range or products under its belt and over eight billion items in its search index Google’s growth continued to amaze.

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Eleven Years of Google: A Look Back

By Jon on October 4, 2009

By Chris Brandrick
October 3, 2009

Mapping The World: 2005
In 2005, Google’s ongoing effort to organize the world’s information continued as they released Google Maps. Since then, Google has continually improved the mapping service, adding new features such as satellite views and directions, as well as increasing the number of new searchable locations. Google Earth, a 3D satellite photography-based mapping application, soon followed, further complimenting Google’s range of location services.

2005 also saw the release of the iGoogle customizable home page, Google Reader RSS feed manager and Google Analytics. Optimized mobile versions of Gmail, Blogger, and Search were also released.

Oh, and could you imagine naming your newborn baby “Google”? It happened.

A Message From Chad & Steve: 2006

Ending months of speculation, in late 2006 Google finally revealed that they had bought online video site YouTube in a massive $1.65 billion stock transaction.

The Growth Continues: 2007
The year started with Google expanding into new territories once again, with Google Maps making its way to Australia and the Google Docs suite of tools being made available in several additional languages. Gmail was also made available to all, no longer requiring an invitation.

The biggest innovation from Google in 2007 was the addition of street level photography to Google Maps. Dubbed Street View, the service lets you view and explore a number of US locations at street level. Naturally, Street View’s introduction caused some controversy as it raised quite a few privacy concerns.

Popular search terms in 2007 included the iPhone, Facebook and Second Life. Since Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the popular video site has grown into an outright juggernaut: Even the Queen of England has her own YouTube channel.

Going Full Circle: 2008
Last year Google celebrated their tenth year in operation, and showed no signs of slowing down. The company released its first iPhone application, expanded Street View’s coverage to include a number of additional countries, revealed a new version of its Picasa photo management app, and launched Knol, a Wikipedia-type service.

In its biggest move of the year, Google announced that it would enter the browser wars with its own take on the humble Web browser. The open source Google Chrome appeared in September of last year, and featured a minimalist interface and home page with shortcuts to frequently visited pages–features that have made their way into other browsers since then.

Later in the year, Google’s foray into software continued as the first ever cell phone to use Android, Google’s open-source mobile OS, hit the scene.

Google At Present: 2009

2009 has been a busy year so far for Google, and it isn’t over yet. So far Google has added offline access to Gmail, introduced its Latitude location service, taken you to Mars with a new version of Google Earth, and re-launched the GrandCentral phone service as Google Voice in the US, to name but a few things.

Google also unveiled its Wave service in May of this year. Wave combines a range of communication and social networking activities into a single web application and is expected to be available to the masses later this year.

The biggest news from Google this year came when the firm announced that it plans to release an operating system. Google Chrome OS is expected to land next year, and will initially be aimed at low end devices such as netbooks. Several hints at what the OS could look like have leaked online, but Google have yet to comment on any supposed screenshots.

A rumored screenshot of Google’s Chrome operating system.

What Does The Future Hold?
With eleven years behind them, Google is still innovating and tweaking. What we can expect next from the search giant is anyone’s guess, but in the immediate future we can look forward to taking Chrome OS for a spin, trying out new versions of Android, and watching countless videos on YouTube.

Just be sure to remember this, Google: Don’t be evil. Please.

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Gmail Expert Tips: How to Tame Your Inbox

By Jon on July 27, 2009

By Adam Pash

Gmail ushered in a whole new way of accessing and managing e-mail. Many people think that it’s a major improvement over the old desktop-app approach. The following tips, tricks, and add-ons make the Gmail experience better still.

Turn on keyboard shortcuts: Why waste time moving your hand to the mouse every time you want to open, compose, search for, or label an e-mail message? Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts keep your hands on the home row and your inbox clean. To activate them (they’re not enabled by default), open the General tab of your Gmail settings, enable keyboard shortcuts, and hit the ? key from anywhere in Gmail to see a full run-down of your shortcuts at any time. Google Calendar shares many of the same shortcuts (including the ‘?’ query) and enables them by default.

Make Gmail and Google Calendar better with extensions: Gmail and Google Calendar are a great pair of productivity apps, but if you want to squeeze even more functionality out of them, try the Better Gmail 2 add-on (Firefox only), which adds a handful of excellent features to Gmail, including hierarchical labels and file-attachment icons. Meanwhile, Better GCal (also Firefox only) completely redesigns the Google Calendar skin.

Integrate Gmail and Google Calendar: Gmail knows when you’ve been invited to a meeting, and it offers to add the meeting to Google Calendar automatically. You can make the two even closer friends by enabling the Google Calendar gadget from Gmail Labs. The gadget creates a handy daily agenda in your Gmail sidebar that pulls scheduling data directly from your Google Calendar.

Automate your inbox: Gmail’s lack of folders throws some users for a loop initially, but it doesn’t take most people long to fall in love with labels as an organizing tool. Use the Labels drop-down menu to label any e-mail message, or just hit l if you’ve enabled shortcuts and then start typing the label you want. If you find that you’re constantly labeling and archiving the same type of e-mail, though, try creating a filter that archives, marks as read, stars, labels, forwards, or deletes any message that matches your criteria. Simply click Create a filter next to the Gmail search box, enter your filter criteria, and start automating your inbox.

Take advantage of Labs: Gmail Labs is Google’s playground for testing provisional features like Forgotten Attachment Detector (helps you avoid the obloquy associated with forgetting to include an attachment), Offline Gmail, and Tasks (Google’s budding to-do list app). The Gmail team is constantly adding new Labs features, so enable Labs and start digging for great new functionality.

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