February 28th, 2008

Google launches JotSpot for Google Apps

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:49 am

Categories: Google Page Creator

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Team, JotSpot, Service, Team Management, Corporate Communications, Management, Marketing, Garett Rogers

After what seemed like forever, Google finally re-launched a service that they acquired called JotSpot. What is JotSpot you might wonder? Well, first, the official Google name for the service is “Google Sites“. and this is how they describe it:

Google Sites makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information — from videos to presentations — and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.
Anyone can do it

Building a site is as simple as editing a document, and you don’t need anyone’s help to get started.
One-stop sharing

Create a single place to bring together all the information your team needs to share, including docs, videos, photos, calendars and attachments.
Work together

Invite co-workers, classmates, or your entire organization to edit your site with you to keep it fresh and up-to-date. And let as many or few people view your site as you want.

This application is great for making pages for a project your are working on, or a simple company intranet. The fact that sites are stored and easily accessible to people within your organization makes this a very handy tool — and with the 10GB limit, there is plenty of space for everyone.

Here are a few sample pages that get the point across:

• Company Intranet
• Club
• Project Homepage

Click here to see a video of it in action.

The new service is only available as part of the Google Apps suite — I wonder if/when it will be released to the general public? It seems like a suitable replacement for the original Google Pages to me.

February 26th, 2008

Live: Google/ComScore conference call

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:51 am

Categories: Google Checkout

Tags: Google Inc., ComScore Networks Inc., Conference Call, Garett Rogers

I will post information about the conference call starting at 2:00EST.

A New Perspective: The Consumer Electronics Buying Process

2:00 Waiting for the call to start

2:03 Still a few more minutes as people are still “dialing in”

2:07 I will post any interesting topics during the conference call and questions during the Q&A. This conference call doesn’t appear to have anything to do with what ComScore announced earlier today (yet)

2:16 search and online ads are equally important as offline marketing — not skewed one way or another. It’s important to do both online and offline advertising

2:22 About 30% of both online buyers and in-store buyers use “search” to make their decisions.

2:30 Online consumers spend more money on consumer electronics than other types of customers

2:32 “Searchers are the most valuable customers” according to Google

2:36 Use online advertising to reach the in-store buyer, measure brand impact as well as ROI of search (i guess maybe they are worried about advertisers looking at their ROI), leverage online marketing in integrated strategy

2:37 Awkward silence as she reads through questions… and now she’s asking people to ask questions because they didn’t get many :)

2:40 I asked about the ComScore report mentioned in my previous article, but they seem to be ignoring it

2:41 Call is over — not extremely exciting, sorry guys… That had the potential to be juicy, but it was far from it!

February 26th, 2008

ComScore results demolish Google’s share price

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:46 am

Categories: Google AdWords, Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., ComScore Networks Inc., Blogging, Investment, Internet, Finance, Garett Rogers

After ComScore made an announcement that clicks on Google ads have leveled off from January 2007 to January 2008, Google’s stock plummeted about $38 to below $450/share — but have since gone up slightly and are currently sitting around $456.

This is interesting timing as Google and ComScore are holding a conference call starting around 15 minutes from now. I will post live updates from the call if it’s interesting, so keep your eyes peeled on this blog starting soon. I’m definitely looking forward to the Q&A session to follow!

February 25th, 2008

Chatback: Let people comment using Google Talk

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 7:35 pm

Categories: Google Talk

Tags: Google Inc., Google Talk, E-mail Providers, Cyberthreats, Construction, Blogging, Spam, Internet, Security, Spam And Phishing

Most blogs let you leave comments, but often it’s a hassle because you have to log in and/or create an account. This is one of the reasons Google launched “chatback” — a badge that users can put on any webpage that gives readers a direct link to speak with the author.

For example, click here to chat with me.

Normally, people would put the badge right on their webpage, but I can’t do that with our current set up here at ZDNet, so I had to post a link to the badge.

What about spam though? Don’t worry, posting your badges online shouldn’t be too much of a risk because disabling old badges is one click away. If you do start getting spam, you can disable all previous badges on this page.

This comes only two days after Google added the invisible feature in Google Talk through Gmail — it definitely makes you wonder how long before a new Google Talk windows client is released.

February 25th, 2008

Google fires up this year’s Summer of Code

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:47 am

Categories: Open Source

Tags: Google Inc., Student, Scripting Languages, Programming Languages, Development Tools, Operational Accounting, Recruitment & Selection, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Software Development

Google has been doing the Summer of Code for several years now, and today they just kicked off this year’s program. It sounds like Google will be will hosting more students than last year’s 900 — the accepted applicants will “flip bytes instead of burgers” for their summer job.

The final list of participants will each get $500 in advance, then two equal payments of $2000 during the course of the program (May 26 to August 18). I would be all over this if I was still in school.

We look forward to applications from organizations and students eager to participate. Applications for organizations open March 3 and close March 12; for students, applications open March 24 and close March 31. Coding will run from May 26 through August 18.

Last year, Google hooked 900 students up with over 130 mentoring groups. These groups include organizations like Dojo, Python, Samba and Ubuntu. For more information, check out the FAQ.

February 23rd, 2008

Go stealth with Google Talk in Gmail

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:48 am

Categories: Gmail, Google Talk

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, Google Talk, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

Google introduced a Google Talk gadget into Gmail quite a while ago, but some people didn’t like that signing into Gmail also meant signing into Google Talk. For them, Google added a feature that lets you “turn off chat” by clicking a link at the bottom of the page.

Though this was an easy way to solve the problem, this left a subset of users who like being logged in (but invisible) out in the cold. Most popular chat clients already support that kind of functionality, but for some reason Google Talk always insisted that you were either online or offline — no way to be invisible.

Even though the Google Talk desktop client still doesn’t support invisible mode, the client in Gmail now does. Now when you log in, you can see a list of people available to chat, and you can remain unseen.

This could be a devil in disguise though — as more people use this setting, there will be less people in your contact list available to chat. Since most Google Talk users use it through Gmail (take a look at your contact list and count how many people don’t have a phone beside their name), this could quickly become a problem.

Even though there is some level of risk for Google, it’s probably a good thing they added this feature — it satisfies a user need that is standard everywhere else. What do you think? Will this new feature affect their user-base in a negative or positive way?

February 22nd, 2008

Sergey Brin nervous about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:17 am

Categories: Acquisition, Microsoft, Yahoo, Microsoft-Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Sergey Brin, Internet, Mergers & Acquisitions, Investment, Finance, Garett Rogers

While speaking at an event for the Lunar X-Prize, Brin said that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is “unnerving” — though I doubt Google really has anything to worry about in the short term. Many people think this is a simple case of the pot calling the kettle black.

“The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies, and when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving.” — Sergey Brin

On Google’s official blog, David Drummond went on record opposing the merger with strong words shortly after Microsoft made the announcement.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.” — David Drummond

I suspect these worries will not prevent the deal from going ahead — but it might be enough to plant seeds of doubt in regulators minds. If successful, this could really slow down the inevitable acquisition process.

February 21st, 2008

Google Health set to launch today

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:54 am

Categories: Google Health

Tags: Google Inc., Health Care, Service, Google Health, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources

Google Health has been talked about for a long time — the project was started by former Google employee, Adam Bosworth, but has been taken over by Marissa Mayer since his departure. The service has been long awaited, and heavily speculated about, but according to the AP, Google is launching a pilot program for volunteering patients the Cleveland Clinic today.

Early hints surfaced almost two years ago when I found a service called M Scrapbook (presumably short for “Medical Scrapbook”) which later changed its name to “Weaver”. Since then, we’ve seen some leaked screenshots and found more login pages. But the Associated Press is now reporting that it recently learned from the Cleveland Clinic that Google Health will finally begin its pilot today. — Tony Ruscoe, Blogoscoped

Tony Ruscoe notes that the login page he found is now the page you are directed to when you visit http://www.google.com/health — previously it went to Google Co-op. If you are one of the lucky patients that gets to test the service out — let us know about it in the TalkBack or email me.

February 19th, 2008

Microsoft to squish Google Sky like a bug?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:30 am

Categories: Google Earth, Microsoft

Tags: Google Inc., Idea, Microsoft Corp., Stellarium, Productivity, Tools & Techniques, Management, Garett Rogers

Google launched a less than spectacular, yet brimming with potential, feature to Google Earth last year called “Google Sky”. It effectively lets users turn the camera upside down to view the stars rather than cities. The idea is great — just imagine using your computer as a telescope, or a perfect reference guide to real star-watching.

The problem with Google Sky, for me at least, are the icons scattered throughout the sky and the lack of a real reference point to the ground — it’s hard to know where exactly you are looking. However, like most things at Google, it will get better given time.

Rumor has it that Microsoft is about to launch some software that has been in the making since 2002[pdf] at TED this year. If reports are true, February 27 is going to be a day that Microsoft actually demolishes something that Google made — it’s apparently called World Wide Telescope.

Those who have seen it say that it’s better than Google Earth (which isn’t surprising) and Stellarium (which is). Stellarium is an awesome tool that has everything Google Sky is missing, and more.

If rumors are true, and if Google wants to win this modern-day space race, they are going to have to do something drastic — but I’m going to bet that what you see is what you get for now.

February 16th, 2008

Gmail task list feature spotted in the wild

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 2:57 pm

Categories: Gmail, Google Calendar

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, Google Calendar, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

One of the most requested features, that has been noticeably missing from Google Calendar and Gmail from the beginning, is a task list. This feature has been on Google’s own task list for a long time, but unfortunately it’s long overdue. Now for the good news — there are brand new reports that people have been seeing them (on and off) in their accounts. I’m thinking that Google will incorporate a task list feature similar to the “Remember The Milk” addon you can install using GreaseMonkey in Firefox.

I now see that a TASK LIST can accompany one’s GMAIL…. A task list
suddenly appeared on my Gmail page yesterday (Feb 4 08) , and I don’t
know what triggered it. Someone invited me to share a calendar, and I
accepted, and that person had a task list…. Is that what caused this
TASK LIST to show on my Gmail?

…

And then I see all sorts of GREAT stuff within that Task List area –
with Due dates, and prioritization!

…

This is the most exciting function I have yet seen in the Google
suite. please help! thanks!

According to this lucky user, it works pretty good. After digging around through the Gmail source code, I can verify there are a couple references to “Tasks”, so I have no doubt this person is telling the truth. Google Calendar has been dropping hints behind the scenes since at least October of last year.

Hey everyone - thanks for the loud and very clear feedback on your desire for a to-do/task list feature. We’re pretty passionate about to- do lists here as well, and we’ve got something in the works. Of course, we’re working to add our special Google secret sauce to the to- do lists space (which can take some time to get right,) so we don’t have something to announce just yet, but the entire team is listening to these threads closely.

Please be patient - we’ll have more to talk about soon.

If I was to guess, this feature will be launched in Google Calendar and Gmail simultaneously with pretty tight integration. Can you see the new task feature? If so, send me your screenshots!