Google Launches Google Apps For Government

Google has introduced a new Government Edition of Google Apps. It includes all of the features of other Google Apps editions, but adds policy and security features. Google says it was designed with guidance from the federal government, as well as the Cities of Los Angeles and Orlando.

Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and Calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for government customers.

The company also announced that Google Apps is the first cloud app suite to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. government. Kripa Krishnan, Technical Program Manager on Google Apps for Government explains:

The FISMA law applies to all information systems in use by U.S. federal government agencies to help ensure they’re secure. The federal government’s General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorization to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation. This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the cloud with confidence.

Google Apps for Government is available for any federal, state or local government in the United States.

 

Google Continues Adding Options for Google News

At the end of June, Google made some big changes to the Google News home page. In fact, Google called these changes the biggest redesign of Google News since its beta launch in 2002.

Since this redesign, Google has been making some adjustments as people have shared their feelings about it. "Some of you told us that you really liked it, especially how the 'News for you' section lets you see a stream of articles tailored to the interests you specify," says Product Manager Chris Beckmann on the Google News blog. "The positive usage data we saw during our months-long tests of the redesign has continued since we introduced it to all users of the U.S. English edition, and hundreds of thousands of you have already customized your Google News homepages. But some of you wrote in to say you missed certain aspects of the previous design, such as the ability to see results grouped by section (U.S., Business, etc.) in two columns."

 

"At Google, we're all about launching and iterating, so we've been making improvements to the design in response to your feedback," adds Beckmann. "For example, we're now showing the entire cluster of articles for each story, rather than expanding the cluster when you hover your mouse over it. We've given you the ability to hide the weather forecast from your local news section. We made the option to switch between List view and Section view more obvious."

Google has also now added an option in "News for You" for a Two-column view, which shows three top stories from each section:.

While the new version of Google News is available in English in the U.S., the company said upon launch that it would be extended over the next few months.

Google Apps Users Get New Mobile Security Options

Google has announced some new mobile device management options for Google Apps administrators. The options will be available to all Google Apps Premier and Education customers starting this week.

New options include:

- Requiring devices to use data encryption

- Auto-wiping device after specified number of failed password attempts

- Disabling the phone’s camera

- Ensuring old passwords are not reused

- Requiring passwords to be changed after specified time interval

- Disabling data synchronization when device is roaming to reduce wireless overage charges

 "It's our mission to provide users with seamless access to their data while allowing enterprise administrators to centrally manage a diverse range of mobile devices," says Google Software Engineer Dale Woodford. "We're working to enhance our device management options and to expand our list of supported devices – including Android later this year."

The new options can be found in the "mobile" tab under the "service settings in the Google Apps control panel. More information on Google Apps mobile security settings can be found here.

More Employees Visiting Social Networks At Work

Even though more companies are regulating social networking sites, employees are finding ways around security blocks, according to a new survey from Trend Micro.

The survey included 1,600 users in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, found globally social networking at work increased from 19 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2010. The highest increase in social networking in the workplace during the last two years was found among users in the U.K., which had a 6 percent increase, and Germany with a 10 percent increase.

"Social networking is an extremely important tool both for personal and professional-relationship building. And while most companies' concerns around social networking in the office center around the loss of employee productivity, what they may not realize is that many social networking sites are built on interactive technologies that give cybercriminals endless opportunities to exploit end users, steal personal identities or business data, and corrupt corporate networks with malware," said David Perry, global director of education. source:
www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Google Could Have Collected WiFi Data From Members Of Congress

Google's Street View cars could have recorded communications from some members of Congress, involved in national security issues, via unencrypted WiFi connections, according to an investigation by Consumer Watchdog's InsideGoogle.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-CA, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee and former member of the Intelligence Committee has at least one wireless network in her Washington, D.C., home that could have been breached by Google.

The consumer group has written Harman and 18 other members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee whose homes are pictured on Google's Street View which suggest their WiFi networks were scanned, and called for immediate hearings. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Report: Tough Review Of Google-ITA Deal Likely

Five days ago, Google and ITA Software announced that they'd reached a "definitive agreement" covering an acquisition. Only - if you hadn't already guessed - it looks like a government agency may have a thing or two to say, as a new report indicates that antitrust regulators will take a close look at the transaction.

The main concern is that Google might eventually withhold flight data (which ITA provides) from its search rivals (Bing is one ITA customer). The search giant's only promised to honor existing agreements so far.

As a result, there appears to be something of a competition over who will question Google's intentions. Brad Stone reported this afternoon, "According to one person familiar with the agencies that oversee federal antitrust law . . . discussions are under way between the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to see who will get to review the deal. According to this person, either agency would 'dig in pretty aggressively.'"

Stone next speculated, "Google likely favors an F.T.C. review of the deal, considering that the agency previously approved two of its previous purchases, of DoubleClick and Admob. But the Justice Department, which opposed Google's settlement in a case involving the scanning of books whose rights holders are unknown, and its proposed search deal with Yahoo, is the more likely candidate, because it typically handles air travel deals."

Brace for another round of "do no evil" blog posts authored by Google execs, then. Perhaps with a legitimate concession or two thrown in for the sake of speeding up the review process.

Just don't count on Google's travel search capabilities radically improving anytime soon considering that the matter of jurisdiction hasn't even been settled yet. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Facebook Has New Suggestions for New Users

Facebook has launched a new feature for suggesting pages of interest to new users. New people who join Facebook will be presented with a list of Pages that other people in a "similar demographic" like.

"Friends on Facebook are constantly helping each other connect with more of the people and interests that matter in their lives," says Facebook software engineer Ziqing Mao. "As more of your friends like the Facebook Pages of their favorites celebrities, public figures, businesses and organizations, you may see them suggested to you in the Suggestions box in the right column of your home page. You also see posts in your News Feed as your friends like Pages or share content from them."

"But if you're new to Facebook, you don't have a lot of friends to help surface those suggestions," adds Mao. "That makes it to harder to connect with all of the interests and people you care about so you can receive updates from them."

Here's what new users will see:



Even Facebook has to worry about keeping people interested, and if people start using the service and quickly connect to things that interest them, it could go a long way for user retention.

As large a network as Facebook is, this shows that even the big guys still have to think about stuff like this.

Google Now Showing Local Results for State Wide Searches

It is no news that Google is displaying local search results in the SERPS these days. If you are looking for anything from a dentist to an Italian restaurant, then you will most likely see a map with a list of local businesses in the searched for city. But what about a statewide search for something like “Colorado Used Cars”?

Google has been rolling out local results on Statewide searches for some time. It seems that it initially started with smaller states like New Jersey, but recently state wide results can be seen in the likes of much larger (in land mass) states such as Utah, Washington, and even Alaska.

A Little Experiment

To find out just how many local states results are creeping into Google’s SERPS, I took the following keywords (Used Cars, Dentist, and Italian Restaurants) and went state by state to see if local map listings would pop up. The findings are as follows..

State + Used Cars brought up map listings in 23 states

State + Dentist brought up map listings in 21 states

State + Italian Restaurants brought up map listings in 24 states

20 states did not show any local results

I first looked at the states that didn’t show any local results and it seemed that they fit into 2 major categories. They either were in the top 25 most populated states, or in the top 25 least populated states, which pretty much means that there was no apparent reasoning to why certain states where showing listings, and certain states weren’t…statistically speaking.

Another important observation is that the physical map that is displayed doesn’t show a picture of the entire state, but usually focuses on a region like displayed in the picture below. Each term also brings up a different region which means that it is determined by the listings more than a location.

City Vs. State Ranking Factors

When you search for a business in a given city, Google displayed results based on a centriod that has been determined. The closer you are to the centriod, the better change you have for ranking if all else is equal. When it comes to statewide searches, the only location qualification is that your business is in the searched for state. Let’s use a few Utah Searches as an example.

Utah Used Cars top listing is in Salt Lake City

Utah Dentist top listing is in Lehi

Utah Italian Restaurant top listing is in Park City

Utah Carpet Cleaners top listing is in West Jordan

Most other ranking factors seemed to be equally important on the city and state levels such as correct categorization, quality and quantity of citations, reviews, user generated content, and (though I disagree with the big G in this one) location and keywords in the Business title.

Potential Steps To Take

Given that it is going to become important to optimize for both city and state for some industries, I think that suitable steps to take would be as followed:

1. Check and see if your Industry and State are showing local listings.
2. Make sure you aren’t stuffing location keywords into categories. If your category is city + keyword then what happens when someone does a search for state + keyword.
3. Do keyword research for city vs. state terms. Your business might benefit by trying to go after one or the other.
4. Look at citations from businesses in other areas of the state and see if you can use them.
5. Create coupons that are focused on citizens of your state.

State results are only the beginning of Google’s quest to display local content and can foresee the day where searches based on landmark, neighborhood, city, county, state, or even nation will display the best of the best businesses around.

source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

Facebook Letting App Users Get Notifications Through Email

Today Facebook announced that it is giving users the option to receive updates from Facebook applications in their email. This would work similar to how email notifications do, but don't worry, you have to opt in for developers to be able to email you. According to Facebook, they will not be able to access your email address without your consent.

"You can now use the rules and routing mechanisms of your email inbox to control how you communicate with applications," says Faecbook's Arun Vijayvergiya. "This email option is one of a number of upcoming changes we announced in October to give you a faster and more connected experience when interacting with external applications on Facebook. You will soon start to see dialog boxes on application pages from external developers asking you if you would like to receive communication about their applications through your primary email address."

If you do sign up to receive emails from any application, you can also unsubscribe, as each email will have an "unsubscribe" link. However, if you unsubscribe, and the application doesn't comply with your request Facebook suggests you report it to the FTC. That said, they do offer the option to report applications for violating guidelines on the application pages themselves. It is unclear if this will be effective for general email spamming.

"Some applications may require an email address in order to use their service, in the same way that websites might when you sign up for them," says Vijayvergiya. "In all cases, you will have the option to click the 'change' link in the dialog box and share an anonymous version of your email address, called a proxied email address. You can always choose to stop using an application or use a different application instead if you don't want to receive emails from a particular application."

Facebook says developers will be held to the "highest" guidelines to help prevent spam, misleading info, and malicious intent, but the company still encourages the use of caution when communicating with apps.

As for future updates, Facebook will also soon start showing the option to receive notifications in new places. There will be a feature called "Counters" that will appear next to bookmarked apps on the user's home page. There will also be new apps and games dashboards where users will be able to get app updates. Users will also soon no longer receive updates from apps in the notifications channel on Facebook.

66% of Government Agencies Use Social Networking

A recent study came out this week from the Human Capital Institute and Saba about government organizations' use of social networking and collaboration tools. The study looked at the effectiveness of social networking in conducting government work, how agency type affects the use, and perception of social networking, and the future expectations and barriers for its use.

"This study looks at the challenges and opportunities faced by government agencies, particularly at a time when private enterprise is adopting multiple forms of social networking to help them retain talent, improve service, and meet competitive challenges," said Mike DeMarco, HCI's Senior Research Analyst. "We were pleased to see that sixty-six percent of government workplaces surveyed reported using at least one social networking tool."

66% of all government agencies currently use some form of social networking – from blogs and wikis to instant messaging and discussion boards, according to the study. 31% of those surveyed have embraced social media as a means of providing a more efficient customer feedback channel.

Other highlights from the study include:

- Federal agencies (defense and non-defense) lead in using social networking tools for project planning and collaboration— while state government agencies lag.

- Fifty-five percent of government workers are uncertain about the future use of social networking tools.

- Security restrictions — chiefly concerns about the loss of confidential information — are the largest barrier to future implementation of social networking tools within governments.

"Real-time collaboration and social networking technologies are rapidly migrating from consumers to both enterprises and government agencies," said Saba Chairman and CEO Bobby Yazdani.

source: http://www.webpronews.com

Google Pledges $1 Million To Haiti Relief Efforts, Bing & Yahoo Add Donation Info

As real-time searches for information on the Haiti earthquake disaster have bombarded Twitter, Facebook, as well as mainstream media websites and the search engines themselves, each of the major search engines have responded by linking information about disaster relief efforts from their homepages.

Google has created the Google Crisis Response page, on which they pledged: “Google will also donate $1 million to help organizations provide relief.”

They have provided an easy way to donate to UNICEF and CARE via Google checkout, as well as providing updated imagery from Google Earth and additional information. You can also read the Google.org blog (philanthropy arm of Google) to learn more about their efforts.

Yahoo has created a special logo appearing sitewide:

Which sends users to the Network for Good donation website.

From the Bing.com homepage, they have linked to a growing list of charitable organizations by MSNBC - Haiti Earthquake: How to Help.

Ask.com has also created a set of search results from its homepage featured question: How can I help Haiti?

source: http://searchengineland.com

Microsoft Office Disappears from Online Shelves

Microsoft has been preparing for this day since the initial injunction was ordered in August of last year, but both CNET and Computerworld are reporting that most versions of Office were unavailable for purchase from the online store for at least part of the day.

Microsoft has confirmed the reports and noted that some product download options will be unavailable today.

As to what went missing, CNET reports:

“Most versions of Office were unavailable from Microsoft’s online store. As of 1:30 p.m. PST, only the $679 Office Ultimate edition was listed in stock.”

“The software maker also pulled Office 2003 Professional from its MSDN and TechNet developer site. However, the company noted that the standard version of Office 2003 is still available and the professional version will be back online for subscribers soon.”

The ongoing saga stems from an i4i Inc. lawsuit asserting that Microsoft used its patented XML technology in current versions of Microsoft Word. The injunction was first ordered in August, but Microsoft was granted an extension and a stay, enabling it to continue selling Microsoft Word pending the appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower courts ruling in late December, and Microsoft has been scrambling to remove the custom XML feature ever since.

Office’s absence likely won’t be long-term though. Microsoft issued the following statement:

“We are taking the steps necessary to bring our systems into compliance with the recent U.S. court ruling, and some of our product download options will be down temporarily as part of this process … We expect to be back to business as usual soon after January 11. We’ll have more detailed information to share within 24 hours.”

source: http://mashable.com/

Top Google Apps in 2009

Here's a list of my favorite Google services that were launched or were significantly improved in 2009.

10. Google Public DNS - a DNS resolution system that doesn't offer too many features, but it's free and fast. Very fast.

9. Google Fast Flip - a service that lets you quickly browse news. It's easy to use and it's a better way to discover interesting news articles than Google News.

8. Google Squared - an innovative way to dynamically generate collections and facts about each item. It's an extension of Google Sets and you can use it to create lists.

7. Google Wave - an online platform for collaboration in real-time. While there are many interesting features in Google Wave, Google's implementation of the Wave protocol is too confusing and difficult to use.

6. Google Translate added new languages, made it easier to find web pages written in other languages and to translate web pages in real-time. You can now use Google Translate in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Groups and many other Google services.

5. Google Maps aggregated information about locations in place pages, started to show more search results and to use its own mapping data in the US. Google also launched Google Maps Navigation, "internet-connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance. It is part of Google Maps for mobile and is available for phones with Android 1.6 and higher." Unlike other navigation apps, Google's Android app is free, but it's limited to the US.

4. Google Image Search added many advanced search options: color filter, size filter, Creative Commons search and an option that lets you find similar images. There's also a great Android app that helps you search the web visually: Google Goggles.

3. Google Search added a toolbelt with many options that help you refine search results: you can restrict the results to forums and recent web pages, find pages shared by your friends, view page thumbnails and explore related searches. Other changes include a redesigned homepage with bigger buttons and less links, Google Suggest as a standard feature and more sitelinks.

2. Android, Google's mobile operating system, had 3 major releases and it's now used by more than 20 devices. Companies like HTC, Motorola, Samsung bet on Android and there are many cool applications that are only available for Android: Goggles, Sky Map, Google Navigation.

1. Google Chrome, the most innovative Google software released last year, continues to be a trendsetter when it comes to simplicity and great performance. It now supports themes and extensions, it has a bookmark sync engine and you can download native versions for Linux and Mac. Chrome is the most significant component of Chrome OS, a browser-centric operating system for notebooks, and a strategic project that helps Google push the web forward. Even if that means improving Internet Explorer.

source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com

Google Simplifies Finding Nearby Businesses from Your Phone

Google has released what is called the "Near me Now" feature for the iPhone and Android browser. The feature shows nearby businesses by category based on the user's location.

"'Near me now' was designed to address two user problems," explains Google's Mobile team. "First, we wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you're standing right in front of a business or if it's just a short walk away. For example, you may want to know what other customers think about a restaurant before you go inside (see quick video below) or what they have been raving about on the menu before you order. By selecting the 'Explore right here' option, you can find out more about a place 'right here' with just a few clicks."


"Second, we wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple," the team adds. "Imagine that you emerge from the subway station and you want to grab a coffee, but you don't see a coffee shop around you. You can simply search for all nearby coffee shops by using 'Near me now'. To search other categories of places not shown, 'Browse more categories' provides access to our local search product with more category choices."