Can’t be there myself, so figured I’d post this up for you and for me to catch up on what’s new at Google I/O. Click through to the full article to view the keynote tomorrow morning…
Can’t be there myself, so figured I’d post this up for you and for me to catch up on what’s new at Google I/O. Click through to the full article to view the keynote tomorrow morning…
Tag: google sites
Google Doc Discussions: Google Wave lite?
I among many others, mourned the loss of Wave. While it had many fantastic features, I think it was exactly this broad feature-set that caused it’s early demise. One of the features in Wave that I thought was a killer app was the ability to easily hold group discussions while collaborating on documents.
Well today, Google Docs announced their new Discussion feature that will go a long way towards resolving this issue. Watch the video for more details and see me after the break…
Delay in Google Indexing of Google Sites?
Been in touch with a couple of friends that have converted over to Google Sites from their old websites and we’ve added them to Google Webmaster Tools (so we can generate a sitemap) and submitted that sitemap back to Google Webmaster Tools.
In the past this has always been a pretty quick route to get sites indexed (or in these cases re-indexed) by Google. That being said, it appears that Google is dragging their heels. Both Advantage Insurance Group and Lake Forest Acupuncture both have been having Google download and read the sitemaps for the last two weeks and (as recently again as yesterday) and they still stand at 0% found in the Google Index.
Anyone else heard of such behavior recently? Any thoughts on what is going on that is slowing down the indexing of the sitemaps?
Is Your Google Sites Sitemap Empty?
If you’ve followed the directions that we posted in our previous posting on Sitemaps for Google Sites and you find that the sitemap is empty (not missing but actually empty) then you’ll need to follow these steps to get your sitemap completed:
- Go to Google Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) and create an account if you don’t already have one.
- “Add a Site” using the information from your current website
- Choose to verify your site using the Meta tag
- Copy the provided Meta Tag information into the “Google Webmaster Tools verification” field in the General Site Settings portion of the “Manage Site” admin page.
- Go back to Google Webmaster Tools and verify the site
Creating Sitemap for Google Sites
So you’ve got a Google Sites website and you want to submit a sitemap to your Google (and other site engines) but how do you do it? Sure, with static sites you can go ahead and use a 3rd party system that will crawl the site and create an xml file for you but if you do that, how do place that file into your Google Sites site?
Well, you could upload it to a file cabinet page but Google comes to the rescue, as you can imagine, in that there is an automated sitemap that stays sync’ed with your website that you can submit to tools but it can kind of confusing to find it.
Signing Into Google Sites In A Different Domain
This tutorial should be helpful to our clients wishing to access project intranets we’ve established in the ExhibitA.com domain using Google Sites. The challenge comes when you try and log into a Google Site (GS) that is part of a Google Apps domain (GA), it isn’t immediately obvious how to log in if email address you are using is part of a different GA domain or is a standard Google Account (like for Gmail or Google Analytics, Checkout, etc).
While the graphics and the discussion will be specfic to logging into a GS on ExhibitA.com, it can be applied to any GS hosted on a GA domain.
Google Puts Nail in Coffin of IE6
Google announced today that many of the elements of Google apps will no longer support older browers; most notably Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.
They are determined to not let lack of support for faster Javascript processing or support HTML5 get in the way of providing a great interface for their customers. As such, after March 1, 2010, Google Docs suite and Google Sites editor will not work with IE earlier than 7.0, Firefox below v3.0, Chrome below 4.0 and Safari below 3.0. Starting next week they will present messages to users to the this effect and recommending that they update.
More importantly, they intend to roll out Google Mail (Gmail) and Google Calendar later in the year. Given that Microsoft has already put out a cry to people to STOP USING IE6, I think that Docs and Sites will not be the death knell but I’m certain that when Gmail stops supporting it, Google will have effectively put the last nail in the coffin of this antiquated web browser.
I say, ABOUT TIME!
What do you think?
Google Sites to include Templates features
Google Sites, a member of the Google Apps family as well as a stand-alone feature, has added site template to the feature list of this great product. Now, instead of the relatively lame themes you now have complete site templates that include not only the overall theme of the site but also suggested content, structure and gadgets that take full advantage of the platform.
Now don’t get me wrong, the themes were nice for personal sites in a GeoCities/FrontPage kind of way but there is so much you can do with Templates. Admittedly, many of the initial templates that are available are still a little "blocky", there are a number that one would be hard pressed to tell weren’t custom sites if it weren’t for the
Google Sites API Released
The Data Liberation Front strikes again!
Google announced Friday that their is now a Google Data API for Google Sites. With this API, site administrators can now programatically:
New Features Added to Google Apps
For those of you using Google Apps, you might be interested in the following new features:
- Templates have now been added to various Google Docs types. The fine folks at Google are now including starter templates for Documents, Spreadsheets and presentations.
- Speaking of Google Spreadsheets, not only can gadgets and charts go full-screen but new number formats and functions have been added as well as handy date shortcuts for today’s date (ctrl+;) and time (ctrl+shift+;)
- Custom URLs added to Google Sites! You can now use the administrative control panel to map public sites that are hosted on Google Sites to your own domain names. If you are looking for assistance in getting this set up, please contact us as we’ll do this as an extension of our Google Apps Setup Service.
- New rules for adding people you to your contact list have been implemented. Gmail will add people that you exchange several emails with rather than doing it on the first exchange. This will help keep your contact list from swelling out of control from one-off correspondences. It also creates a "Suggested Contacts" list that you can easily move their suggestions into your normal contact list.
- Looking for better language support in Google Calendar? 8 new languages added include: Latvian, Romanian, Filipino/Tagalog, Serbian, Ukranian, Bulgarian, Hindi and Indonesian.
- iPhone users rejoice: Google Talk now available for your platform! For those of you fortunate enough to have an iPhone, you can now communicate via IM with other Google Talk users.
Not using Google Apps yet? Let us help you take fullest advantage of all this Googley goodness with our Google Apps Setup Service.