Microsoft has launched the public beta of Office 365, an online suite of collaboration and office tools aimed at small businesses. It includes access to Office Web Apps, plus access to hosted versions of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online. Read more »
A new report indicates that 8.8 million tablets are now in use at small and medium businesses in the U.S. The majority are surely Apple iPads, given that competing devices are just now appearing. Three new Android features for enterprise from Google could help Android adoption. Read more »
Envision this: A few minutes before a scheduled meeting time, you get an SMS that shows photos of the participants, together with data from their LinkedIn profiles, their last few tweets, and links to your most recent emails with them. That’s the idea behind Noteleaf. Read more »
The typically rapid release cycles of web apps can be problematic to manage in larger organizations, where complex systems may rely on particular pieces of functionality. To make its products more appealing to larger enterprise customers, Google is introducing a Scheduled Release option to Google Apps, Read more »
Google blogged this morning about a new no-planned-downtime for Google Apps, a promise it’s able to make because of its globally distributed infrastructure estimated at more than 1 million servers. Google’s expansive infrastructure gives it multiple options for migrating workloads during planned downtime. Read more »
Email spam is, of course, a continuing problem, even if the total amount has fallen recently. So Google has responded by adding some new spam-fighting tools to Google Apps. Administrators can now enable DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). This technology is intended to prevent “spoofing” of messages. Read more »
Some Gmail users are seeing ads below messages. Gmail has long displayed ads in its web interface, to the right of incoming messages. But some are complaining that the new placement makes it more likely that people will click on ads accidentally. Read more »
Most email providers have filtering systems that do a pretty good job of catching spam messages. But every so often, there will be a surge of spam messages that get past the filters to pollute our inboxes. Here’s a tip that may help reduce future messages. Read more »
The web-based presentation application SlideRocket has enhanced its tools for interactivity and collaboration. Users can now incorporate interactive elements — like real-time Twitter streams, widgets, commenting tools, polls and audio narration — into their presentations, in addition to traditional graphics and text. Read more »
In the battle for collaboration domination, Google has struck another blow with its suite of new features for the Google Search Appliance that let users search their Google cloud services as well as traditional data stores. Read more »
The OpenOffice community has staged a coup against project owner Oracle, but to what effect? The Document Foundation promises little more than a tired retread on an outdated office productivity meme. It’s time for the open-source community to ditch OpenOffice and instead embrace the web. Read more »
Google today announced that it was adding the option of a two-step verification process to Google Apps, which requires users to log in using a password and a verification code that’s sent to their phone via SMS or generated using a mobile app. Read more »
CSC, the company chartered by city of Los Angeles to deploy Google Apps using its trusted cloud service, says over 15,500 city employees have switched over to Google’s web-based offerings. Only four of city’s 40 departments, including the LAPD, have yet to make the switch. Read more »
Google Apps is an easy solution for managing email, calendars and documents. It can be rolled out in a matter of minutes and requires little training. But one of the biggest dilemma that Google Apps users face is how to appropriately back up their data. Read more »
Memeo today announced the GA launch of it’s Memeo Connect product that fills a glaring hole in Google’s product offering. A number of players, Memeo included, are jumping to provide a document and file syncing tool, built off the back of Google’s infrastructure. Read more »
It’s always been disappointing that Google Apps accounts (those with custom domains) haven’t had access to as many services as accounts with addresses @gmail.com. That is now changing. Selected Google Apps are now being given the opportunity to transition their users to “enhanced” Google Apps accounts. Read more »
Simon recently wrote about tempalias, one of a growing number of services that lets users create temporary email addresses. If you want to be able to create your own temporary email addresses without having to use such a service, here’s an old trick that I use. Read more »
Yesterday, Google announced that Gmail users who use IMAP (instead of POP) can now synchronize notes created and edited on the iPhone with Gmail. Naturally, my first question was what about Google Apps (name@domain.com) and Google Sync (Exchange) users? Turns out it is indeed possible. Read more »
Last August, I blogged about how my business partner and I were working through some processes to improve the way my virtual company works. We’ve continued to improve our processes, so I thought I would write an update to let you know how things have changed. Read more »
Web-based communication systems for companies and groups seem to be all the rage these days. Such systems fall into two groups: the ones that are built around projects, tickets and the like, and enterprise microblogging platforms that are more like Twitter and Facebook. Read more »
