Small Business Tech

I noticed this evening that Google has added drag and drop to Gmail. You can grab a small handle at the far left portion of message listing and drag it onto a label. You can also accomplish the same by dragging the label onto a message. You can also select multiple messages and drop them onto a label.

This addition as well as the recent ability to "move" messages into labels makes Gmail more and more useful. The Gmail web interface is becoming more comfortable for former Outlook addicts.

By the way unlike tasks in Google Calendar, this feature is available in Google Apps.

Labels: email, Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook

It is not a secret that Google has sights set on Microsoft's enterprise jaugernaut - Exchange. Google Apps has begun a reseller program that has a lot of sales and promotional materials for sellers. Google's sync with nearly any smartphone strategy is working well.


The good news is that Google has a plug-in on the way that will synchronize Outlook with Google Apps email, calendar, and contacts. Google is light on details on options available or the frequency of synchronization. A release date is also missing from the details. You can watch the video here for more information.

This subject does bring us back to a previous post about Cemaphore. If you cannot wait for the Google plug-in you can option Cemaphore MailShadow Desktop Edition. Cemaphore also offers other products that backup your Exchange server to Google Apps.

Labels: Apps, Cemaphore, Exchange, Gmail, Google

Gmail is finally available offline at least for some users. Google will be rolling the experimental feature out to Gmail users in the U.S. and U.K. over the next few days.

This video explains everything...

More information is available on the official Gmail blog.

Labels: Gmail

If you use Google's Gmail or Docs or any other Google service that requires you to sign-in there is some good news from the Google team. You can now monitor where and when your account was accessed, and you can log out remotely.

If you are like me, you use web-based services such as Gmail, Google Docs, and many others at various computers. On many occasions, I have wondered later if I remembered to sign out of the service when I left the host computer.

Worry no more. Along the bottom of some Google services pages such as on Gmail, you will notice in small print the number of minutes logged into the service. There is also a link called "details". Clicking this link will give you a pop-up listing recent activity times and locations by IP address. The page also gives you your current IP address for comparison. The greatest part of this feature is the button that allows you to log out of all other sessions. No more worrying if you forgot to log out.

This is something that other online software services need to go ahead and just copy. Do not worry about pride in saying that you wish that you had thought of it first. Swallow your pride and do it for your users.

Labels: Gmail, Google Docs, software

Many have fallen in love with Google Apps including Gmail and Google Calendar, but there are those that still have gotten used to the Outlook interface and folder work flow. Good news for Outlook lovers. A start up called Cemaphore is developing an plug in for Outlook that will interface with Google Apps in much the same way that Outlook interfaces with Microsoft Exchange server.

Robert Scoble has a demonstration video. The execution is still a bit shaky in this video, and they have user preference issues to work out. Overall, the product looks very promising.

This will place Google into a position to be a killer-application for business users. One instance where I can see this to be useful is where Outlook is the bridge between a business application and email. Much software today relies on Outlook to manage email such in sending quotations or communications directly from the software. This will free companies up to use centralized, always-available email with their business applications.

This tool will also eliminate the need for expensive and IT-task-intensive Microsoft Exchange. This will satisfy the same 24/7 email access without the need for a server in the office running day and night. The main advantage of Exchange has been the always backed up central repository of email and scheduling. Google will be able to satisfy this need even more readily with their massive data infrastructure.

Some will argue that this is already available with hosted Exchange. That is true, but the pricing cannot even compare. I have reviewed hosted Exchange plans that cost from $10 to $12 per month compared to Google's $50 per year. The other problem is that a hosted Exchange provider does not exist that can offer the data integrity and availability that is available from Google.

All right. Enough Google-loving for one day.

Labels: Cemaphore, Exchange, Gmail, Google