Archive for Google
Bing vs. Google
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Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine debuted June 1st with lots of fanfare. I decided to give it a try as I’ve been pretty pleased with the improvements Microsoft has been making, especially with their Small Business and Live products. I gave the old ‘Live’ search a try many times and was usually disappointed. I would type in the same search terms in the Live box and then in the Google search box and Google gave me what I was looking for. Not so with Live.
So how’s Bing done in taking away marketshare the past 3 weeks? According to an article by Ziff Davis’ Nicholas Kolakowski, Microsoft has overtaken Yahoo as the number 2 search engine and marketshare points have increased by 3 to 16.7% in the last week. People are checking it out. I’ll be watching the numbers with interest.
Aesthetically, the Bing home page is much prettier than Google’s starkness. Each day presents with a new and impressive photo, but that’s not one of the metrics we’ll look at. Let’s start with the best feature of Bing (IMHO):
Preview and Search
With Bing, type your search terms in the box and when the results are returned, hover your mouse over one of the results. Over to the right, you’ll see a vertical line with a small orange dot in the middle. Roll your mouse over to it and a preview of the site will appear without you having to leave the search page. I like this feature as it will quickly eliminate what you don’t want. Nice time and effort saver.
Bing has an added feature to present upon performing a search that Google doesn’t have. Type in your search term and in addition to the results cascading down the page, Bing also presents a separate list over to the left side of the screen. This list presents you with related searches that may be of interest. I like that. The graphic also shows that Bing shows you recent search history.
Image Search
Bing surpasses Google in this area. Click on ‘Image’ to be taken to an image search and type in your term and you’ll see rows of images without the clutter. By this I mean only images are displayed on the page – no text identifiers on each picture – much less distracting. Just hover your mouse over any image and that information will appear for you. But wait, there’s more!
Along the left, you can choose to filter your results by size, layout, color, style and people. Click the ‘+’ to expand and make your choice on how to sort and navigate through your choices. This can be handy when looking for a certain type, style, color or size of graphic.
Shopping & Local
Bing has a free rewards program you can sign up for with your Windows Live ID. Then, simply use Bing when you do your shopping comparison and you’ll be shown the cash back you earn by shopping at stores like Tiger Direct, New Egg, Home Depot and even Sears. We’re talking from 1-7% back on your purchases!
Bing already knew my location and when I typed in ‘traffic’ it gave me the Oklahoma City traffic conditions and a map. Not so with Google. I got traffic in LA and the east coast.
Extras
Over at the top and right of your screen, there’s an ‘extras’ drop down. Select ‘Webmaster Tools’ and you’ll be able to enter in your various websites and let Microsoft run some tools. You will have to verify your site by putting some code on your website page.
Conclusion
I’ve got my home page set to be Bing right now and so far, I’m pretty happy with search results, the preview, the images and the shopping. Please leave your comments and impressions.
Google Me – Set up Your Google Profile
Posted by: | CommentsLet’s all admit it, privately if that makes you feel better, that we’ve googled ourselves– ‘ego-surfing’ its been called. If you own a business and want to be well-known, then you probably want to be found when someone googles your name. Get yours here.
In April, 2009, Google infused its profile services with the option to ‘claim’ your name. The greatest advantage to doing this is that Google promises that if you fill out a profile, when someone does a name search on you, it will appear at the bottom of the first page in a Google search. This could be a huge benefit for the small business trying to be found on-line. Have your business name show up right under your name – you choose how to fill it out and how much to reveal about yourself. This is another free service from Google – the only requirement is that you have a Google account and email address.
Filling out the profile form is a bit like Facebook, but much quicker. You can list places you’ve lived, places you’ve worked, schools you’ve attended and your interests, There’s a bio form where you can do an ‘about me’ section. There is an option to put links in this form to direct your friends and associates to a particular site or announcement you may have.
It might be good to set up a Picasa or Flickr account, if you don’t have one, as there is a section to display pictures right under your name when people look at your profile. Pictures enhance your profile and you can use it as a business tool, or just for fun.
There is a contact information section for listing your email address, phone number, address. By default, this information is private. You control who can see this information. This is accomplished by either setting up some groups, or using the groups you may already have set up – for instance your contacts are considered a group. If you want to post your IM handle, you can do it here.
After the information about you is filled out and tweaked to your privacy requirements, then you can start adding links to all your social networking, blog and websites. If you’re a heavy Google user, you’ll see these fields pre-populated for you, but you can choose to show them or not. Add Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Twitter – anything you can link to, you can have show up here.
If you choose to make your contact information private, (and I did), be sure you check the ‘allow’ box below so people can get in touch with you somehow without revealing your email address.
If you wish to delve deeper into Google Profiles, check out Danny Sullivan’s post in Search Engine Land as he has more detail, including more screenshots and information on how to verify your profile.
Privacy Concerns? Here is one article on this subject from…wired.com – “Google Wants You To Profile Yourself”.
Curious about who has filled out a profile – check out the Google Profiles page and do a search! I filled mine out just yesterday and it showed up right away at the bottom of the first page. What are some of your experiences?
GMail is Available for Offline Use Now
Posted by: | CommentsThe long-awaited day has arrived—rabid Gmail users can now access their mail while offline. 
So what all can we do off-line? Here’s a list of Can’s and Cant’s:
You Can
Read mail
Respond to mail
Apply labels
Apply Stars
Search for an email
Open attachments
You Can’t
Use spell check
Do anything else that requires an internet connection (duh). I didn’t read anything about contacts being offline or not in the announcement or anywhere else. Perhaps that’s all a part of mail, not sure.
So the list of cant’s is quite a bit smaller, isn’t it? Not bad. Here’s the announcement from Google about the offline email.
To enable the offline service, go to your email and click on the Google Labs icon 
to go to the Labs. While you’re there, take a look at the other Labs offerings – they always have something going on. Then just click the radio button to enable offline access. Gears (the power behind this), will start caching your mail on your hard drive, getting ready to be accessible when you’re next offline. Google also has some settings you can tweak if you are having spotty coverage and want to be offline for awhile anyway.
I’ve seen other bloggers talking about the rollout. Some see it as a threat to Outlook, I really don’t think they are quite in the same league. For one thing, GMail still has the ‘beta’ clinging to it. That’s enough to make many IT people very nervous. It’s not an Enterprise product and it’s still web based—what if there was some kind of huge web outage or hack attack? I’m thinking this will perhaps spur Microsoft and Yahoo to upgrade their Live and Yahoo mail services to this level, that would be nice to see. Yahoo does offer off-line email with the download of Zimbra software. With Zimbra, you can have all your email together in one place – even Outlook mail (but that’s another blog article). Some interesting discussion on off-line Gmail can be found from ZDNet blogger, Garret Rogers.
This is a nice addition to Google, I’ll be glad when Windows Live has the same capabilities.
Windows Calendar Sync with Google Calendar/Windows Live Calendar with Outlook
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve talked several times about calendar syncing and what works with what. We are all looking for the holy grail of calendar syncing and we all have our unique needs and situations.
Today, we’ll talk about two other calendar syncing tools: a 1-way Google to Windows Calendar Sync and 2-way Windows Live Calendar to Outlook 2007 Calendar Sync (includes mail as well).
1-way Google to Windows Calendar Sync
First, let’s define and make clear what I mean by Windows Calendar. Windows Calendar is shipped with the Vista OS, not XP, so if you are an XP user, you can skip this—or read what you’re missing! Windows Calendar is part of a built-in Vista suite of products that replaced the sorry (IMHO) Outlook Express program. There is a calendar and a mail client that can be used if you don’t buy Outlook.
Lots of us already have and use the wildly popular Google calendar, so why not quickly connect your Google calendar with your Windows Calendar – just takes a 
couple of minutes. Here’s how:
1. Go to your Google calendar, click on ‘settings’, ‘calendar’, then click on your name. Scroll down to ‘Google calendar settings. You’ll want to click the ‘ical’ green button and it will open and show some code for your calendar. Copy this text.
2. Next, go back to your Windows Calendar, click on ‘subscribe’ and a box will open like the one below.
Go ahead and paste the code into the box and click on the next button. It will take a few seconds to get it all connected. Choose how frequently you want google to update the Windows calendar and you’re done!
Keep in mind that this will be a 1-way sync only from Google Calendar to Windows Calendar. For example, if I put an appointment on my Google calendar, it will sync to my Windows Calendar. But if I add something to my Windows Calendar, it will never show up on my Google Calendar.
Next, we’ll look at software that will connect your Outlook calendar and mail to your Windows Live Calendar and Mail.
2-way Windows Live Calendar to Outlook 2007 Calendar Sync
The sync here does not include the Outlook 2007 calendar with the Windows Calendar. I could not find that Microsoft has this functionality. Perhaps they don’t because they feel if you have the Outlook calendar, you won’t need to use the built-in Windows Calendar.
So this section deals with bringing your Outlook calendar together with your Windows Live Calendar. I actually blogged about this a couple of months ago. So the instructions are in that post.
All you need to complete this sync is a windows live ID. A live ID is required before setting up a live or hotmail account. So if you’ve been a live or hotmail user for awhile and also have Outlook, this is a nice tie-in to get both mail streams in one place. You will also need to download Outlook Connector (covered in my previous blog posting).
Microsoft has made giant steps in improving what I like to call, your ‘cloud’ experience in the past six months. We’ll be looking at some of these in this new year.
Google Labs New Offerings – Calendar & Docs Gadgets
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While browsing in gmail the other day, I saw some red text in the upper right corner of my screen, inviting me to try out some new Google improvements. So I clicked and read a bit about the latest offerings from the Google Labs.
Since most people spend hours every day in their email, they’ve added a gadget to display both your calendar and your docs right on your gmail page! Now you won’t have to switch windows so frequently to get to either your docs or your calendar. The calendar is small, but gives you a quick reference into upcoming events. You can create items on the fly and you can click on ‘options’ and have it show both the calendar (month view), and events for the day. From within the calendar settings, you can also choose to have a daily email sent to you that contains each day’s appointments.
To get to this, from your Gmail, click on the ‘Settings’ tab in the upper right corner and then you’ll see a row of tabs – the last one is ‘Google Labs’. Click it and scroll through all the cool gadgets you can add. There’s nothing to download – just click ‘enable’ to activate your choice, click the ‘save changes’ button at the bottom of the list and your Gmail will refresh and you’ll be able to use your new gadgets. I counted over two dozen items in there to make you more productive, efficient and even have a little fun!
One I may try out is the ‘Forgotten Attachment Detector’. We’ve all had an ‘oops’ moment when we hit the send button and then remembered we forgot the attachment – so awkward. One that looks kind of fun is a random email signature gadget. It will put various quotes on your email signature from famous figures.
Be sure you visit the Google Labs routinely to see the latest and greatest.
Calendar Collaboration
Posted by: | CommentsCollaboration with clients is a high priority with VAs. There are a bevy of tools out there that we all talk about and try, some of them actually work for us! How do YOU evaluate a collaboration tool and decide to use it?
I like to look at what those in my AssistU community say about them by posting some queries in our forum. This eliminates some and puts others in the forefront to be investigated further.
I’ve done several posts regarding Google calendar’s 2-way calendar sync and Plaxo with its many features. This week, I’ve also looked into SyncMyCal, OggSync, ShareO and gSyncIt.
Although this may not be my last posting on this subject (there are always new tools coming out), here’s a synopsis of the pros and cons as I’ve experienced them. For the purposes of this posting, I evaluated these apps for two criteria: ability to update/add to/change calendar appointments and the same for contacts.
Plaxo
This is my hands-down winner. What it does:
- ability to add or remove appointments via a web log-in and they will show up in my client’s Outlook calendar. Note: the client has to have Plaxo for Windows installed for this to work (of course).
- same for contacts. I update/add/delete a contact and it will sync with Outlook. Tasks will also sync, but I haven’t figured out how to put them in categories as you can in Outlook.
- A big plus with Plaxo is that it offers ‘sync points’. That is, if you or your client has a Yahoo, Google or other mail account, Plaxo offers these sync points you can set up where your calendar and contact information can be synced with Plaxo. The thing that we need to remember is that it is only a 1-way sync. That is it will read changes only from Google to Plaxo. In addition, it only recognizes and updates if you add or delete a contact. If you open an existing contact in Google or Plaxo and change a phone number, it will not be changed in the other application.
- If you have others in your address book who also use Plaxo, you will automatically get updated contact information on them whenever they update their own contact information. Nice.
Plaxo also has the increasingly popular Pulse feature – another social networking tool to use. There are many other features that remind me of Facebook.
Google Calendar
Since Google implemented their great 2-way calendar sync to use with Outlook, I can heartily recommend using this if you only need calendar syncing with Outlook (not contacts). What it does:
- Download the small program from Google and spend a few minutes getting the tool set up in your Outlook and you’re ready to go! Configure it to sync at intervals set by you and you can see the little icon working in your Outlook.
- It will sync only your primary Google calendar
- If you use Google calendar with Plaxo, you can add more than one calendar as a sync point (another plus for Plaxo)
- Contacts are not synced AT ALL. This means if you add a contact to your Google contacts, it will never appear in your Outlook contacts. You can do an initial export from Outlook and import your contacts into Google.
- Now, as you’ve already read above, if you use Google with Plaxo, you will have the 1-way syncing.
These next few I have never tried, so I really can’t review them, I’ll just give a little information based on my research.
ShareO
Check out their website. They say calendars, contacts, tasks and the inbox can all be shared. This is not a free program. This program got very poor reviews on the AssistU forums, so I’m staying away from it.
Oggsync
This is a program that syncs your calendar between Google and Outlook. It will also sync them with your mobile device. It will sync multiple Google calendars (which Google doesn’t do). There is a free and a pro version. It looked harder to set up—you have to go deep into your Outlook settings to get it set up. I really don’t need the mobile syncing part, so I just wasn’t interested in this one.
gSyncIt – updated on 7-26-2010 after receiving a comment from Dave at gSyncIt
I am the author of gSyncit and find that the Lynn’s take on my product is unjustified. She fails to draw her own conclusion of my product and opts to take the viewpoint of a _single_ user experience failing to take into consideration that the user perhaps didn’t configure the product correctly!
I encourage any user looking for a powerful and inexpensive sync solution to check out gSyncit. For $15 you can sync calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks with Google and ultimately with most mobile devices.
Dave, I’m glad you took time to write about your product. I’ve spent a little time re-looking at your website http://www.daveswebsite.com and see you’ve had quite a few software upgrades since I wrote about it nearly 2 years ago.
Doing several searches, I only found good things being said about your software – 2 reviews are below as well as I see you have links to reviews right on your home page.
http://www.thehypervisor.com/2009/09/review-gsyncit/
http://jeremywaldrop.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/synchronizing-blackberry-outlook-and-gmail-without-a-bes-server/
I’m glad your software is becoming more popular and I’m happy to post this update in my original column as well as here in the comment section.
Lynn Dye
This program looks very new and it says it syncs multiple Google calendars with Outlook AND it syncs the contacts as well. When something is that new and from a source I don’t know, I’m reticent to use it. One reviewer wrote in saying after he installed it, he lost everything on his calendar and instead got someone else’s appointments put in his calendar instead – sheesh!
SyncMyCal
Here is another program that will sync your Google to your Outlook calendar. There is a free lite version and a paid version. With the paid version, you will get 2-way contact syncing. SyncMyCal has been around for awhile and seems to have pretty good reviews.
To summarize – it seems to me that these last three programs really aren’t necessary with the advent of Google’s 2-way calendar sync unless you have multiple Google calendars you need to sync, or you need to keep your contacts synced between Outlook and Google.
Plaxo will sync calendars, contacts and tasks – all for free. There are premium features you can check out though.
For myself, using Plaxo in conjunction with Google calendar works pretty well for me. I realize there are other possibilities out there as well – feel free to share.
Calendar Sync Tool – Plaxo
Posted by: | CommentsA few weeks ago, I talked about using Google as a 2-way calendar/tasks/contacts/notes sync tool to access either your own or your client’s calendar without having to login to a desktop client or a remote computer.
I started using Plaxo with a client over a year ago. It was how I originally accessed and made changes to her calendar, contacts and tasks. It was a simple login from my web browser and my entries were synced to her Outlook. If you do use Plaxo with a client, either they will need to do the download and install to their email client, or you will need to log in and do it for them. After the install, the software leads you through choices about syncing. For example, you can choose to sync only the calendar and not contacts, etc. There will be Plaxo icons appearing in Outlook after installation.
You’re not limited to using Plaxo with just Outlook. Plaxo gives you the option to add “sync points” with Yahoo, Google, MSN, Windows Mail, Mobile and Outlook Express. It must be noted that these are all 1-way syncs. So this means if you are entering calendar updates, contacts or new tasks in, you’ll need to enter them in Yahoo, Google, etc. Then, they will sync to Plaxo. See below for an excerpt from the Plaxo Help Site that explains how it handles Google:
Google Synchronization Limits
Currently, the Google sync point is a one-way sync. It can only read data and changes to the data from Google to Plaxo. Any changes on the Plaxo side will not reflect back to your Google address book.
In addition, we only support contact deletions and additions during the sync. Changes to existing contact records will not sync to your Plaxo account.
It also must be pointed out that the web mail apps mentioned above are the 1-way sync. Since Plaxo has a software download for Outlook, that is a 2-way sync. This means when you enter a new appointment from within Plaxo, it will sync with the linked Outlook account.
When setting up your sync points with your various web accounts, Plaxo does give you options on what to sync. For example, you can choose to only sync your calendar and nothing else. If you change your mind and decide to remove a sync point, there are no worries about deleting any information. It simply stops the sync.
If one of your Plaxo contacts updates their contact information, it silently communicates this to your Plaxo account and updates it – nice.
There is a Plaxo Premium service that offers some benefits. A new service added is the ability to sync (again only 1-way) from your LinkedIn contacts to Plaxo.
There are many other features and benefits from Plaxo, such as ability to see and send your picture with each email, see pictures of your contacts (if they’ve uploaded one), get reminders of people’s birthdays and many more.
Plaxo also has a popular Pulse feature. This is Plaxo’s social networking side of things. You see your contact’s updates, blog postings, comments, etc. This can be delivered to your in-box, or you can view updates from the web.
Earlier this year Plaxo was acquired by Comcast. This gives me reason for pause, although they initially said privacy policies would not be changed, policies can be changed at any time. By choosing to be on-line and participating in a number of social networks, I have no expectation of being anonymous. Since Comcast is an information-collecting gorilla, digesting Plaxo just made it a bit bigger. To put that in perspective though, just mull over all the information Google has on all of us!
OpenOffice.org vs. Google Apps
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I blogged way last summer about Microsoft Office type replacements (see May & June, 2007 posts). Back then we discussed ThinkFree and Google Apps. Now I have a reason to really look at OpenOffice.org. I just ordered the extremely small and sweet Asus EEE computer and it comes loaded with OpenOffice.org. I’m very happy to be ‘forced’ to use both Linux and OpenOffice software! Now Microsoft still has a place in my life – on my business laptop!
Version 2.4 was released just last week and offers many enhancements to make working in the OpenOffice.org environment more robust and well, more Microsoft-y! You can read the release notes here: Reading through them, it seems that if you are a pretty experienced Office user (as I am), then you may think to yourself, “well, that’s nice that they’ve added a page down feature from within the print preview menu, but I think I’d expect that”. I’m not trying to belittle the enhancements – I’m sure my perspective would be different without my Microsoft background.
Since OpenOffice.org has been around for about 20 years now, there is an extensive and comprehensive help section complete with forums and user manuals. If you’re a group, you can even talk to them about coming to train your people.
Thinking of some differences between Google and Openoffice:
- Google apps is on-line – Openoffice isn’t. Advantage OpenOffice! (footnote:Google just announced they will have a way for users to download and work on documents offline. Only for docs – not the other apps)
- There’s a lag time when opening docs on-line vs. on your hard drive. Advantage OpenOffice
- Google docs are great for uploading and sharing in real time with someone else – not OpenOffice. Advantage Google Apps
- Google docs are available to you anywhere you have an internet connection. Not so for OpenOffice (unless you have off-site storage)
Suite Features:
OpenOffice Google Apps
Writer Docs
Calc Spreadsheet
Impress Presenter
Draw (drawings, flowcharts, etc.)
Base (database program)
There are so many comparisons that could be made. It comes down to what it is YOU need. If you don’t collaborate, you probably don’t need Google Apps. If you have some old computers around and would like to be able to do some word processing or calculating, OpenOffice.org would be perfect for that. OpenOffice also has a couple more packages than Google. However, neither of them have calendaring/email built right in and all in the same place.
I’ll post more after I get my EEE computer!
Google’s Presentation is “Suite”
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle completes its free suite of office products this week with the launch of Presentation –a product that competes with Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint software.
With this addition, Google Docs now offers, for free, a complete suite of office productivity products. All the software is web-based, nothing is downloaded to the user’s computer. As long as the user is on-line, Google products work fine.
I had to try it out. I created a new presentation, played around with the different themes, inserted different types of slides (title, bullet list, two column, etc.). A few shortcomings were that it didn’t have an option to insert a chart slide or a spreadsheet. It’s definitely a simpler product — not as many bells, whistles and options as PowerPoint, but that could be a plus for the novice user.
Presentation also allows the uploading and revision of .ppt files, so I uploaded a graphic-rich presentation and noticed quite a few slides that didn’t make the translation very well. If you have a mostly-text file, it should upload with few problems.
The feature especially touted by Google is the collaboration ability of having storage of documents on-line. If you are collaborating on a document with several people, it does alleviate the confusion of multiple versions of the same document out there. The document owner uploads the file and specifies who can access and make revisions. Google has a blog entry that announces Presentation along with a informative (and cute) video. See it here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.
Web Based Office Apps – Google Docs & Spreadsheets
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Docs & Spreadsheets is a popular web-based Microsoft Office alternative probably because of the Google name front and center. Google developed the spreadsheet program on its own, but bought out Writely in March, 2006, to use as their word processing program.
Take a short tour of the product here, www.docs.google.com.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a totally free service, you need only to sign up for a free google account.
Google allows most common file formats to be imported and edited including; DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, without losing formatting and formulas. Users will see the familiar toolbar icons for bolding, underlining and summing making the web-based application pretty easy. Files can then be saved back to your hard drive into the original file format.
Collaboration is a key feature with Google. After uploading or creating a document, click on the collaborate tab and fill out the required information. Documents can be edited in real time by multiple people with the application keeping track of who changed what and when it was revised. A on-screen chat is available when working on spreadsheets.
Some handy features are the ability to post a document as a web page – no knowledge of html necessary, and an option is available to post a document directly to your blog.
Google is painfully aware they have no presentation application to offer. They hope to remedy this by summer ’07, utilizing technology designed by Tonic Systems.
An offering launched in February this year is Google Apps Premier Edition. The site says, “With Google Apps, you can give your organization Google tools like Gmail on your custom domain (jsmith@example.com), Calendar, and Docs & Spreadsheets. You and your colleagues can check email, schedule meetings, chat in real time, collaborate on documents, and more. Google Apps is accessible via the web, so you can connect with others in your organization 24/7, no matter where you are. And it’s all hosted by Google—there’s no hardware or software to install or maintain—so you can get up and running quickly.” You can check it out here - http://www.google.com/a/.
For small biz owners, they have a suggested package of tools which may be of interest. Click the above link and read more or take an on-line tour.
I was interested to see the rumor mill was perking away last December when it was said Google was in talks with Korean-based ThinkFree to acquire them. So far,ThinkFree has said thanks, but no thanks.
Next, we’ll do a comparison of ThinkFree vs. Google and will compile a list of several other alternatives to Microsoft Office just to make things more interesting. Happy computing!
