Archive for Google
Google Tool Bar Auto-Fill
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle is good, Google is great, but I resist using every tool they come out with. One I’ve resisted is the Google Toolbar as it takes up real estate at the top of my screen and I wonder what all it will know about me.
However, I was on a training call last week and our instructor mentioned she uses the auto-fill feature from the Google tool bar for filling out web forms. Quickly and effortlessly, the form was filled out with no loss of time or having to stop and look up information.
The download and install took under a minute and I immediately filled out two profiles using the AutoFill function – very easy. You can choose which is the default. You can add a credit card and require a password to access that for web forms. I chose not to do that right now.
Need several ‘identities’ for your web forms – perhaps a business and a personal? No problemo, feel free to make as many profiles as you need.
Of course, the Google Toolbar has many more features. Check them out along with detailed explanations for their uses.
Google makes using the Auto-Fill function of their toolbar even easier by making this very short video.
What are your favorite toolbar features?
Microsoft has updated their tool bar, which I find more useful since I use more of their services. We’ll look at that next week, perhaps along with the Yahoo toolbar.
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?
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.
Google Calendar 2-Way Sync & Contacts
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It seems we all are looking for the ‘magic bullet’ of syncing software. We want to be able to access our email, contacts and calendar remotely, on our main computer and on our PDA.
A big ‘must’ for Virtual Assistants is the ability to access our clients’ calendars. We need access to post appointments, send invitations to meetings or find free time for setting up meetings, trips, etc.
When I moved a client to using gmail so I could access her email, I did some research into the google calendaring feature. I had heard so many great things about the google calendar and how easily it synced with people’s smart phones and outlook and other mail programs.
To my delight, I found that Google had introduced the very desirable ’2-way sync’ feature earlier this year. Google has all the instructions here.
So, download the file and follow the instructions to install it (you’ll have to have outlook closed). After installation, you’ll get the below box where you’ll then enter your gmail address and password. Then you will want to select the 2-way radio button. The only other option is how often to sync. Default is 120″, the lowest interval you can select is 10″.
Google Calendar Sync Options
Then pull up outlook and you’ll see a little calendar icon in your system tray. Hover your mouse over it and it identifies itself. When you see arrows moving on the icon, you know it’s syncing.
If you have more than one google calendar, it will only sync to your main calendar, so choose wisely. If you have a calendar further down on your list, you can go into the google calendar settings and decide which calendar will be your main calendar (a nice feature).
In addition to the sync function, google also has some other interesting calendar features. For example, code is provided if you want to insert your calendar inside your blog or website – handy if you have events to publicize. There are a host of options available for sharing your calendar on-line with others. Just choose the permissions you want others to have.
I’ve been using it for several months and it seems to be working well. You can also import your outlook contacts into google. From outlook, I did a file export into a .csv file (currently the only supported import/export method), and then imported that into google. More information here.
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!
