.::REALITYRECALL::.

The home of Canadian Pacific’s future intermodal hub was unveiled Friday on the outskirts of Regina.

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve made it easier to see recent interactions you’ve had with people in Gmail, added a set of customization options to Google Calendar and streamlined the discussions feature in Google documents. We also welcomed tens of thousands of new customers, including our largest governmental customer to date.

Gmail’s new people widget
The new people widget in Gmail shows up alongside email conversations and conveniently displays the contact information you have for people included on the message. When you click on someone in the widget, we’ll automatically show you a snapshot of the recent interactions you’ve had together, including email messages, calendar appointments and shared documents.

Calendar appointment slots
You asked and we listened: as of Monday, Google Calendar lets you set up blocks of appointment slots that colleagues, students and customers can reserve online. For example, professors can let students book time during office hours, and accountants can allow clients to make consultation appointments. It’s easy to embed an interactive calendar of your availability on any web page, so others can view and reserve your open appointments.

Default meeting lengths and more print options in Google Calendar
Last week, Google Calendar got two new customization options: adjustable default meeting lengths and new print options. If your typical meeting is longer or shorter than the default 30 minute appointment, you can tailor the default length once and spend less time changing the details of each meeting you create. If you prefer to have a paper printout of your agenda, Calendar now lets you print custom date ranges in addition to the standard day, week and month views.

Improvements to discussions in Google documents
A few months ago we introduced discussions in Google documents, and on Wednesday we improved the way you can converse with collaborators in a document. The discussion pane now shows the snippet of text being discussed, which adds context to each conversation, and you can view document statistics like how many people have recently viewed your document. We also made long discussions more compact by collapsing extended conversations and streamlined the format of email notifications for discussions.

Who’s gone Google?
Businesses and other organizations continue to migrate from legacy communication and collaboration technologies to Google Apps. Summer may be upon us, but Directski.com is preparing to help more people “ski for less” next winter by streamlining their operations with Google Apps. LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels—with 7,000 employees and 20 hotel and resort properties—is moving to Google Apps to help their staff provide a more enjoyable guest experience. Among other uses, LXR’s human resources team is using video chat to conduct interviews instead of flying remote candidates to Florida.

This week we also gathered in Washington, D.C. with more than 100 government IT leaders to explore how state, local and federal agencies can increase productivity and conserve taxpayer dollars with our cloud-based solutions. As part of the agenda, we took some time to celebrate dozens of agencies that have selected Google Apps in the last few months, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With more than 25,000 employees, contractors and associates who will use Google Apps for email, document collaboration, video chat and more, it’s the largest government agency to move to Google Apps yet.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Alexander Graham Bell’s great grandson is sworn in as a Canadian citizen at a special citizenship ceremony in Baddeck, N.S.

In this week’s app roundup: iPhones, morphed into kaleidoscopes; Android phones, controlled by a hand wave; iPads, becoming a great blogging tool; Dinosaurs, sent to the zoo; auto correction mistakes, fixed; BBC News, available worldwide; and much, much more. More »

Postagram: It’s a service that prints and ships your Facebook photos or pictures from your photo library as postcards. It only costs $1 to print and ship picture anywhere to the world. A pretty clever way to deliver that print touch in a digital world. Free

More »

Telus wireless customers will be able to make Skype calls on their smartphones more easily under a new partnership announced this week.

Summer may be approaching but the nights can still get a little chilly, so hook yourself up with this surprisingly easy to make and inexpensive personal fire pit. More »

Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Mailplane: Rapportive, a plugin which we’ve previously mentioned for its Gmail-enhancing powers, has recently added Twitter capabilities. So now you can follow, reply to, and retweet your contacts—all without leaving Gmail. More »

At Apple WWDC dropped a bomb on RIM and came out with their own messaging system called “iMessage”. This has similar features as to their BlackBerry Messenger. According to the Wall Street Journal it seems that Google is developed or working on offering Android users a similar feature. The report states that “Google Inc., whose Android software is the most popular operating system on smartphones, has also recently worked on a messaging application, a person familiar with the matter said.”

No other details were given but Google currently relies on third party apps like Whatsapp, Liveprofile and Kik. The objective is to keep users on a specific mobile OS and keep them loyal to the brand. RIM currently has over 55 million BBM users and Apple, when iOS 5 is officially released in the fall, will have millions of users too. It’ll be interesting to see how this all impacts text messaging.

Source: WSJ
Via: Electronista

Related posts:

1. Google: 70.2% of all Android devices run OS 2.2 or higher
2. Google seeing 350,000 Android activations per day
3. Google releases Android OS 2.2 (Froyo) for the Nexus One

American ISPs have convinced us that Internet access is expensive—getting speeds of 100Mbps will set most people back by more than $100 a month, assuming the service is even available. Where I live in Chicago, Comcast's 105Mbps service goes for a whopping $199.95 ("premium installation" and cable modem not included). Which is why it was so refreshing to see the scrappy California ISP Sonic.net this week roll out its new 1Gbps, fiber-to-the-home service… for $69.99 a month.

Sonic.net has been around since 1994, selling DSL service in California, but it has recently expanded into fiber; the company has even secured the contract to manage Google’s own 1Gbps fiber network that will connect 800+ faculty homes at Stanford University.

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Microsoft’s already brought Xbox Live integration to Windows Phone 7, and it looks like you can count on some similar, if not deeper, integration in Windows 8 as well. Speaking to The Seattle Times, Microsoft VP Mike Delman said that “Live has been successful on the Windows Phone,” and that “Live will be built into the PC. It will be the service where you get your entertainment.” Delman went on to add that “Xbox Live will the pervasive media service across devices,” and that “whether it’s us or Apple or anybody else, people want to be able to navigate through multiple devices in a certain ecosystem very seamlessly so we’re committed to that.” As you might expect, however, he was still fairly light on any further specifics, but he did say that assets like Live and SkyDrive will be unified, and he promised that Microsoft will have plenty more to show at next year’s E3 — according to Delman, “you will not just see consoles and handhelds at this show next year, this show’s going to morph into other devices.”

Microsoft talks Xbox Live integration in Windows 8, says service will be ‘pervasive’ across devices originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are 2,500 more people working in Saskatchewan than a year ago, but not all areas of the province have improved, according to new job statistics.

Sexting starting off like one of those stupid terms nobody actually uses, like netiquette. But now it’s on CNN nigh daily. So where’d this strange neologism come from? The internet has an answer! More »

Android: If you take a lot of pictures on your phone and don’t want to manually drag them onto your computer, DropSnap will automatically upload any photo you take to Dropbox, so they’re ready for you when you get home. More »

Like Comanderino Jobs said, Apple’s new toroid mothership may become the best office building in the planet. But it’s not the only spaceship that has landed on planet Earth. Gizmodo reader Felix Pharand D. has sent this high resolution comparison. More »

The New York Times reports that the Spanish police have picked up three suspects in connection with the PSN hack that brought the network down over the last month and a half.

The arrests include one man in the city of Gijón who allegedly had a computer in his house that was used to attack PSN. The same computer was reportedly involved in attacks on Spanish banks and other entities. The other two arrests took place in Valencia and Barcelona, but no further information was provided.

Spain’s National Police, according to NYT, claim that the three suspects were part of the “local leadership” of the hacking group Anonymous, and that the police found its suspects by analyzing chat logs and web pages. The arrests were made as part of an investigation that began in October of last year following a hack on the Spanish Ministry of Culture website. Anonymous has previously denied official involvement with the PSN hack, though some members have speculated that the attackers were likely connected to the group.

[Thanks, David!]

Three arrests made in connection with PSN hack originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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