The title provides a short answer to the question: Why do we integrate with Google Apps? An important emerging theme in cloud applications is the one-page or to be more accurate the one-browser-tab approach to design – i.e contextual integration of information across applications, so that whichever app the user happens to be, it pulls relevant information from other apps, and displays it in the right context. In the traditional desktop and client-server world, data is slave to the application that created it. In the cloud, data is liberated so it can contextually go where it is the best fit. We have used this as our architectural blueprint in Zoho, as we integrate Zoho services with each other (such as our CRM & Email integration), as well as in integrating Zoho with third parties.
Take the Google Apps marketplace announcement yesterday. At that event, there were plenty of demonstrations on how contextual integration works across vendors. Notable ones include Intuit Online Payroll integration with Google Calendar, Atlassian Jira.com integration with GMail/Docs/GTalk, and of course our own Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects integration with GMail/Docs. It is fair to say that every single case of integration demonstrated at the launch even yesterday takes the cloud based ecosystem functionality ahead of where traditional enterprise systems are capable of today. Even more important, we completed our integration with Google in under 2 months, even while they were still refining their APIs. We thank the Google team once again for inviting us to be a launch partner.
Why do we want to integrate with Google Apps? The most important browser tab, in a business context, is the one dedicated to email. Given that GMail is the cloud email provider of choice by far, it is natural for Zoho to integrate our suite with GMail and Google Apps. While we agree with Marc Benioff on enterprise apps taking design inspiration from Facebook (well, not too much inspiration, we are not sure we want to go around “poking” our customers!), we would also like to point out that email is where the majority of business users spend their time. Of course, given that Salesforce has no email strategy, it is natural for them to try to redefine the market away from email and towards social networking. This is Salesforce’s third attempt at making their CRM a business app platform, but unfortunately for them, email is a far more natural starting point than CRM – we say that as a company that has a strong CRM suite. Besides, to be a real platform, you have to have a degree of openness, and our experience with Salesforce demonstrates the opposite, and sets up a direct contrast to Google’s platform approach.
Now, what exactly is contextual integration? In a nutshell, contextual integration allows for the most relevant information to surface up to the user, regardless of where that information is stored. For years, if you wanted to get information on customers, you had to go to your CRM system. If you wanted to get information on employees, you had to go to your HRIS system, if you wanted to read email, you went to your email client.
The cloud is going to fundamentally change that. With contextual integration, everything comes together – emails, calendars, documents, CRM systems, project management, HR, accounting, all of it – all from within one single tab. In this new vision, application boundaries become fluid, in fact applications in the traditional sense take the back seat, and the user’s workflow and context dominate. The benefits are enormous, both for individual business users, as well as for IT organizations. Individual users can get more done faster, with tools that get out of their way. IT organizations reap enormous productivity gains in systems integration.
That second point, systems integration, is an important one. The vast majority of IT spending goes to systems integration/professional services. It is well known in the industry that in the old software model, licensing costs represent only 20-30% of the initial cost. But in the SaaS world, we are already seeing how much easier it is to share data among different, disparate systems. This of course, doesn’t mean that system integration costs will entirely go away. In particular, enterprise customers will still need to hire professional services to connect cloud services to their more intricate, legacy systems they still have in-house. While they might not go away, we fully expect them to substantially decrease. Small and Mid-size customers will even be able to do away with them, as cloud vendors are increasingly pre-integrating each other’s systems.
I will acknowledge that contextual integration is still in its infancy, but we (by which I mean the entire cloud ecosystem) are making rapid progress. The important thing to note about cloud applications is that, in the beginning, they were just about replicating the desktop experience. Want an email program? I’ll give you one, but instead of on a desktop client, on the web. That was step one. Step two was about improving some of the features that the desktop application provided: more storage, better scalability, better security, etc. But now cloud applications go far beyond that. Contextual integration is an example of how cloud applications – Zoho’s and everyone else’s – are bringing a whole new wave of productivity and innovation.
Sridhar Vembu is CEO of ZOHO Corp. Learn more about Zoho, a comprehensive suite of award-winning online productivity, collaboration and business applications for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as consumers, at http://www.zoho.com and the Zoho blog, http://blogs.zoho.com/. Follow the company on Twitter at @zoho.
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有了buzz，在gmail里面可用做任何效率的沟通，即时的用gtalk、广播的用buzz，P2P非即时用mail，google真的是很贪心
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Quick. A project just came on your radar, but you've got a lot on your plate already. You don't want to forget about a key fact or detail of what you have to do, but it's almost closing time. Or maybe you're just lazy and don't have any of those yellow sticky notes nearby to write down the details. Or maybe you just don't feel like logging on to your Google Calendar to create yet another reminder of whatever it is you have to accomplish.
Lots of possible scenarios, one awesome solution. This week's featured Web app is the ultimate reminder tool for any little fact or meeting time that you need to keep on your radar. It's extremely simple to use--in fact, it would probably take you less time to schedule yourself a little task update using this tool than it would any other software application there is, period. It's even faster to access than Notepad.
The name of the app is (appropriately enough) Remindr. I'd walk you through how it works, but it's pretty easy to figure out on your own. The Web app consists of a single page. On it, you'll want to enter the little note that you need to remind yourself of as well as the time said reminder should be sent. Pick a platform--Twitter, email, or Jabber/Gtalk--and enter your appropriate contact details. That's it. The service will send you a little message wherever and whenever you specified and, hopefully, you'll be adequately reminded to perform whatever task you intended to do.
And that's really the joy of using Remindr: You don't need to edit a ton of variables or login to a third-party service. Just type in your reminder, type in the time, and wait. No hassles, no fuss--just reminding.
Each week, Maximum PC picks a new free or shareware download as its favorite of... the week. Have a nifty application that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.
Google Voice may have its own mobile webapp now, but it doesn't provide notifications on your phone when you get new SMS messages. Free web service GVMax solves this problem by putting full SMS support into email and IM on your smartphone.
Google Voice's free SMS feature is reason enough to use the service, but it doesn't always integrate well with your current mobile setup. We've featured ways to turn Google Voice into a desktop-friendly, Growl-integrated Windows and Mac app, which you could, in theory, also use to forward notifications to your iPhone with previously mentioned Prowl—but that still requires your computer to be connected and running 24/7. And, if you have a different smartphone, or want to use Google Voice's SMS through something other than it's webapp, you're out of luck. GVMax is an open source web service that allows you to send and receive SMS messages through either email or GTalk, as well as get push notifications of new SMS messages on your iPhone without keeping your computer on at home.
GVMax does this by using Google Voice's SMS-to-email forwarding system, and sending those messages onto other protocols. Setting up GVMax is incredibly simple—all you need to do is log in with your Google credentials (which you may or may not be comfortable with) and it will set up all the necessary filters for you. You can then go into your preferences and decide whether you want SMS support in GTalk or email, as well as whether you want notifications pushed to your iPhone. If you're uncomfortable providing GVMax with your Google credentials (you can read their privacy statement here), you can manually set up the filters yourself as well, for which GVMax has a pretty easy tutorial.
If you choose to get SMS support in GTalk, you will receive SMS messages as IMs in your IM client (both on your computer and smartphone). Replying to the IM sends your reply as an SMS message to your contact. If the sender is in your Google contacts, their alias will already be set and you can add them to your buddy list—although you can also add contacts to your buddy list by adding [their phone number]@mygvmax.appspotchat.com as their handle (e.g. 3135551212@mygvmax.appspotchat.com), so you can initiate SMS messages from GTalk as well.
GVMax also provides email features beyond that which Google Voice provides, most namely that you not only get SMS messages forwarded to you and can reply to them via email, but you can also initiate SMS conversations by sending an email to [your contact's number]@mygvmax.appspotmail.com. Note that this email must be sent from an email address somehow associated with Google Voice, either a forwarding email or the Google account tied to it.
Lastly, if you are on an iPhone, you can get push notifications of SMS messages using Prowl—this is particularly useful if you don't use the above features, or if you use an IM client that doesn't stay logged in, as is common on the iPhone. The difference between the normal Prowl set-up and GVMax, though, is that GVMax doesn't require the Growl middleman, meaning your home computer doesn't need to be on and running all the time to give you notifications—instead, any time someone sends an SMS to your Google number, you will get a push notification sent straight to your iPhone. In addition, if you choose to have, say, both Prowl and GTalk set up, GVMax will default to GTalk when you're signed in and resort to Prowl when you're not—so you won't find yourself inundated with duplicate notifications, which is really nice.
There's quite a bit more that GVMax can do, but these are the essentials (which are still far beyond any Google Voice solution we've seen yet). Check out their user manual for more details. Thanks, manderson!
There’s hardly a person I know who is not using Gmail today. Finding an available Gmail username is no easier than finding a new .com domain.
No matter how popular Gmail is, not everyone is still aware of what he can do with it. Search option is one of the most awesome features of the service which (together with some external utilities) is a great fun to use:
Gmail advanced search is pretty well outlined on this table, here I am listing my favorite tricks:
| Search operator | Description |
| filename: | Search for messages with attachment by name or type (for example, filename:doc will find all messages with doc attachments) |
| in:anywhere | Search in all folders including Trash, all labels, spam (be default Gmail searches only inbox) |
| is:starred / is:unread / is:read / is:chat | Search for messages that are starred, unread or read, sent via Gtalk |
If you search Gmail often, you might want to save your searches to quicker access them. You can do that with one of Gmail labs tools.
In Gmail Labs accessed via Setting), find “Quick links” and enable it:
You should now see “Quick links” box in the left-hand panel in your Gail interface.
Saving searches is easy: once you perform a search within your Gmail and feel like saving it, click “Add Quick Link” located in the box and then confirm in the dialog:
After that the search will be added to the box; once you click it, the search will be quickly performed again:
1. Install this search plugin for quicker access of Gmail search: Google Mail / Gmail. With it you can search with one click of mouse.
2. GMail Date Based Quick Search (Greasemonkey) : adds date filter to left-hand panel for you to easier filter emails received:
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
3 Gmail Search Tips You Will Be Thankful For
GigaOM says the "privacy experts" weren't "placated" by Google's non-apology. I guess they aren't experts at GigaOM. http://r2.ly/xhcy
Google, after scrambling to alter certain features and add new settings to Buzz several times since its launch a week ago, has admitted that it rushed the service out the door. However, the search giant says it’s working hard to adapt to what users want and has set up a “war room” dedicated to responding as quickly as possible. The company told the BBC that while most Google services go through some testing with a small group of beta users, Buzz was released into the wild without this level of testing. Buzz product manager Todd Jackson admitted that many users of Buzz were “rightfully upset” and said Google was “very, very sorry.” He added that: “We know we need to improve things.”
Within hours of the Buzz launch, users were complaining about a number of features (or flaws) in the service, including the fact that their Gmail and GTalk contacts were publicly revealed for everyone to see, and that the setting for making that public or private was enabled by default and/or difficult to find. Users also said blocking followers wasn’t as easy as it should have been, that they couldn’t unfollow someone if they didn’t have a Google profile, and that it wasn’t clear who would be shown in their list of followers.
Many of Google’s new products and services first undergo testing with what the company calls its Trusted Testers program, in which a small group of users — primarily friends and family members of Google employees — get early access to the service and provide feedback before it’s rolled out in open beta. This was not the case with Google Buzz, the company told the BBC, although it had been used for some time internally by Google employees themselves. “Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild,” Jackson said.
According to both the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, the company has set up a “war room” at Google headquarters that monitors what users are saying about Buzz, and that the company plans to make further changes to the service in response to that feedback. The most recent changes to the service — in which Google switched from an auto-follow approach, where users found themselves following Gmail and GTalk contacts automatically, to a “suggested follow” approach — was made on Saturday by a group of Google engineers and senior executives including VP Brad Horowitz and senior engineering VP Jeff Huber. The changes are being rolled out this week.
While the company has been applauded by many for its rapid response to user complaints and the addition of new features, that doesn’t seem to have placated some privacy advocates, who say Google’s approach was wrong from the beginning. According to the LA Times, the Electronic Privacy Information Center is planning to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over Buzz. “”The bottom line is that self-regulation is not working,” center director Marc Rotenberg told the newspaper. “Google pushes the envelope, people scream and they dial back the service until the screaming subsides.”
Post photo courtesy of Flickr user So Gosehn
Google, just two days after making substantial changes to Buzz, and less than a week after the service first launched, has again altered the terms of its new chat platform to try and respond to privacy concerns from some vocal users. But will the latest changes be enough to dampen the flames of criticism and get people to focus on the service’s positive features instead of its negative ones? In his blog post about the latest changes, product manager Todd Jackson said the Google team had been “working around the clock” to respond to users’ concerns, including the auto-following of contacts from Gmail and GTalk, which some found disturbing. He wrote:
With Google Buzz, we wanted to make the getting started experience as quick and easy as possible, so that you wouldn’t have to manually peck out your social network from scratch. However, many people just wanted to check out Buzz and see if it would be useful to them, and were not happy that they were already set up to follow people.
Now, instead of auto-following everyone in your Gmail contacts, Buzz will simply show you a list of the contacts you are connected to whom you might want to follow, and then let you decide whether to do so or not. As more than one person has pointed out, this changes the service from an explicitly opt-out process to an opt-in one — which is likely to be a lot less intrusive for those who are sensitive about displaying their email contacts to the world.
In two other notable changes, Google will no longer connect your Picasa web albums and Google Reader shared items automatically (even though that just displayed content that was already public). And a new Buzz tab has been added to the settings in Gmail, which will allow users to either hide Buzz or disable it completely. This is no doubt a response to the numerous “How to disable Buzz” blog posts and discussion threads that sprang up in the wake of the service’s launch.
The fact that they need to make this many changes to Buzz may be further evidence that the members of the Google Buzz team are nerds at the dance, but at least they’re dancing as fast as they can — and they’re not shy about saying they need help learning the steps. But wouldn’t it have been easier if they asked people about this kind of stuff before they launched the product?
Related posts from GigaOM Pro:
Google Buzz’s True Home Is In the Enterprise
Post photo courtesy of Flickr user teo_ladodici
If you’re a GMail user you’ve no doubt come across a brand new section of your email called Buzz.
Buzz is Google’s new social network and it’s already created a stir. There have been concerns over privacy but all in all, the reaction has been very largely positive. This article is a simple guide explaining how to use the service.
Buzz is Google’s answer to Twitter and Facebook, remarkably similar to another service (that Facebook acquired and still exists) called Friendfeed.
Buzz is a way for you to share status updates, video, audio and images with friends. Buzz also lets you import your activity from other sites including Picasa, Flickr, Twitter, your blog and others are bound to come.
A little like Facebook you might say, but Google does dramatically improve on the stream based UI that Facebook has become synonymous with. Buzz is fast, imports more services, adds location features and it automatically ‘follows’ recommends people you communicate with frequently. More on that later, first lets get your profile set up.
Your Profile Page
One of the things Buzz prides itself on is the minimal set up time, you can literally just begin using the service and should have a number of friends on there already because , as mentioned, Buzz autofollows recommends people you communicate frequently with via email and Gtalk.
That said, you will need to get your Google Profile set up, yep, just like your Facebook one. If you do not have a Google profile, create one for yourself. Be aware that nearly everything on your Google profile page is public so only enter what you’re comfortable sharing.
You can however choose not to show your full name and also have the option of hiding the people you’re following and who are following you.
Other settings on your Google profile include fields for all your social network pages. So go right ahead and add your Flickr, Facebook, Twitter profiles. 
Also, at the foot of the edit profile page you’ll also see an option to create a custom profile URL. You only have two options here, either a number or whatever your gmail username is. Note if you choose to use your username, people will know what your gmail email address is.
Whenever you want to access your profile, simply click ‘Edit Profile’ located at the right side top of your screen.
There are 4 things you will do on Buzz:
1. Sharing
Sharing into Buzz:
• The simplest way to share into Google Buzz is by typing into the field at the top of your Buzz Stream.
You can share photos, links, status updates and videos on Buzz. If you type a link in the field, Buzz will attempt to pick up any media it finds on that page – sadly, it doesn’t do all that great a job at this.
Another way of sharing content in Google Buzz is by importing activity from other social networks you might use, e.g. Twitter or Flickr. These other social networks are known as “connected sites” and allow you to import Twitter status updates, gtalk status, new Flickr photos and more. So the moment you add a photo to Flickr, it should appear in your Buzz stream.
• You can also import any RSS feed into Buzz, it’s not a built in feature just yet but here’s a work around.
• You can use Shareaholic extension and bookmarklet to share into Google Buzz.
Sharing out of Buzz
You might find something on Buzz that you want to share elsewhere, here’s how you do it.
Email: Click email under each share and that will rapidly open up an email with a link to that post.
Copy the URL of the share: Right-click the date to the right of each item. Copy the link and then paste that into twitter, IM or wherever.
2. Reading Buzz
Your Buzz stream is similar to Facebook stream. It’s full of your friends recent shares and you can ‘comment and ‘like’ away.
Ordering the Buzz Stream. One important point however, the moment a share gets liked or commented on, it bumps back up to the top of everyone’s buzz stream. This is Buzz’s way making sure everyone see’s the most popular content.
Quietening your Buzz Stream. Of course if you’re on Buzz quite often, you’re likely to see the same popular items over and over again.
To get rid of one that you’ve had enough of seeing pop up, you can ‘mute’ it by clicking on the menu to the right of each item
3. Interacting on Buzz
Commenting and Liking
Pretty straight forward, but come across a post you like or think more people should see, ‘like’ it. Inclined to leave a comment, click comment and leave a message.
NOTE. Whenever you comment on a buzz post, you will automatically be subscribed to further comments that appear. These notifications will appear in your email inbox, to disable this – simply ‘mute’ the post as above.
Grab someone’s attention. @Someone. This isn’t perfect yet but if you want to add someone to the conversation, simply do a twitter mention by typing an “@” symbol and start typing the name you have saved in your contacts.
(note: If you don’t have that person in your gmail contacts, just look for the username in the status bar when you hover over a name and enter @<username>@gmail.com)
4. Searching Buzz
With the number of people using Buzz and the amount of content and comments flowing through the service, it’s not difficult to image how useful search on Buzz could become.
There are a number of interesting ways you can search on Buzz. Here are a selection courtesy of Kol Tregaskes:
• View Your Own Buzz Posts
Click on your name above the share field. (see right)
• Email Share – simply send a status update of file into Buzz by emailing buzz@gmail.com with your registered email address.
• Keyboard Shortcuts – these are the important ones:If you’ve enabled keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, type g b from any Gmail view and you’ll open Google Buzz.
j to move to the next share
k to move back to the previous share
m to mute
Shift+l – like a message
r – add a comment
p / n – go to the newer / older conversation
o – expand conversation
• Formatting
Buzz lets you format text in three different ways; bold, italic and strike-through.
To make something bold, simply enclosing it with asterisks (*) eg. *TheNextWeb*
To italicize a word, simply enclose it with _ eg. _TheNextWeb_
To strike through text, enclose the word with – eg. -TheNextWeb-
• How to turn off Google Buzz
At the very foot of your email page, you’ll see a “turn off Buzz’. Poof, it’s gone.
• Disable email notifications.
When someone replies to one of your Google Buzz messages, Google sends an email notification to your Gmail account. If you don’t like the notifications or they clutter your inbox, create a filter that archives or deletes all the messages that are labeled “buzz” (a built-in Gmail label). Make sure you type label:buzz (you could also use is:buzz) in the “Has the words” box and ignore Gmail’s warning.
• Add more connected sites. (via Google OS)
Google Buzz lets you import content from services like Google Reader, Picasa, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, but it’s not obvious how to add other sites. Let’s say you want to add your FriendFeed profile or the feed of your site. To do that, you need to make sure that the site links to your Google Profile or to one of the services that are associated with your Google Profile.
Google explains how to add a link to your profile and how to include a special markup (rel=”me”) that offers more information about the link: it’s a profile page.
<link rel=”me” type=”text/html” href=”http://www.google.com/profiles/your.username” />
Unfortunately, you can’t connect the site immediately after you add the link. Google needs to crawl the site before updating the connections. “When the site is re-crawled the mutual claim will be verified and feeds associated with the site will be made available within Google Buzz for the verified user.”
• Save searches (via Google OS)
You can bookmark your favorite Buzz searches by enabling the Quick Links feature from Gmail Labs. After performing a search, click on “Add quick link” and add a name for your bookmark.
• BuzzCounter
Unofficial Website Widget for your Buzz Stream. Get it here.
Note. I will keep adding the best tips & tricks I find here.
Buzz on mobile is not unlike the version on Gmail but it does have one important distinction, location.
Buzz on your mobile lets you:
How do you Buzz on your mobile?
The are four main ways to buzz on your mobile:
Here’s how you can get to Buzz if you have: (courtesy of CNet)
To keep things simple, lets visit buzz.google.com on your phone.
The mobile web app lets you update (optionally with your own location), search, view nearby buzz’s (and view a map), read the updates of those who follow you. Tap a person’s buzz and you can ‘like’, comment, and view the geotagged location on a map.
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Ok, I’m bound to have missed something. If I have please let me know politely in the comments. Anything else you think I should include, please do the same.
Also, don’t forget to follow The Next Web on Buzz!
