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This week we are reporting on time and so much to cover that includes great Google news and some big changes internally. These posts are also a great chance to reflect not only what has happened in our industry but what has happened globally. This week I want to lead off with something a little different.

Chilean Miners Rescue
I think I can speak for the majority of us when I say we were all touched by this in someway during the week. I’ll be honest I didn’t really follow the events leading up to the rescue but when I couldn’t escape it on the TV channels during the week, I started to take notice. When live footage was shown of the capsule entering the shaft where the miners of Chile were stuck almost 1km underground, it made me stop and think. It put events like the Moon Landing which we, (my generation) didn’t get to experience into perspective. A moment in time where millions of people all around the world stop and hope that all will go well, and then the out pour of emotion when it all does! There is just something special about that. In saying that, it’s great to know all went well and the miners are all now safe. Here are some links to various types of multimedia covering the event:

• All 33 Chile miners freed in flawless rescue
• Chile Miner Rescue: Photos
• As they emerged: How each man spent his first moments above ground

CloudAssist.com.au gets a facelift
This week we are happy to announce CloudAssist.com.au’s face lift. While it’s not a total rennovation, we have given the front page a new coat of paint in an effort to tie our social media platform together along with recently completed projects. In the upcoming month we will be working to clean up the rest of the content and include information around our new service offerings. In the mean time check it out and let us know what you think. http://www.cloudassist.com.au

Getting the Most Out of Gmail – Google Enterprise Blog
For those of you who have already made the switch to Google Apps, I recommend reading a great article posted on this weeks Google Enterprise Blog. It covers how to make the most out of the functionality available in Gmail and tips and tricks you can use along the way. As a heads up, it covers items such as the newly released Priority Inbox, Chat, Labs, etc. I recommend heading over to the Blog to find out how you can get the most out of your Gmail user experience.

Five Great Styled Maps Examples – Google Geo Developers Blog
Some of you may not yet know, but Google recently launched a new version of the Google Maps development platform which has added a whole heap of new and cool features. In a recent Blog posting, the Maps team highlighted one of these cool features – Styled Maps, I recommend you launch the article to see what has inspired some pretty impressive results. Maps have become much more than just adding a few pointers, Maps serves a platform that represents a variety of Geo data types. If you are struggling with Geo data at the moment, and are looking for some creativity, get in contact with us, we would be more than happy to assist with our experience, creativity and support

A Quick Tip: Paste As Plain Text in Chrome
Just a quick tip for a problem that I am always coming across when copying and pasting text. When I use to copy text from websites and paste it into Google Apps it always kept the styling which was a pain. Not anymore, now you can press Control + Shift + V to paste as plain text. No more styling! Sorry this only works in Google Chrome.

Fact of the Week: Facebook is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind.

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Managed Migration, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord

We don’t like to keep having to come up with excuses for the delays in our weekly news update, but time is so short, and we are ever so busy these days. While we would like to open with some news from last week, some developments on Saturday, and today have meant we’re having a special edition.

Google Announces Self Driving Cars! [Neil Rutherfoord]
I think Minority Report vehicles will soon become a reality. Imagine being able to tell your car, through a simple Google command, to go to Coles to fetch your groceries, or even go to your childs school to fetch them. While this technology has been attempted by many organisations, and many competitions exist for budding science buffs, it takes a huge company to really make a difference. With the financial backing of Google Inc and the information they have at their disposal, Google Maps and Earth, its no wonder its something they are trying to tackle. We are thoroughly impressed and definately opens up a world of possibilities.

New File Migration Tool [Mark Wyman]
Even though it’s still in beta, we would like to announce that we have developed our own File Migration tool after quite a lot of demand. The tool will assist in moving your existing files to the Cloud with support for Google Docs, Google Sites and soon Amazon S3. If you have engaged Cloud Assist to handle your migration, it’s all apart of the service, but if you have the need for such a tool don’t hesitate to contact us. contact@cloudassist.com.au.

It’s that time again, Barcamp Brisbane [Mark Wyman]
It’s on once again and it looks like both Neil and myself will be attending this again. If you have never heard of Barcamp, it’s whats called an un-conference, much like a conference but without the structure. The great thing about this is that it’s up to the attendees on how it runs and who presents, therefore you get a wide range of presentations. There is also an emphasis on participation, you don’t need to present but there are always other ways to participate. Hope to see you there!

There you go a short a sweet version this week. We should have another one out on Friday. So until then have a good end of the week!

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Innovative Innovation, Managed Migration, Maximising Mobility, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord

Sorry we are a little late on this week with the update, but as I say every week we have been absolutly flat out. A couple more Google Apps roll outs and some custom developments, using different aspects of the Google offering, have kept us on our toes making it a really productive week. In terms of news, we have seen some cool announcements from Google, so on with the show.

Threaded email or not, now it’s your users’ choice in Gmail – Google Enterpise Blog
BIG NEWS! I feel this has to be one of the biggest announcements in regards to GMail in a very long time. Gmail’s conversation view has been one of most contested features for a very long time and it seems though Google has finally listened and realised that it’s not for everyone. You can now turn the feature off, so if you would like to turn off the conversation contact your Google Apps administrator and have the feature enabled.

More tools for viewing document revisions – Docs Blog
Google have provided another way to see the changes that have been made to a Google Document by anyone you may have shared the document with. Previously you could step back through a document’ history and see the changes were made, but the distinction between the current and previous versions were not as clear as it is now. Each user change can now appear inline in the document, and is highlighted in a different colour, so it is easy for you to distinguish who made what changes. Its a brilliant addition to the suite.

Google Promotes Replacement for JPEG Image Format – DigitalTrends
Google has just announced a new image format, called WebP, which the company claims will result in smaller file sizes for commonly shared small image files. They say we will see a massive reduction in Internet traffic, as 65% of all traffic is image related. See a comparison of these image formats here http://code.google.com/speed/webp/gallery.html

301 Redirect – How to move your web server’s files without hurting SEO – Real World Business Solutions
Turning to the website front now. At some point in time 99% of companies are going to upgrade or move their website. A very important part of this process is managing the SEO during the change. This article gives a very good overview on how to manage this, a very important read for anyone considering to update or move their website.

No monkey business at Delhi Games
The Commonwealth Games will kick off in Delhi next week, and to protect the athlete village from hoards of monkeys, authorities there have turned to rented langurs. They are a giant monkey with a black face, and are a popular antidote to the monkey threat. Apart from monkeys, rats are a major concern in the city but the Municipal Corporation of Delhi launched a drive, armed themselves with 600 rat traps and 100kg of rat-killers, to clear the venues of the rodents. Good Luck to our Aussie Athletes!

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Innovative Innovation, Managed Migration, Maximising Mobility, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord

After last week being a bit light on in Google news, this week there has been heaps of good news from the Google camp. On the Cloud Assist front we have been busy as always especially with the website audits. We have seen a great interest in these, so if you haven’t requested one make sure you do! Anyways on with the news.

Google Apps gets Two Factor Authentication – Cloud Assist
Big news out this week is that Google Apps now has Two Factor Authentication! This is really great news for those security conscious organisations who require the next level in security. If you’re an existing Google Apps user who thinks they need it, just contact your current administrator and they can enable it for you. Overall I think this is a really great step forward for Google Apps and for more information about it make sure you read the entry over at the Google Enterprise Blog.

Three million businesses have gone Google: celebrating growth, innovation and security – Google
This week saw the three millionth business choose to use Google Apps as their platform of choice for their mail and collaboration and I don’t see this slowing down any time soon. It is quite interesting though how many people we talk to who are hesitant to the idea, but why? Before you make the decision to go one way or the other, get educated and see why so many organisations have made the jump to Google Apps. Talk to us now!

5 Tablet Offerings Explored, An Infographic – HotHardware
With Christmas just around the corner, one item that will be hot on everyones wish list is going to be the Tablet. So you want an iPad right? Well before you go shopping this Christmas research your options as there will be a number of tablets available and there may be one that suits your needs a little better than the iPad. The HotHardware article is a great visual representation of what to expect from each device. Make sure you check it out.

Fact of the Week: It is impossible to lick your elbow.

Well that’s it for another week. As always have a great week from everyone at Cloud Assist!

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Innovative Innovation, Managed Migration, Maximising Mobility, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord

And there you have it, almost another week down, but before we wrap the week up we better do our Weekly Industry update. It has been a very busy week for us with staff travelling all over Australia as Google Apps and Search continues to be the hot topic! Let’s get started with the update.

The Feds Australia Goes Live – Cloud Assist
You may have seen this on the blog already, but I thought it would be worth throwing in this weeks update as well. The Feds Australia website designed by Cloud Assist went live last Friday and the feedback so far has been nothing but positive. The purpose of the project was to expand on their existing one page website and for that they chose our brochure website package. This package met all the customers requirements and has provided the business with a platform they can use to expand along side their business growth. Make sure you check out their website at thefedsaustralia.com.au.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9: What’s the fuss all about? – Digital Trends
Just when it seems the browser war may be cooling down it looks like it’s about to heat up again. Internet Explorer 9 will soon been released by Microsoft and it seems it has some new features that will put it back in the ring swinging with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. One of the neat features that I like is that it will utilise your computers GPU to help render pages faster. For those who are interested in the browser war make sure you give the article a read.

Here Comes the New Twitter.com – Mashable
I can’t say I am big user of Twitter as I just don’t have the need, yet… In saying that, I am always looking out to see what updates are being made, and this week as the company plans to integrate multimedia into the stream, Twitter announced a new version of the web client. Further to that, I believe the long term goal here is to take the added features of the third party clients and bring them back to the web client. For more about the upcoming changes make sure you read the article.

Android Will be Number 2 Platform Before 2011, Challenge Symbian by 2014 – intomobile
We’re a little lite in Google announcements this week, so I thought I would cover off something I saw in the market during the week. When I bought my Samsung Galaxy S, I was a little worried by the Android OS but I had read sales were taking off in the US so that helped me in the decision to buy the phone. This week, Gartner released a study that shows Android will be the second largest platform by 2011 and no, iOS (iPhone’s platform) won’t be first. So what does this mean? Well, for me I see companies jumping on the iPhone/iPad application band wagon. If that’s you, you may want to stop for a second and think about where the mobile market is heading and if iPhone/iPad is correct or would an Android app be a better fit, especially with the Android iPad killers hitting the market around Christmas. If you need more information around Android Apps make sure you get in touch with us – cloudassist.com.au

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Innovative Innovation, Managed Migration, Maximising Mobility, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord

Welcome to the second ever weekly round up. It’s was good to hear positive feedback after the first one. Plenty of announcements this week from around the globe and a couple by us too. So here we go for another weekly round up.

Is your website working for you? – Cloud Assist
If you subscribe to any of our social portals (see Weekly Industry News Update #1), you may already be aware that Cloud Assist are happy to announce we are offering FREE website audits. We all know website aren’t neccessarly cheap, but are you getting the return on investment that you should be? See how healthy your website is by signing up for a FREE audit now.

Google Instant – Google
Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. Google are pushing the limits of technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Their key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type. 

Earthquake-proof your business – Computerworld
The Christchurch earthquake at the weekend and the current floods in Victoria are a timely reminder for IT management to dust off its disaster management plans and ensure they are up to date and effective.

Cloud Computing: The Invisible Revolution – OSnews
While trolling the news sites this week I came across this article about Cloud Computing. Every day I still get asked what Cloud Computing is? I find this really interesting as the term now has been around for a couple of years and we all know what it can do for our/your company. But whats really behind the marketing term “Cloud Computing”? If you have a spare 5 minutes and want to get a better understanding of what Cloud Computing encompasses I highly recomend reading the article.  

Hands on: Samsung Galaxy Tabreview – TechRadar
This week saw the official release of Samsung’s answer to the iPad. Since I received my Samsung Galaxy S last week and so far been nothing less than impressed with the device I was keen to find out more about the tablet equivalent. You will always have you Apple ethuists out there which will tell you nothing comes close to the iPad, but if you can filter through that, so far the feedback has been very good! I’m pretty sure if this device came with a nice little Apple logo , people would be lining up to get one and crying if they missed out. The device has been seen in Australia so expect them to come out soon but in the mean time read the full review here. 

Microsoft BPOS down for 90 minutes; second outage in a month – ZDNet
Unfortunately Microsoft’s hosting suite of enterprise applications has seen it’s second outage inside of a month and once again relating to network issues. We all know in a connected world what an outage of 90 minutes across your whole organistation could potentially cost you! I don’t want to turn this into a Google vs Microsoft piece, but it is a worry when you compare the number. I can’t help to think, is Microsoft rushing to play catchup? 

Fact of the Week
The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E and F is “feedback” 

As you can see a very interesting week in our sector. As always until next time, have a great week from everyone here at Cloud Assist.

Filed under: Cloud Assist, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Innovative Innovation, Managed Migration, Maximising Mobility, regular, Tech News, Technology by Neil Rutherfoord