WebProNews

L.A. Approves $7.25 Million Google Apps Contract

The City of Angels has shown a great deal of faith in Google.  Late yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a $7.25 million contract that'll have all branches of the city's government adopting Google Apps over the next eight or so months.

Google Gets Serious About Marketing Apps

Update: Google has expanded the campaign to additional countries:  U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore.

Google Docs Gets New and Old Features

Google has made some updates to Google Docs. For one, they have introduced shared folders, which the company has been promising since July, and says is the most requested feature they get for Google Docs. Shared folders let users collaborate on groups of documents more easily.

Google Sites Gets New Image, Feed, and Template Features

Google has made it easier to insert Picasa Web Albums photos into Google Sites. They have added a photo option to the "insert menu." In addition, users can upload photos directly to Picasa Web Albums from within Google Sites, using the "upload photo" tab in the insert dialog. It should be noted, however, that Google Apps users will not see the options, because Picasa Web Albums is not available in Google Apps.

Google: IT Departments Moving Toward the Cloud

Google has been pushing Google Apps use big time this year. They took out billboard space, and they recently sponsored a survey about IT departments and cloud computing. The poll covered 1,125 IT decision-makers. Google has prepared an entire report based on the findings, which is available for perusal here (pdf).

API Makes Google Sites More Useful for Business

Google has launched a new API for Google Sites as a Google Labs feature (meaning it may have some flaws). The Google Sites data API allows client applications to access, publish, and modify content within a Google Site. It is available to both Google account and Google Apps users.

Gmail Users Experience Another Hiccup

Some Gmail users have been experiencing yet another instance of the service being down. This seems to be happening quite a bit lately, and at a particularly odd and unfortunate time for Google, as the company has recently increased its efforts to push Google Apps on Businesses. Right now, when I log into Gmail I get the following message:

Google to Start Crawling Google Docs Documents

Google has quietly announced that Google Docs documents that are published will soon be crawlable. This means if you have published documents as web pages, or used the publish/embed option for a document, and it has been linked to on the web, it can be indexed by Google and other search engines.

Google Introduces New Drawing and Form Features for Docs

Google has launched some new features for Google Docs. They have made a couple improvements to drawings and added several new features to Forms.

Google Launches New Features for Sites

Google has introduced some new features to Google Sites, the company's web site creation and publishing app. The new features were made to make it easier for users to copy their site, and use more options to search and announce updates. Google Sites now allows users to copy entire sites. You can do this by simply going to "Manage Site," then "General," and "Copy Site."