Small Business Tech

Good news for Google users. You can now access a dashboard that will list all of your data that is stored with Google. It is somewhat similar to the dashboard that has been available to Google Apps admins. Incidentally, I took a look and my dashboard is not enabled, yet. Hopefully your mileage will vary.

Labels: Google, Google Apps

Google Apps is going to the spotlight as the Los Angeles, CA city commission has decided to move their email system to the cloud-based collaboration software. Microsoft and Google were battling to provide services to the 30,000 city employees. You can read more.

I have compared both services and chosen Google for many users. I even attended a workshop by Microsoft where they pitched the product. The problems were that Microsoft was selling vaporware. Vaporware means that the products did not even exist, yet. The other problem was that Microsoft only offered 1 gigabyte of storage for $10 to $12 per month. Google Apps offered 25 gigabytes of storage for just under $5 per month. It has been an easy decision so far.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Apps, Microsoft

I like the Firefox browser from Mozilla. It is fairly fast but still feature rich, but my favorite trick is the extensions. I thought that I would make a list of my must-have extensions.

Must-Have: They must be installed on a computer that I use more than once.

• IE Tab - Once in a while you have to use Internet Explorer for a web site. This plug in simply gives you the right-click option of viewing the page in Internet Explorer. You can save a list of frequent sites as well.
• Google Toolbar - My workflow revolves around Google Apps, so this is a must for me. It does much more than search including indicating if you have new email and listings your universal bookmarks.

Cool-To-Have: These just make using your computer more pleasant.

• Forecastfox - This small utility resides in the right-hand status bar showing you weather data for your chosen location. You get a small indicator if the National Weather Service has issues a warning for your chosen area.
• Cooliris - This is a fullscreen experience to looking at videos and images. Web sites have to be Cooliris capable, but the good news is that many popular sites are already on board.

Trying Out: Still in my personal testing phase.

• Tree Style Tab - This is an alternative to the tabs appearing across the top of your browser window. They appear in a bar on the left in a smaller format and broken in to hierarchical trees. Very handy if you are doing a lot of research.
  

Netbook only - Really useful on a netbook computer.

• Autohide - This extension allows you to choose the when and what disappearance of toolbars in Firefox when you use fullscreen mode on a netbook. Using fullscreen mode is a must for Firefox on a netbook, but it allows you to keep the status bar or even the taskbar available. The top bar slide down without resizing the page which is also nice.

There are lots of other extensions for Firefox. Some are mundane to making Firefox a completely different browser. Tell me about a few of your favorites.

Labels: extensions, Firefox, Google Apps

I noticed this evening that Google has added drag and drop to Gmail. You can grab a small handle at the far left portion of message listing and drag it onto a label. You can also accomplish the same by dragging the label onto a message. You can also select multiple messages and drop them onto a label.

This addition as well as the recent ability to "move" messages into labels makes Gmail more and more useful. The Gmail web interface is becoming more comfortable for former Outlook addicts.

By the way unlike tasks in Google Calendar, this feature is available in Google Apps.

Labels: email, Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook