Google's Office Gets Instant Messenger

Google Apps, the suite that is often compared to Microsoft's Office, gets a new update that adds communication features to the pack of programs. Basically, the interoperability could be done with ease because the parent company implemented only the Google Talk Gadget that is compatible with the Personalized Homepage, recently-renamed to iGoogle. A few weeks ago, the search giant improved the Gadget with several new features, numerous users sustaining that there is no reason to install the downloadable application since this tiny tool is even more powerful.

As you can see, the Mountain View company tries to get the communication capabilities of its solutions closer to the most powerful products on the market. Yahoo Messenger is the clear leader of the category but it seems that Google targets another side of the chatting solutions: the enterprise market. Since Google Appls was released, most of the company's efforts were meant to conquer the enterprise customers and increase the search giant's presence into this domain.

The interesting fact is that Google tries to attract both sides, individuals and enterprise users, with the same products but with different flavors depending on their target.

The Google Talk Gadget is compatible with several solutions powered by the Mountain View company including the Personalized Homepage, the one that features the communication functions in Google Apps.

"If you use Google Apps at your business, organization or school, you can now use the Google Talk Gadget on your Start Page to have chats with colleagues or classmates (including group chats)," Adam Fass, Software Engineer, said today. "Google Apps also offers collaborative tools, like Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and the customizable Start Page, where all your students, employees, or members can view relevant content, preview their inboxes and calendars, and now, chat with one or more colleagues or classmates -- all from the same webpage"

What If Google Offered Windows for FREE?

The recently-acquired FeedBurner might become free for all the users because the PRO version is already offering an attractive promotion for the interested consumers. As blogger Ionut Alex Chitu noticed, FeedBuner PRO can be used for free for a period up to 15 days but you still have to pay approximately $5 per month after the trial period ends. However, this is an interesting step because it's not the first time when Google acquires a company and before making them 100 percent free, it offers a short trial to attract consumers. Ionut Alex Chitu offered as examples Google Earth, Picasa and SketchUp, the 3D modelling tool that was bought by Google on March 14, 2006.

"By default, FeedBurner already enabled the reach metrics for everyone. "Reach is the total number of people who have taken action — viewed or clicked — on the content in your feed. Subscribers is a measure of how many people are subscribed to your feed. At any given time, you can expect that a certain percentage of this subscriber base is actively engaging with your content and this "Reach" measurement provides this additional insight," the blogger mentioned.

In addition, FeedBurner MyBrand, a solution powered by FeedBurner and that allows publishers to distribute their own feeds straight from their domains, is available for free without any fee. It seems like before the Google acquisition, the product was valued at $3-$14 per month as the same blogger mentions.

"With MyBrand, publishers can continue to take advantage of all of FeedBurner’s services, but provide a transparent experience by running everything through their domain (e.g. feeds.yoursitenamehere.com) instead of ours," the parent company Google says.

Now, if Google has this interesting technique to buy major companies and make their solutions available for free, let's hope that the Mountain View giant is interested in acquiring the famous Windows operating system and release it with a freeware license. In my dreams...

High-Resolution Imagery for Google Maps. Google Earth Is Next

Several new additions for Google Maps were already rolled out but the parent company Google didn't announce them officially. Just like the past updates, this new set of imagery brings high-resolution photos for two new locations: India and the United Arab Emirates. As the Google Earth Blog reports, this improvement is currently compatible only with Google Maps but the parent company Google plans to include it into the downloadable solution in the upcoming weeks.

According to the same source, Google Maps now allows searching for India addresses and local businesses. "You can now see detailed roads for the UAE. You can't yet search for addresses. Support for searching for businesses is not built-in, but you can search and see web results for things people have already marked with KML," the blog mentioned about the United Arab Emirates update.

Google Maps is a web-based solution that allows users to view satellite maps straight from the window of the browser without installing anything. Recently, the parent company debuted Street View, a revolutionary function that brought the Mountain View giant into trouble after several users raised privacy concerns. The main reason was that Google Maps' new function shows way too many details because some of the consumers were able to view private stuff from their houses.

In addition, the US authorities reported that Google's mapping tools, Google Maps and Google Earth, were used by the terrorists to organize attacks against the nation. Although they managed to discover the attempt before anything happened, the terrorists admitted they were using the Google solutions to view detailed photos with the JFK International Airport.

In the past, there were several similar cases but every time the parent company blocked the attempts by replacing the imagery with older ones. The best example is Basra where the terrorists tried to attack the UK troops using details offered by Google Earth. Google replaced the photos with older ones captured before the departure of the army in the zone.