Google+ for Google Apps

As promised, Google+ is now obtainable for Google Apps users. Administrators can allow the new service from the control panel, as explained here. Google+ requires that Picasa Web Albums and Google Talk are enabled and that the organization uses the new accounts infrastructure. If the two services are enabled and the choice to automatically add new services is selected, Google+ is routinely enabled.

After the enabling the service, you require to wait a few minutes until you can use it. Obviously, users have to physically join Google+ by visiting plus.google.com. "Google Apps users will have access to the same set of features that are obtainable to every Google+ user, and more. In addition to sharing publicly or with your circles, you'll also have the alternative to share with everyone in your organization, even if you haven't additional all of those people to a circle," explains Google.

It's interesting that Google+ is obtainable for higher education institutions, but not for other education institutions because users have to be at least 18 years old to use Google+.

You almost certainly noticed that Google+ evolves incredibly fast, faster than any other Google service. The support for Google Apps is not the only new quality: there's Hot on Google+ (a section that highlights popular posts), Ripples (a visualization tool for public shares and comments) and a Creative Kit for photo editing powered by Picnik.

Google Goggles Makes Your Phone's Camera Smarter

Google Goggles is an request that's sometimes useful, but it's not good enough to use it every time you want to find something about an object. The Android app has a new characteristic that integrates it with the Camera app, uploads all the photos you're taking to Google's servers and shows notifications in the status bar if Goggles found something useful. It may sound spooky, but it makes your phone's camera smarter.

"With this new opt-in feature in Goggles, you can just photograph an image using your phone's camera, and Goggles will work in the background to examine your image. If your photo contains items that Goggles can distinguish, the app will notify you," explains Google. The feature is disabled by default, but you can facilitate it from the settings page by choosing "Search from Camera".

It's almost certainly a good idea to only enable this option when you're on vacation or when you're planning to photograph barcodes for products you want to buy. It's also helpful if you're in a bookstore and you want to "bookmark" some books.

Google Mobile's help center informs that "each Goggles query consumes about 100 KB of data" and you can limit the amount of data that's inspired by selecting "Search on WiFi networks only" under "Mobile Connection".

"Search from Camera" is one of the features that won't be obtainable in the Google app for iPhone because iOS' background APIs aren't that powerful. If you have an Android device, install Google Goggles 1.6 from the Android Market.

Bringing Google Apps educators jointly through regional user groups

From grading math quizzes with Google forms to plotting plant growth in a motion chart, teachers around the world are continually generating new, creative ways Google Apps can improve instruction.

To make it easier for educators to share great ideas away from their school walls, we’re introducing eight Google Apps Regional K-12 User Groups across the U.S. and Canada. These groups will enable educators and administrators to learn from one another and work together through community discussion forums, shared resources, events and webinars.

If you’re an educator involved in sharing and learning new ways to use Apps in your classroom, visit the Enterprise Blog for more information and to sign up.

Many Gmail Users Can't Find Their Messages

Imagine loading Gmail and noticing that all your mail have been deleted. This is a real trouble for many Gmail users who thought that they lost all of their messages. Here's one of the many reports from Gmail's forum:

Yes, whatever the mistake is on Google's end (and it clearly is that, not a hack, unless it's some kind of inside hack) it's basically reset my account so it's like a brand-new Gmail account My friends are intact, but nothing else--the folders have reset to defaulting, my signature line is blank, the "theme" is changed back to the default and--of course--every single email from the last 7 years has misplaced completely.

The Google Apps position page mentions that "this issue affects less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase" and "Google engineers are operational to restore full access". The users that are affected "will be provisionally unable to sign in".

This is a really significant problem for Google and one of the biggest Gmail issues ever since Google's email check was released, back in 2004.

Update: A Google engineer says that the "accounts that are precious are currently fully disabled. We're in the process of altering this to be a Gmail only disable so you should regain access to other Google services soon. This will also mean email to these accounts stops lively and gets queued up for later delivery instead."