In November, Google launched site templates for Google Sites, making it easier for Google Apps users to create their own website.

This week the Google Docs blog is highlighting some templates for Google Sites created by SADA Systems and Over the Top Marketing.

Take a look at the original blog entry at googledocs.blogspot.com.

Prior to Thursday, April 15, 2010, if you wanted to attach an image to your Gmail message you had to click “Attach a file,” find the photos, click them, etc…   

Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6 users can now just drag and drop the files to attach them — easy as pie.

The original blog entry can be viewed at: gmailblog.blogspot.com

Google has joined the Cloud Security Alliance, a non-profit organization of experts focused on best practices and education efforts around the security of cloud computing.

View the original post on the Google Enterprise blog.

Google launched Google Buzz today. It’s a new way to start conversations, share updates, photos, videos and more.  It’s built right into Gmail, so there’s nothing to set up if you have a gmail account.

View Google’s original posts here and here.

The Google Enterprise blog had a great post last Friday that I’d like to share.

With the advances in Web technology over recent years, content on the Internet has evolved from simple text to heavily interactive applications.  If you’re still running an older browser, it most likely won’t be able to diplay many of the latest content features effectively.  

Upgrade your browser with one of the following links to the most popular browsers available if you have’nt done so already.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

Google Chrome 4.0+

Safari 3.0+

You can read the original post at Google Enterprise Blog on this topic here: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-modern-applications.html

How it works:
Google Apps Sync is a simple install. Once in your Windows operating system, find Google Apps Sync in your program files and click on “Set up a Google Apps Sync User.”

Next step is to enter the email address and password for your existing Google Apps Premier account. Before installing the program, you will need to be sure you have the following: 

• Google Apps Account
• Outlook 2003 SP3 (11.0.8169 or higher) or 2007 SP1 (12.0.6335 or higher).
• Windows Vista SP1 or XP SP3

After installing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a new account is now enabled in your Outlook profile. The synchronization tool then attempts to bring in all your data from Google into Outlook including your email, contacts, and calendar items. Notes, journal entries, and tasks will not currently sync. Possibly some day since Google now has tasks enabled in Gmail.

What the sync product provides is familiarity. If you are accustomed to the Outlook interface to read mail and have not made the full jump to an all cloud approach, this tool can help.With the new tool, DNA Mail can ensure companies migrating to Google Apps Premier Edition can take care of all their employees, even the ones who want to continue to use Outlook as their main mail tool. Google Apps™ also offers collaboration applications companies can use other than email can calendaring including Google Talk™ chat and instant messaging, Google Docs™ document, spreadsheet and presentation sharing and editing, and Google Video™ for internal video sharing, and Google Sites™ intranet for knowledge sharing.

“Google Apps provides options in the email solutions marketplace,” says George Mitsopoulos, VP, and General Manager, DNA Mail. “We like Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook since it simplifies the amount of effort required by end users to use Outlook with Google Apps. The product also assists companies looking into Google for their communications.  These customers want to continue to use their Outlook software and simultaneously utilize other Google Apps and mobile services.”

This could be due to cached Automatic name fill-in (AutoComplete) Entries. As you begin to type in an email address or name, suggestions from a list of names and e-mail addresses that you have typed before are shown in the To, Cc and/or Bcc fields, this is known as the AutoComplete name list. In order to resolve this issue, you should delete the unwanted name by using the UPor DOWN arrow keys, when the cached name or address is highlighted, press the Delete key.

Finally, if you want to delete all of your cached entries, then you can delete the .NK2 file. Navigate to your Microsoft Outlook Directory*
For Windows XP Go to drive: \Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
For Windows Vista Go to drive: \user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook.
Locate the user.nk2 file and rename it to user.OLD, this will clear all of your AutoComplete entries allowing you to start with a fresh AutoComplete file.

Why are so many companies hosting their own mail servers? To make our point, check out this video which compares managing your own mail servers to producing donuts. Really who wants to have the own donut factory inside their company when it is not your main business. OK donuts are yummy but once everyone wants donuts of all different kinds and flavors (think mobile, webmail, spam management, server farms), who wants to manage that. Moving to the cloud on Hosted Exchange is really the smarter move in today’s economy.