Google Apps extends protection to web surfing and remote workers

Google today announced a web security product that makes it easy and affordable for companies of all sizes to provide Internet security to users in any location. Google Web Security™ for Enterprise provides real-time malware protection and URL filtering with policy enforcement and reporting. An additional feature extends the same protections to users working remotely on laptops in hotels, cafes, and even guest networks.
"One of the benefits of Google Apps is the protection it provides for communication and collaboration within businesses," said Scott Petry, director of product management, Google. "Now companies can extend that protection to more of their users’ Internet activities, whether they’re surfing the web at the office or the airport."

Google Web Security allows companies to secure their networks from web-based malware; enforce Internet use policies at the user, workgroup or company level; and receive comprehensive reporting on all web activities. Since employees are most vulnerable when they’re working outside the office, companies have the option of adding protection for off-network users. And because the product is delivered as a service, those remote workers get the protection wherever they are, without having to sign on to their corporate network.

The product is Powered by Postini™ with technology from ScanSafe, and accessible from the same administration console used for Google Apps security and compliance messaging services. Google Web Security is available in North America and Europe. Go here for more information.

Source- Google Press Release

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Google Maps Street View now available in driving directions

Starting today, finding your way around town will be easier than ever: Street View is now integrated into Google Maps driving directions. In the regions across the country where Google Maps Street View imagery is available, users will see camera icons next to each step of their directions, which will open a Street View image of the location, along with an arrow showing the action to be taken. Users can click through their entire route through Street View, and when the journey is complete a green marker will indicate arrival at their destination.

By viewing Street View images alongside directions, drivers have visual context for intersections and action points along their route, enabling them to be aware of landmarks and other factors such as tolls, speed limits, size of the road, and the availability of parking at their destination.

Street View, originally launched in May of 2007 in 5 cities, now provides interactive 360-degree street-level imagery in 44 regions across the country. Integrating Street View with driving directions provides those living in or traveling to these regions with another powerful, useful tool to help them easily navigate their surroundings. Street View was also recently made available through the Google Maps API, allowing developers to utilize Street View functionality to enhance their services.

Source-

Google Press Release

Google Launches Developer Sandbox for iGoogle

Today, Google opened a sandbox for developers to help them build richer gadgets for iGoogle, which will offer users more powerful and interactive features. To ensure developers get the most out of their gadgets, we’ve also launched an updated developer website which guides developers through building and distributing gadgets to iGoogle’s growing audience.

iGoogle’s new features will include left navigation, a maximized or "canvas view" option for gadgets, and social features for gadgets using the OpenSocial APIs. These social features for gadgets will include a friends list and activities displayed through a special updates gadget. The features and functionalities as they appear in the sandbox are meant for development purposes only, and may not reflect the end consumer experience.

Developers are an important part of Google’s innovation ecosystem and we’re always striving to provide tools to help them innovate in new directions that will ultimately make the web richer for all users. By building more powerful and interactive gadgets for iGoogle, developers will have an opportunity to share their gadgets with the tens of millions of iGoogle users.

To see the video for developers on the iGoogle sandbox, please see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6KVwATfCdM

Source- Google Press Release

Google’s Website Optimizer is now available

Today at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco, Google Website Optimizer™ launched out of beta as an independent product. Formerly a feature within the Google AdWords™ advertising service only, this free website-testing tool is now accessible through its own website (http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer) as well.

Google Website Optimizer helps improve user experience on the Web by showing its users what their visitors want to see. Rather than debating or guessing how a webpage might look best, users can continually test different combinations of website content, such as images and text, to see which one yields the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.

Google Website Optimizer provides value "beyond the click" as part of Google’s suite of advertising tools offering heightened precision, accountability and scale. Together with Google AdWords, which drives traffic to your website, and Google Analytics™, which measures that traffic, Google Website Optimizer further helps you convert your traffic into customers.

The product is available in 27 languages worldwide: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia, UK & U.S.), Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish.

Check Out the Latest Google Earth 4.3 Beta

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.

Here are the highlights:

• New navigation — We’ve created a new navigational experience so users can better take advantage of the 3D environment in Google Earth. The navigation takes the traditional pan-and-zoom approach associated with mapping programs and incorporates a first-person, ground-level perspective commonly used in video games.

• More, faster 3D buildings — Version 4.3 also includes dozens of photo-textured cities and towns, as well as thousands of user-contributed buildings around the world.  We’ve significantly enhanced our approach to rendering 3D data to greatly improve performance and realism of 3D data.

• Street View — The well-known Google Maps feature gets added to Google Earth with version 4.3. Street View is a popular, engaging feature that allows people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location.

• Sunlight feature — This new addition is a playful way to control the sun’s location relative to the Earth. When zoomed out to a view of the Earth, you can control a time-lapse view of sunlight moving across the Earth.  While zoomed into a given city, you can watch the sunrise and sunset.

• Image acquisition date — One of our most requested features, 4.3 now includes an image acquisition date, which shows you on what date a given area of imagery was taken.

• New languages — Version 4.3 includes twelve new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Download: http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthWin.exe
Home page: http://earth.google.com/

Salesforce.com and Google Introduce Salesforce for Google Apps

Salesforce.com ,the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Google today expanded their global strategic alliance to make it easy for companies of all sizes to run their business in the cloud with Salesforce for Google Apps. The combination of the Google Apps™ suite of productivity applications and the Salesforce suite of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications enables businesses to effectively communicate and collaborate without any hardware or software to download, install or maintain. Salesforce for Google Apps also leverages the Force.com Platform and Google’s open APIs, opening up even more development opportunities for developers and partners.

"Google and salesforce.com have always had similar models and philosophies about delivering innovations made possible by the Internet," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Salesforce.com was a pioneer in Software-as-a-Service and a year ago we joined them in this mission to bring the benefits of cloud computing to businesses of all types. Together, we are making more applications and services available online so customers can focus on building their core business rather than the applications that support it."

Source- Google Press Release

Google and Virgin announce Mars expedition and colony

Google and Virgin Group today announced the launch of Virgle Inc., a jointly owned and operated venture dedicated to the establishment of a human settlement on Mars.

“Some people are calling Virgle an ‘interplanetary Noah’s Ark,’” said Virgin Group President and Founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. “I’m one of them. It’s a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it’s a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we’ll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though.”

The Virgle 100 Year Plan’s milestones will include Virgle Pioneer selection (2008-2010), the first manned journey to Mars (2016), a Virgle Inc. initial public offering to capitalize on the first manned journey to Mars (2016), the founding of the first permanent Martian municipality, Virgle City (2050), and the achievement of a truly self-sustaining Martian civilization with a population exceeding 100,000 (2108).

“Virgle is the ultimate application of a principle we’ve always believed at Google: that you can do well by doing good,” said Google co-founder Larry Page, who plans to share leadership of the new Martian civilization with Branson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

“We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, fine, only — base of web search volume and advertising inventory,” Page added. “So, you know, it’s, like, win-win.”

The original contingent of Virgle Pioneers will be selected by numerous criteria, including an online questionnaire, video submission, personal accomplishments, expertise in scientific, artistic, sociological and/or political fields of endeavor, and inadequate Google and Virgin personal performance reviews.

It surely seems to be an April fool’s day joke by Google

Update- Here is another google april’s day joke just take a look-

http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/index.html

Source- Google Press Release

Yahoo! supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to form non-profit OpenSocial Foundation

Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google today announced they have agreed to form the OpenSocial Foundation to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web.  Yahoo!’s support of OpenSocial and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008.  The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

“Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, Vice President – Platforms, Yahoo!. “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

Source- Google press Release