Last Friday Santa opened up the Ho Ho Hotline and teamed up with Gmail to send personalized holiday phone calls to anyone you know who has been nice (or naughty, for that matter) in the U.S. or Canada. In just a few days Santa has made hundreds of thousands of calls to your friends, family and loved ones, and received many a message from you at his Google Voice number (855-34-SANTA).

Santa has one more surprise in store. Starting today, anyone in the world can create and send a personalized cartoon video message (in English only) from Santa to anyone you know, anywhere in the world, and share them through email and Google+. Watch our sample video below and create your own at SendaCallFromSanta.com.



The Gmail team wishes you a happy holiday!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted from the Gmail blog)

Last year, Santa got his very own Google Voice number, and people around the U.S. received a special personalized holiday phone call from Santa Claus.

This year, Santa wants you to reach out to him (after all, reindeer are only so-so conversationalists). If you or your family members have a special request for Santa, you can call him right from Gmail* and leave him a message at his Google Voice number: 855-34-SANTA. Santa won't be able to return messages himself—it’s a busy time of year for him—but he's promised to keep us up to date on happenings in the North Pole day by day.

You also can create and send a unique, customized phone call from Santa to anyone you know, from your nieces and nephews to old college friends, over the phone (to U.S. numbers only). Listen to a sample phone call, and send a message of your own from SendaCallFromSanta.com.

Of course, Santa is never one to fall behind the technological times (word on the street is that Rudolph’s nose was recently upgraded to an energy-efficient LED). So while the red suit may never go out of style, this year Santa has come up with an extra special way to spread the holiday cheer. But you’ll have to wait until it’s closer to Christmas to find out what it is. So no peeking—but keep checking the site!

Happy Holidays from your friends at Gmail.

*Calls from Gmail are free for U.S. and Canadian users, but will cost people outside those areas $.01/minute (plus any applicable VATs).

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

The elves got an early jump on the holidays this year by leaving us some surprises in Google Apps over the last few weeks. Sharing from Gmail got a whole lot easier, and Google Calendar can make better use of precious screen space. We also have 10 new Google Apps customer stories to share from the tens of thousands that have gone Google in recent weeks.

Gmail gets more social
Last week we sprinkled a touch of Google+ into Gmail, making it easier to connect and share with people from your inbox. You can add people to circles right from an email thread through Gmail’s people widget, share photo attachments with friends and family on Google+ without leaving Gmail, and view a filtered version of your inbox only showing messages from people in your circles. We also improved Gmail’s address book by incorporating contact information shared by your friends, family and colleagues in their Google+ profiles.


New features in the Gmail iOS app
Just yesterday we added several new improvements to the Gmail app for iOS 4+. Now you can set up a custom email signature for mobile messages, manage your vacation responder, and view nested labels from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. We also added scribbles, a fun way to spice up messages by adding a quick hand-drawn sketch. You can create scribbles using a range of colors, brush sizes, lines, erasers and spray paints from your touchscreen device.


More free calls right from Gmail
Last year we introduced free domestic calling in Gmail within the U.S. and Canada, and we’re extending this free service for the whole year of 2012. We’re happy to help you keep in touch with those special people in your life, for free.

Hide morning and night hours in Calendar
If you don’t often have appointments early in the morning or late at night, a new trick in Google Calendar might be useful. Now you can hide morning and night hours, leaving more screen real estate for the times of day when most of your events take place. Give it a try in Calendar Labs.


Who’s gone Google?
Businesses and schools are switching to Google Apps in droves these days. From tiny startups to large enterprises and nonprofits to college campuses, we love hearing the inspiring stories that our customers share. Here’s a new batch of stories for your reading pleasure: TripIt, IPSEN, Ebby Halliday, Ticket River, VigLink, HeyZap, The Great Books Foundation, Utah K-12 schools, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and UC Santa Cruz. Welcome one and all!

For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog, and keep an eye out for this series here after the holidays. We launched more than 150 improvements to Google Apps in 2011, and we have a ton more in store for 2012!

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

We want to bring you a great experience across all Google products which, for Gmail and Contacts, means understanding what you care about and delivering it instantly. With that in mind, we’re introducing some new integrations with Google+ that we think will make Gmail and Contacts even better. If you use Google+, you can now grow your circles, filter emails and contacts by circles, keep all your contact information up-to-date automatically and share photos to Google+, all right from Gmail and Contacts.

Grow your circles from your email
Now when you open an email from someone on Google+, you can see the most recent post they’ve shared with you on the right-hand side of the conversation. If they’re not in your circles yet, it’s easy to add them straight from Gmail.


Find information from the people you care about most
Looking for the info on an upcoming family holiday gathering but can't remember who sent it? If you've spent time building your Google+ circles, you can now quickly use them to filter your mail, saving yourself from having to sift through that pile of daily deal emails and newsletters. You can see messages from all of your circles at once or from each individual circle. And if you want, you can show circle names on emails in your inbox. Contacts can also be filtered by circles, making it easier to view your social connections.


Keep your contact information up-to-date automatically
Manually entering contact information can be a huge time drain—so let your circles do it for you. If your contacts have a Google profile, their contact entry in Gmail will be updated with the profile information they’ve shared with you, including phone numbers, email addresses and more. If they change it in the future, you’ll get those updates automatically. You can also make sure the people you care about have your most up-to-date contact information by updating your own Google profile and sharing it.


Share effortlessly without leaving your inbox
Lots of great images are sent through email, but sharing those photos with friends on Google+ used to require downloading the image from Gmail and re-uploading to your profile. Not anymore: Now you can share photo attachments with one quick click. The image(s) will be uploaded to your Google+ photos and be viewable only to the circles that you choose to share with.


We’ll be rolling out all of these changes out over the next few days to Gmail, Gmail Contacts and the “standalone” version of Google Contacts at contacts.google.com. Please note that Google Apps users won’t see the Contacts updates quite yet, but we’re actively working to make them available.

All of these features (and the more to come) are the result of the great discussion that we had on Google+ with users in July. If you want to join in discussions like these, add the Gmail Google+ page to your circles. And if you haven't signed up for Google+ and would like to try these new features, visit this page to get started.

Posted by Mark Striebeck, Engineering Director

Last month 350 CIOs and thousands of live stream viewers joined us for Atmosphere 2011, our annual cloud event. Leading companies from around the world came to explore how businesses are using the web to drive collaboration, innovation and growth in their organizations. In case you missed them, the keynotes are now available on our YouTube channel. You can watch the entire conference in order on the Atmosphere playlist.

This year’s speakers included a best-selling author, award-winning computer scientists, Google executives and product managers, and several Google Apps customers including Flint Waters, CIO of the state of Wyoming, Bryson Koehler, SVP of Global Revenue and Guest Technology at IHG, Michael O’Brien, CIO of Journal Communications and Christine Atkins, VP of Group IT at Ahold.

One of the highlights was listening to Christine Atkins talk about Ahold’s experience moving 55,000 users to Google Apps and how, in her words, “Google Apps is helping us deliver on the promise that we've all been seeking: that of strong collaboration platforms that help our company come together and work together.” You can watch Christine’s presentation here:



Posted by Chris Farinacci, Global Marketing Director, Google Enterprise

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

The last few weeks have brought a fresh new look in Gmail, more mobile access options and simpler meeting scheduling tools. Millions of organizations using Google Apps can now use Google+ on their business and university accounts, and we launched a couple Apps-related Google+ Pages ourselves.

Gmail’s new look
Back in July we previewed Gmail’s new look, and a couple weeks ago we started letting people switch to the new design with one click. The refreshed interface makes it easier to follow conversations and spot the sender with profile pictures for each message. The new look also supports dynamic screen densities, so Gmail displays properly whether you’re viewing on a large desktop monitor or a smaller mobile screen. We also added a selection of beautiful HD themes to the existing gallery. Finally, we made it easier to perform advanced email searches using a panel of powerful search options that reveals with a single click.



Gmail app for iOS devices
This month we introduced the Gmail app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, complete with mobile alerts for new mail, a responsive touch screen interface and Gmail mainstays like fast search, conversation view and address auto-complete.


Suggested meeting times in Google Calendar
We’ve heard how frustrating it can be to spend 15 minutes finding a good time for people to convene for a 30 minute meeting, so we made it easier to find a good meeting time in Google Calendar. The suggested times feature automatically reviews the availability of meeting invitees, and proposes event times that work for the whole group.


Google+ for organizations using Google Apps
Businesses, schools and organizations with Google Apps can now use Google+. Employees and students can create profiles, +1 things they like on the web, share interesting content with their circles and have live multi-person video chats with classmates, colleagues and friends. Organizations can also create their Google+ Pages—an organization’s identity on Google+ for customers, students or fans. We’re using Google+ Pages ourselves, so take a look at the Gmail and Google Enterprise pages, and circle us if you’d like to stay in the loop.

24x7 telephone support and improved mobile device management
This week, we introduced a couple other new benefits for Google Apps customers. Organizations of all sizes around the world can now call our support hotline at any time for all core service issue. Also new this week, we improved our mobile device management capabilities with an interface for administrators to view and deny mobile devices connecting to Google Apps, granular mobile policy controls, and the ability to visualize mobile usage trends across the organization.


Who’s gone Google?
Organizations large and small continue to amass around Google Apps. We’re thrilled to welcome a whole host of new customers including the Trinity Mirror Group (Britain’s largest newspaper publisher), startups such as JobFlo and UserTesting, organizations including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and colleges like the University of Michigan and UT Austin. Welcome to all!

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

I’m one of hundreds of University of Michigan alumni currently working at Google. So is this guy. I’m proud to have a degree from U-M—and that we made it to two Rose Bowls and one Final Four during my time there. But I’m even more proud that today we’re welcoming my alma mater to the Google Apps for Education family. By providing our cloud services to the entire university community, we’ll continue to build on the strong relationship that Google and the University of Michigan have had for many years. Many other alums—especially in our Ann Arbor office—are just as excited as I am:



Over a year ago, the University of Michigan (U-M) announced a new IT strategy known as NextGen Michigan, a plan to upgrade technology across the campus. Laura Patterson, U-M’s Chief Information Office, told us the switch to Google is just one of many projects that will make up U-M’s multi-year strategy for changing the approach to IT service and investing more heavily in technologies that will advance the university’s academic, teaching, research and clinical programs. She said: “Adopting Google Apps for Education will help support U-M’s leadership in teaching, learning and discovery, as well as improve collaboration across campus.”

As their first order of business, U-M kicked off a project to select a unified messaging and collaboration platform to help consolidate the more than 40 email and calendar tools which currently service about 90,000 students, faculty and staff. After a review process that included townhall meetings and a campus survey, the university’s IT steering committee overwhelmingly recommended Google Apps for Education as U-M’s preferred provider.

In addition to the suite of products in Google Apps for Education, U-M also plans to use APIs to build rich integration with existing campus services and encourage increased collaboration.

Hail to the Victors—The University of Michigan is going Google!

Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President of Product Management

Back in July we showed you a preview of Gmail's new look, and we’ve been working this summer to make even more updates and improvements. Today, we’re giving you an in-depth look at the new design. If you like what you see, over the next few days you’ll be able to switch to the new look by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail.


Streamlined conversations
Conversation view has been completely redesigned to help you read through your email threads. You’ll now see profiles pictures for your contacts, so it’s easier to keep track of who said what. We also stripped out as much as possible so you can focus on communicating with your friends and colleagues.


Elastic density
We know that you use Gmail from a variety of screen sizes and devices, so now the spacing between elements on the screen will automatically change based on the kind of display you’re using. If you prefer a denser view all the time, you can change your density manually in the Settings menu.


New HD themes
Themes have been completely rebuilt to enable us to bring you a new set of beautiful high resolution themes with imagery provided by iStockphoto. We've updated most of the old favorites as well and your theme will be automatically carried over to the new look. Go to the Settings menu to take another look at themes and choose the one that fits you best.


Smarter navigation
The navigation panel on the left keeps your labels and chat contacts in view at all times. It's also more customizable: you can resize the labels and chat areas if you want to see more, or hide the chat area entirely via the chat icon in the lower left. You can also use the arrow keys to navigate around the interface.


Better search
Click the dropdown in the search box to see a new advanced search panel, which makes it easier and faster to find exactly what you're looking for. You can use the same panel to create a filter from any search in just a few clicks.


We’re excited to finally share Gmail’s new look with you. We’ll be bringing these changes to everyone soon, but if you’d like to make the switch right away, we’re rolling out a Switch to the new look link in the bottom-right of Gmail over the next few days.

Posted by Jason Cornwell, User Experience Designer

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

This time last year, we were tailgating with the USC marching band at the EDUCAUSE conference—an annual gathering of the higher-education IT community. Last week, with more than 15 million people now actively using Google Apps for Education, we ventured to Philadelphia for a few jam-packed days at EDUCAUSE 2011. Our time in the city of brotherly love included a booth with 30+ Googlers and a woodsy backdrop for our fireside chat series; meeting with hundreds of CIOs from universities using and considering Google Apps for Education; a party at the Academy of Natural Sciences; and of course liberty and the lifelong pursuit of the Philly cheesesteak. Here’s a glimpse:



The Campus Computing Project released its annual report at EDUCAUSE, too. This year’s survey named Google as the leading provider of outsourced cloud-based campus email services. According to the survey, 89 percent of higher education institutions are either already using or considering switching to cloud-based solutions. Of four-year colleges and universities (including community colleges) that have already moved to the cloud, more than 56 percent have gone Google—including 64 percent of public universities and 66 percent of private universities.

Last month we shared that 61 of US News and World Report’s top 100 Universities are using Google Apps for Education. That number’s now up to 62, and is still just a snapshot of the thousands of institutions using Apps on campus. Schools that have recently selected Apps for Education as their collaboration platform include Harvard University, University of Texas at Austin, Wellesley College, University of Amsterdam, Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of York and University of Bristol.

In addition to these new schools, we’re also bringing some new integrations to Apps:

• OpenClass: Pearson has developed a free cloud-based Learning Management System that is tightly integrated with Google Apps and provides a new kind of learning environment that stimulates social learning. This is available in the Apps Marketplace. 
• SlideRocket EDU: This presentation software integrated for cloud-based collaborative education enables you to unleash the creation, sharing and communication of ideas with an online application that connects with content in Google Apps for Education and is available on any device or browser. This is available in the Apps Marketplace.
• Blackboard Bboogle: Last year, Northwestern University presented their popular Bboogle (Blackboard + Google) application at our EDUCAUSE booth. Bboogle has now been certified by Blackboard and is available to other universities as a Building Block through Blackboard’s Extensions website. Bboogle enables instructors to link Blackboard course sites directly to Google Docs, Calendars and Sites without requiring a second login. And by automatically setting permissions for editing, it helps encourage and facilitate collaborative instruction.
• Desire2Learn: Users will soon be able to add widgets to Course Homepages that make it easy to view unread email messages in Gmail, keep track of upcoming events in Calendar, and submit assignments created in Docs.

If you weren’t able to join us in person at this year’s EDUCAUSE conference, you can check out some of our photos, and we’ll hope to see you next year.



Posted by Tom Mills, Director of Education

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

In the spirit of helping people work better together, over the last few weeks we made big improvements to Google presentations, introduced a version of Google Docs optimized for Android tablets, and enabled more dynamic content in Google Sites. We also celebrated the fact that Silicon Valley has gone Google!

Google presentations reloaded
On Tuesday we launched a completely rebuilt version of our web-based presentations application, so you can build more beautiful presentations together with colleagues and classmates. Google presentations now lets you make great-looking slides with animated builds, advanced slide transitions and better support for drawings, tables and themes. Plus, we made it easier to create presentations with others, without the hassles of attachments. Your whole team can work together in the same version of a presentation at the same time, and you can see who’s doing what, chat with others, and see a full revision history at any moment in time.


Google Docs on Android tablets
We’ve made it faster and easier to work with Google Docs on Android tablets with a new version of the Android application that takes full advantage of larger screen real estate. The three-panel view lets you browse filters and collections, see your document list and view file thumbnails and details simultaneously. You can get the Google Docs Android app for free from the Android Market.


Charts in Google Sites
Charts are often created in spreadsheets, but sometimes you want charts to appear in other places, like your team or project sites. In Google Sites, now you can select “Chart” from the “Insert” menu, and navigate to the Google Spreadsheet where your chart or data is located. You can also choose to have your site’s chart update in real-time when someone updates the underlying spreadsheet.



New look for Google Docs and Sites
We started rolling out a new look in Google Docs a couple months ago, and now this new design is available throughout all our collaboration tools. In addition to a cleaner, simpler design, we’ve made it more clear when your files are being auto-saved and added new icons to help you see at-a-glance who your docs are shared with. You can also customize the overall “density” of screen information, a great feature if you want to fit more onto a smaller display.



Who’s gone Google?
Successful small businesses tend to stay laser-focused on improving their core businesses, without getting distracted by peripheral activities that don’t make them more competitive. For example, most small businesses don’t want to spend time or money developing in-house expertise to run email and other IT systems. Case in point: 97 percent of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley Startups to Watch” use Google Apps.

More than 5,000 businesses and thousands of other organizations start using Google Apps every single day, and more of our customers have shared their stories recently so you can hear why. A warm welcome goes out to Philz Coffee, Mid-Atlantic Door Group, Bradford & Barthel, LLP and the City of Mesquite, Nevada.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

A year and a half ago, we released completely new document, spreadsheet and drawing editors. Google Docs has been picking up speed ever since with more than 60 new features and millions of new users. Today we’re rounding out the suite by previewing a new version of presentations with faster collaboration and more features.

A collaborative approach
Presentations are made to be shared—whether it’s presenting your thesis to your professors or inspiring colleagues at a conference. And the best presentations are made together, collaborating with others to build a compelling story that captivates your audience. Creating presentations together is easy because you can:

• See exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers
• Edit with your team members simultaneously from different locations
• Use revision history to see who made changes or to revert to earlier versions
• Say hello, start a conversation or share new ideas using built-in chat

More than 50 new features
In the new presentations, we’ve added many of your most requested features, including:

• Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
• Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
• New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
• Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
• Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data

What’s next
We’re gradually rolling out the new presentations. To get an early start, click on the gear icon in your document list, and select Document settings. Then, from the editing tab, check the box to “Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor.”

Many of the new features were built using technologies that are only available in modern browsers. If you’re using an older browser you’ll be able to view, but not edit, the new presentations.

With today’s launch, the Google Docs suite is now built on a single, solid foundation. Now that the groundwork is in place, you can expect more useful and collaborative features, delivered faster than ever before.

Posted by Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

As we said a few weeks ago when we launched a completely rebuilt, streamlined authoring and editing experience, we’re in the process of bringing you a much improved and modernized Blogger. The next phase of these updates starts today with seven new ways to display your blog, called Dynamic Views.

Built with the latest in web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3), Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that will inspire your readers to explore your blog in new ways. The interactive layouts make it easier for readers to enjoy and discover your posts, loading 40 percent faster than traditional templates and bringing older entries to the surface so they seem fresh again.


Dynamic Views is much more than just new templates. With just a couple clicks, you’ll get infinite scrolling (say goodbye to the “Older posts” link), images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, lightbox-style posts for easy viewing, keyboard shortcuts for quickly flipping through posts, and one-click sharing to Google+ and other social sites on every post.


No two blogs are the same, so you can choose from seven different views that display text and photos differently. For example, if you have lots of photos on your blog, you may prefer Flipcard or Snapshot. If your blog is more text-heavy, then Classic, Sidebar (what you’re seeing now on Blogger Buzz) or Timeslide may be preferable. Here’s a quick description of each of the new views, along with links to some of our favorite blogs where you can check each of them out in action.

• Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
• Flipcard (M loves M) - Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
• Magazine (Advanced Style) - A clean, elegant editorial style layout 
• Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) - An interactive pinboard of your posts 
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) - A horizontal view of your posts by time period

Enter the name of your favorite Blogger blog below and click Preview to check it out with Dynamic Views.
.blogspot.com Preview

Adding a Dynamic View to your blog is as easy as changing your template. Log in to Blogger, click on the Template tab on your dashboard, and select whichever view you want to set as your default. Note that readers can still choose to navigate your blog in a different view by selecting from the pulldown in the upper left of the screen.

If you want to add your own touch to any of these new views, you can upload a header image and customize the background colors. We’ll be adding more ways to customize Dynamic Views in the coming weeks.

We hope you enjoy the latest update to Blogger, and that, as always, you tell us what you think by completing this short survey.

Note: In addition to Blogger Buzz, several other official Google blogs will be featuring Dynamic Views through the weeks and months ahead, including the Gmail Blog, LatLong Blog and Docs Blog. We’re excited to bring Dynamic Views into the fold and we'll be looking at how to incorporate this new technology across Google’s blog network in the long term.

(Cross-posted from Blogger Buzz)

Update 7:31pm: We've added back a working link to submit your feedback.
Update 6:00pm: Earlier today, this post included a link to a feedback form. We do value your feedback and want to know what you think of this update; we'll have a feedback link up again soon.

Posted by Antin Harasymiv, Software Engineer

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

It’s back-to-school season, and we’ve made Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and Sites easier to use and more powerful for students and non-students alike—including some important accessibility improvements to help blind users be productive in our apps.

Multiple sign-in and other new preferences in Gmail for mobile
On Wednesday, we added some helpful new features for people who use Gmail on a mobile browser. You can now sign in to more than one Gmail account at a time, and toggle between them easily from the account switcher menu at the bottom of the mobile inbox. This can be a good time saver if you have multiple accounts or share a mobile device with family members. Gmail for mobile also now enables you to set up mobile-specific email signatures and create vacation responders right from your phone to let people know when you won't be available by email.


Calling credit auto-recharge
Now you can automatically add international calling credits for phone calls in Gmail when your balance gets low. Just visit the "Billing" area of the Google Voice settings page and click "Add credit" to put your account on cruise control.


Allow people to comment but not edit in documents
Sometimes, you might find yourself in situations when you’d like to share a document for feedback, but don’t want to make the document's content fully editable. The comment-only level of access launched last week is a nice option for these scenarios. You can let others discuss and add their thoughts to your document—without allowing them to change your work. You can allow document comments from specific individuals or groups, from anyone belonging your organization or from the general public.


Format painter, Fusion Tables, drag & drop images and vertical cell merge
Comment-only access isn't all that we've added to Google Docs over the last few weeks. Other notable improvements include a text format painter in documents, which is a fast way to copy and paste font, size, color and other text styling. Spreadsheets now support vertically merged cells (in addition to horizontal merges). In drawings, you can drag images from your desktop to the drawing canvas, then continue editing your graphic. We also added Fusion Tables as a new document type in the documents list. Fusion Tables are a powerful way to gather, visualize and collaborate on large data sets that might be unwieldy in a typical spreadsheet.


Accessibility improvements in Google Calendar, Docs and Sites
We think technology can do a better job getting out of people’s way and helping you be more productive with less complexity and fewer frustrations. In this spirit, we’ve recently made a series of improvements to make our applications more accessible to blind users. We have more work to do, but Google Calendar, Docs and Sites now offer better support for screen readers and improved keyboard shortcuts. We hope these changes make our applications more useful to all users.

Who’s gone Google?
Organizations are moving to Google Apps for a diverse set of reasons—including cost savings, streamlined teamwork and better mobile access. We’ve even started hearing from schools and businesses who have made the switch to reduce their impact on the environment. No two organizations choose Google Apps for the exact same reasons, but in total, the momentum of Google Apps keeps growing.

We recently shared the news that 61 of the top 100 universities ranked by U.S. News and World Report have gone Google. On the business side, there are now more than 4 million companies using Google Apps, and businesses are joining at a rate of over 5,000 per day. In all, there are more than 40 million users that regularly use Google Apps in their organizations.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

This fall, as classrooms fill with the hustle and bustle of a new semester, more students than ever will use Google Apps to take quizzes, write essays and talk to classmates. Yet blind students (like blind people of all ages) face a unique set of challenges on the web. Members of the blind community rely on screen readers to tell them verbally what appears on the screen. They also use keyboard shortcuts to do things that would otherwise be accomplished with a mouse, such as opening a file or highlighting text.

Over the past few months, we’ve worked closely with advocacy organizations for the blind to improve our products with more accessibility enhancements. While our work isn’t done, we’ve now significantly improved keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers in several Google applications, including Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar. Business, government and education customers can also learn more about these updates on the Enterprise blog.

In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll continue to improve our products for blind users. We believe that people who depend on assistive technologies deserve as rich and as productive an experience on the web as sighted users, and we’re working to help that become a reality.

For more information on these accessibility changes, using Google products with screen readers, how to send us feedback and how to track our progress, visit google.com/accessibility.

Posted by T.V. Raman, Technical Lead, Google Accessibility

Pop quiz: What’s significant about the number 61?

(a) Number of points required to win a standard game of Cribbage
(b) The country code to call Australia
(c) Number of Top 100 universities that use Google Apps for Education

As all Aussie Cribbage enthusiasts attending college in the U.S. may suspect, this is actually a trick question—all three answers are correct!

Today, U.S. News and World Report released their 28th annual ranking of the top higher-education institutions across the nation. While this list of schools represents traditions of academic excellence that span centuries, these institutions also clearly recognize the importance (and value) of modern technology in academia. We’re thrilled that 61 of this year’s top 100 universities have chosen Google Apps for Education to help improve communication and collaboration on campus.

We’re proud to see such historic institutions moving to the world of 100% web. Here are just a few of the schools from this year’s “Top 100” that have gone Google:

• Yale University
• Northwestern University
• Brown University
• Vanderbilt University
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Southern California
• Wake Forest University
• William and Mary
• Brandeis University
• Case Western Reserve University
• University of Maryland
• Boston University
• Rutgers University
• Clemson University
• University of Minnesota

To show our appreciation to these great schools, and to help students better explore and evaluate their college options, we’re providing a year’s worth of free access to the U.S. News complete rankings for anyone who registers before Friday, September 16. Just sign up and you’re all set.

Finally, it’s not just about who is using Google Apps. We’re also interested in how students and staff are using Google tools to do amazing things inside and outside the classroom. Since 61 is the magic number, we’ve compiled 61 stories directly from students, faculty and staff at these universities: www.google.com/apps/top100schools.


These 61 schools represent just a small portion of the 14 million students, faculty and staff now using Google Apps for Education. All over the world, Google Apps is helping schools offer their communities a better way of working together, and we’re honored to be a part of this new tradition.

(Cross-posted on the Enterprise Blog)

Posted by Tom Mills, Director of Education

(Cross-posted on Gmail, Green and Enterprise blogs)

Cloud computing is secure, simple, keeps you productive and saves you money. But the cloud can also save energy. A recent report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and Verdantix estimates that cloud computing has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions by millions of metric tons. And Jonathan Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford who has led several studies on data center energy use, has written that for many enterprises, the cloud “is significantly more energy efficient than using in-house data centers.”

Because we’re committed to sustainability, we sharpened our pencils and looked at our own services to see how they stack up against the alternatives.

We compared Gmail to the traditional enterprise email solutions it’s replaced for more than 4 million businesses. The results were clear: switching to Gmail can be almost 80 times more energy efficient (PDF) than running in-house email. This is because cloud-based services are typically housed in highly efficient data centers that operate at higher server utilization rates and use hardware and software that’s built specifically for the services they provide—conditions that small businesses are rarely able to create on their own.

If you’re more of a romantic than a businessperson, think of it this way: It takes more energy to send a message in a bottle than it does to use Gmail for a year, as long as you count (PDF) the energy used to make the bottle and the wine you drank.

We ran a similar calculation for YouTube and the results are even more striking: the servers needed to play one minute of YouTube consume about 0.0002 kWh of energy. To put that in perspective, it takes about eight seconds for the human body to burn off that same amount. You’d have to watch YouTube for three straight days for our servers to consume the amount of energy required to manufacture, package and ship a single DVD.


In calculating these numbers, we included the energy used by all the Google infrastructure supporting Gmail and YouTube. Of course, your own laptop or phone also consumes energy while you’re accessing Google, so it’s important to choose an efficient model.

There’s still a lot to learn about the global impacts of cloud computing, but one thing we can say with certainty: bit for bit, email for email, and video for video, it’s more efficient in the cloud.

Posted by David Jacobowitz, Program Manager, Green Engineering and Operations

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last few weeks, we added a few frequently-requested improvements to Google Apps, including offline access in Gmail, Calendar and Docs, page numbering in documents, and page-level permissions in Google Sites. If you’ve been waiting for these features, please give them a try!

Work offline in Gmail, Calendar and Docs
You can connect to the Internet in more and more places now, but you probably occasionally find yourself in situations when you can’t use web apps because of spotty connectivity. Now you can stay productive even without a connection in Gmail, Calendar and Docs on Chrome, thanks to new offline capabilities for each of these applications.


Free calls home for overseas U.S. Military personnel
On Tuesday, Gmail also added the ability for all U.S. Military personnel with valid .mil email addresses to call the United States for free. We appreciate the hardships our troops face, and we hope to make staying in touch with friends and family a little easier for them while they’re deployed.


Page numbers in Google Docs
A while back we added page headers and footers in Google Docs, and now you can add automatic page numbers at the top or bottom of your pages. We’ve heard from plenty of students and teachers who asked for this feature, so we’re glad to be making Google Docs just a little bit better for them.


Page-level permissions in Google Sites
Sometimes project sites are most useful when the whole team can access everything in the site, but there are other situations—like when you’re sharing a site with a client—when you might not want everyone to have full access. That’s where page-level permissions come in handy. It’s a simple way to specify who can see each page in your Google Sites.


Administrative audit history
Another useful feature that we added for organizations this week is administrative change reporting. This new area of the control panel lets admins see a record of administrative changes that have been made to their Google Apps setup, including changes to user accounts, application settings, mobile settings and administrative delegation.


Who’s gone Google?
More than 4 million businesses are using Google Apps now, and the wave of organizations switching over continues to accelerate. Yesterday at Dreamforce, Eric Schmidt shared a couple new details about the growing momentum in this area, including the fact that more than 5,000 businesses sign up each day, and that there are more than 40 million total active users in organizations using Google Apps.

To get a flavor of how organizations are putting Google Apps to work, Viocorp, North Carolina A&T State University and Lamar Advertising shared their stories over the last few weeks.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted from Blogger Buzz)

As you may have heard, things are starting to look a little different across many Google products—and today, Blogger is the next product to get a makeover.

It’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics. We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time.

Throughout the design process, we conducted user interviews to help identify how to make Blogger even easier and more enjoyable to use. We also watched users try our new interface and made many refinements based on their feedback.

A streamlined blogging experience
Whether you’re on a dashboard or settings page of blogger.com, you can always create or edit posts with just one click at the top of the screen. Additionally, the post editor has been expanded and simplified to give you a larger canvas for drafting and previewing your work.


Monitor and grow your audience at a glance
In the new “Overview” section of your dashboard, you’ll be able to quickly get a pulse for how people are reacting to your blog with a graph of your most recent traffic numbers, comment activity and follower counts. For extra guidance and inspiration, you’ll also find a list of helpful links, a feed of Blogger updates and a showcase of other blogs you may find interesting.


Opt in now
Starting today, we’ll gradually let all bloggers choose to turn on the new UI, so your Blogger experience won’t be updated until you enable it. Over the next few days, keep an eye out for a pop-up announcement on your dashboard with instructions on how to get started, and check out this Blogger Help Center page to learn more about what’s changed.

If you have suggestions or feedback about the new look, click the gear icon in the top right of the navigation bar and select “Send Feedback.”

We’re working hard to fundamentally revamp and improve the Blogger experience from the ground up, and we hope you enjoy the first in a series of major updates that are on their way in the coming months.

Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager, Blogger

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

We understand that it’s not always easy or affordable for our troops serving overseas to call friends and family at home, so starting today we’re making it completely free for all uniformed military personnel with valid United States Military (.mil) email addresses to call the United States, right from Gmail.

There are two easy steps to enable free calling from Gmail (detailed instructions):

1. Add your valid .mil email address to your Google Account
   
2. Click on the Call phone link at the top of the Gmail chat roster and install the voice and video Gmail plugin if you haven’t already.

And don’t forget that for friends and family at home in the U.S., calling troops abroad is as little as $.02/minute. 

Across the United States, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) provide educational homes for hundreds of thousands of African-American students. Small and community-focused, usually with fewer than 5,000 students, privately or publicly funded, and far-reaching in curriculum and tradition, these communities share a proud history of addressing educational equality and preparing many of the nation’s minority students for whatever life opportunities they seek.

Last week, at our annual HBCU Faculty Summit in our New York City office, we had the chance to host more than 50 professors and administrators from 16 HBCUs across the country. The 2011 summit had three themes: infrastructure, curriculum and partnership. We were pleased to lead thoughtful conversations around these themes and discuss the benefits Google Apps can bring to a campus. The summit also provided a unique opportunity for representatives from different HBCUs to come together and learn from one another. Click here to view photos from the Faculty Summit.

On the first day of the summit, nine HBCUs announced their decision to switch to Google Apps for Education. These schools included:

• Alcorn State University
• Bethune Cookman College
• Jarvis Christian College
• Morgan State University
• Morris Brown College
• North Carolina A&T State University
• Philander Smith College
• Saint Paul College
• Wilberforce University

These schools joined another 13 HBCUs already using Google Apps, meaning that more than 100,000 HBCU students and faculty will have access to Google’s collaboration tools in the 2011-2012 school year.

Like all universities, HBCUs rely on technology like Apps to facilitate communication, collaboration and connectedness among their students, staff and alumni. To learn more about HBCUs turning to Google Apps to transform campus technology while cutting costs, read this white paper and today’s Enterprise Blog post about North Carolina A&T going Google. If you’re an administrator or ambassador at an HBCU and would like to go Google, visit the Google Apps for Education website and click on “Get Apps today.”

Posted by LaFawn Bailey, Global Diversity & Inclusion Specialist