Google Adds New Tips Page to Gmail

Are you a Gmail Ninja? Check out the new Gmail Tips to find out.

At the time of its release, and even to this day, Gmail challenged the way people thought about web-based email. When it was made available to the general public on February 7th, 2007, Gmail differed from other services like Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail in a number of ways:

• Email messages are arranged into threads called 'conversations.' Rather than organizing email sequentially by date, by sender, or by subject.
  
• The storage capacity of Gmail in its original closed beta was 1GB at a time when the most you could get from competing services of 2-4MB.
  
• Spam filtering in Gmail was community driven. This helps Gmail as a whole learn to filter similar messages for all users, not just user who marks a message as spam.
• From the start Gmail was heavily search-oriented. Google used their own search technology to allow Gmail users to search their inbox for messages.
  

Today Gmail has well over 100 million users. Now Google is asking those users, "Are you using everything Gmail has to offer?" From the days of the original closed beta Google has continued to improve on what was already an innovative system. Many users aren't aware of everything Gmail can do for them. To help educate the masses, and undoubtedly to help drive up the number of people adopting Gmail, Google has created a fun guide to many of the features in Gmail. Gmail tips is a link located at the top of your Gmail inbox.

That link leads you to a page where Google provides a guide to "Become a Gmail Ninja." The different features in Gmail are divided into four levels:

• White Belt: Includes basic features like how to use stars to mark a note as special, how to reply by chat, and how to organize email using Gmail's label system. Each rank is also divided by how much email a person deals with in a day. The typical Gmail White Belt is a user who only gets a few emails a day, and maybe only uses Gmail as an alternate email solution.
• Green Belt: Covers more advanced features like using Google video chat in Gmail, adding filters to incoming mail, and adding the forgotten attachment detector available in labs (and my favorite Gmail gadget by far). The typcial Gmail Green Belt is a user who gets a moderate amount of email every day and/or uses Gmail as their exclusive mail system.
• Black Belt: At the Black Belt level the Google guide goes over speeding up Gmail through keyboard shortcuts, filtering email with personalized email addresses, and setting up canned responses (definitely a useful feature). The typical Gmail Black Belt is a user who is definitely using Gmail exclusively, and someone who deals with a lot of email messages every day.
• The Master: A Gmail Master is someone who uses Google Docs and Google Calendar within Gmail, can sign out of their account remotely if it is left open on a public computer, and has personalized RSS feeds in web clips. Like the Black Belt the Gmail Master uses only Gmail as their email client, and they deal with a massive amount of email per day.

The features described at each level above are only a small sample of those offered by Gmail and Google Labs. To make it easier for the average user to choose the features they want, Google has published this guide online, and also made available a PDF version that users can print. Google also offers a laminated guide for $1.25. The laminated guide was given away for free to the first 1,024 (get it?) users to request a copy.

Further Reading

Take a look at some of the links below for more about Gmail Tips.

• Gmail tips on the official Google Blog
• How to Become a Gmail Ninja reported on Softpedia
• Google Offering Gmail Ninja Lessons on Information Week's "Grok on Google" column
  

SADA Helps Save the Day for Fielding Graduate University

SADA Systems, Virtualization Key to Fielding Graduate University Staying Operational Through Devastating Fires.

When fires in Santa Barbara last month threatened Fielding Graduate University and forced an evacuation, SADA was there to help put the university's disaster recovery plan into action.

In a recent article published in NetworkWorld, SADA Systems Inc. and SADA's Director of IT Services were identified as key players in supporting Fielding Graduate University's disaster-recovery plan. Fires that broke out in the Santa Barbara area in May forced the evacuation of the University. While some staff were routed to hotels outside of the mandatory evacuation area, the university's Director of Network Operations Deby DeWeese was hard at work ensuring the university's students and faculty who are distributed throughout the U.S. and beyond could keep working in their online academic environment. The solution came in the form of a network-in-a-box making use of blade servers, set up at another location. Then it became clear the university would remain evacuated for an extended period of time. "We could see flames from our office windows and ash was falling from the sky," DeWeese said. "We couldn't keep doing network-in-a-box, we needed to get something up and running somewhere else."

To keep the network available for those who depend on it DeWeese called on their disaster recover vendor, SBWH, and their network engineering company, CIO Solutions. SBWH provided an engineer who cleared rackspace for the university's blade systems, their disk array, and their Microsoft Data Protection Manager. CIO Solutions provided a network engineer and planning space in their offices. This team did some quick planning for the blades and the necessary network configuration. Then everything was plugged in and turned on, which restored the university's network in a location that was a safe distance from the fire.

DeWeese then reached out to SADA's Director of IT Services, Niv Dolgin, and engineer Kevin Palmer. Once the network was restored it was necessary to ensure that email was working properly, and that graduate students and faculty had access to the necessary network resources to continue working. Dolgin and Palmer worked with DeWeese, SBWH, and CIO Solutions to restore email and network connectivity.

When all was done, Fielding Graduate University went from a network-in-a-box to a remote network in a virtual environment in just over 24 hours. In this way university students and faculty were able to continue working while the fires destroyed more than 8,000 acres. When the fires were contained and local fire authorities sounded the all clear, Dolgin and Palmer once again assisted DeWeese and SBWH, and CIO Solutions with returning their network to its home environment.

Without quick response, a solid disaster-recovery plan, and assistance from key vendors like SADA Systems, Inc. the University might have been disabled for a week or more. For Fielding Graduate University the disaster-recovery plan and quick response from SADA provided a significant part of the support they needed to stay productive without lengthy interruption.

Open Multiple Excel 2007 Windows

A work-around covered by tip site Online Tech Tips allows you to open more than one session of Microsoft Excel 2007.

A lot of us now need to use Microsoft Excel to one extent or another. If you use it to plan your family's budget, or to keep track of your comic book collection you may not have run into one of Excel's major shortcomings. Excel 2007 does not allow you to open a new session in a separate window, so that you can see two spreadsheets side-by-side. This becomes a major problem if you want to run a task such as calculating everything on one spreadsheet. If there are other spreadsheets open, Excel will recalculate those as well, whether or not their data is related.

To be fair, Excel does allow you to change how windows are arranged. You can use this to open two spreadsheets in the same Excel session by changing the "Arrange All" option to "vertical." This makes your open spreadsheet documents appear side-by-side in a single Excel window. While this sounds like Excel supports viewing two spreadsheets at once, it's really only helpful if you have two monitors or a good-sized wide screen monitor. It's not as helpful if you have a single, smaller (19" or less, viewable area) monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio. It also doesn't eliminate problems like the calculation issue mentioned above. Also, if you open a third spreadsheet document Excel will arrange it alongside the other two.

This article posted on www.onlinetechtips.com solves the problem by making use of a registry hack. The term 'registry' refers to a database in Windows that stores options and settings. Don't let the term 'hack' scare you away. This is not a malware exploit of a Windows vulnerability. In this case 'hack' can be used interchangeably with 'workaround.' To make use of this option you will need to download this zip file. It includes five different files. Each file does something different. The features set by each file include:

• Add the 'open in new Excel instance' and make it the default
• Only adds the new instance option
• Only makes the new instance option the default
• Remove the open in new instance option
• Undo the default setting for the open in new instance option

All of the above are basic text files. To make use of this feature you will need to rename each file and change ".txt" to ".reg." Then double click the file and click OK when prompted (Excel should be closed when you do this). That's it! The option will now appear in the menu that opens when you right-click on an excel icon (pictured below).









For all the details read the article on OnlineTechTips.

Microsoft Offers Windows 7 Home Premium for $50 if You Pre-Order

For the next two weeks Microsoft will offer customers who pre-order the Home Premium edition of the latest version of the Windows operating system at a discounted price of $50.

On Friday, June 26th Microsoft kicked of a Windows 7 promotion that will end July 11th. In that time customers will be able to pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium Edition for $50 ($49.99). Stores participating in the promotion include Amazon.com, Best Buy, and you can order direct from Microsoft through their website. Also available at a temporary promotional price is the Professional version. That edition is available for pre-order at the discount price of $100 ($99.99).

Special pricing for Windows 7 applies only to the upgrade packages and not the full versions. The full versions of both Home Premium and Professional are available to pre-order, but must be purchased at full price.

Microsoft has also announced the full retail prices for Windows 7 when it becomes available in retail locations later this year. The Home Premium Edition will be $119.99 for the upgrade, with the full version costing $199.99. The Professional Edition upgrade will be sold full price for $199.99, with the full version running $299.99.

Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 7 at a significantly discounted price if you pre-order is proving to be hugely popular, if Amazon.com is any way to judge. Since the announcement the Home Premium Edition has jumped to the number 1 selling item out of all products available in Amazon's entire electronics catalog, not just software. The Professional edition also jumped substantially, landing in the number 2 spot among software products.

Here are some links to online retailers offering Windows 7 at the discounted prices for pre-order:

• Amazon.com
• BestBuy.com
• NewEgg.com
• The Microsoft Store

For further reading about Microsoft's offer and Windows 7 click one of the links below:

• Microsoft discounts Windows 7 article in Computer world
• Windows 7 pre-order a hit article on CNET News
  

The End of Analog Television Begins Today

Today is the final day for television stations to broadcast programming using analog radio signals.

If the next time you switch on the television you see nothing but static, you won't be alone. The FCC estimates that some 1 million television viewers are as yet unprepared for the digital television transition. To accommodate a likely flood of calls and requests from confused television viewers the FCC has put 4,000 operators on standby. Demonstration centers have also been set up in several cities to help people understand the digital transition, and how they can continue to get their programming.

The DTV transition marks the largest change to television viewing in sixty years. The last big change in the television industry was the switchover from black and white to color broadcast. The change was initiated as part of the Digital Television and Public Safety Act of 2005. The bill returns the analog bandwidth currently used by television broadcasters to use by emergency agencies. The date for the transition to digital television was originally set for February 17th of 2009. The Obama administration, fearing catastrophic backlash from television consumers unprepared for the transition, pushed the date back an additional four months. The FCC feels confident this move has greatly reduced the level of disruption that may be caused by the transition.

Here are some things to know about the digital television transition.

• Any television manufactured after March of 2007 is required by law to include a digital tuner.
• If you purchased a new television after that date, you don't need digital converter box.
• If you already subscribe to satellite or cable television services, you already get digital programming and don't need a digital tuner.
• Most televisions manufactured after 2004 will include a digital tuner. Check with your manufacturer to be sure. Many sets were sold as "HD-Ready" or "HDTV monitor," meaning they have the hardware required to display a high-definition image, but require a converter or cable TV connection to receive a digital signal.
• Television sets made before 2000 will most likely require a digital converter box.
• If your television was manufactured after 2007 and includes a digital tuner, but your image is either garbled, or the station displays either static or a "please upgrade your hardware" message, you may only need a digital antenna.

Some additional resources to help understand the digital television transition:

• Associated press report on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ovqj3RJEuE
• The official digital television transition website: http://www.dtv.gov/
  
  

Google Apps Get Docx and Xlsx support

Users of Google Apps can now upload documents created using the native Office 2007 format.

Early this week Google answered one of the most common questions about uploading documents to Google Apps. Previously, Google Docs allowed the upload of documents and spreadsheets created in versions of Word or Excel up to Office 2003, or those created using open formats such as those supported by Open Office. Office 2007, however, was not supported. On Monday Google announced on the official Google Docs blog that users may now upload their Office 2007 documents and spreadsheets to Google Docs.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To import a .docx or .xlsx file into Google Docs, click the 'Upload' button from the Google Docs List menu, select your file, and click the 'Upload File' button.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/06/file-formats-keep-on-coming-announcing.html

MORE Great New Features in Google Apps!

If you get a message in your Gmail inbox from your cousin in Germany, a business associate in Mexico or a pen pal in Japan and it's written in their native language, the Labs folks at Google have another innovation for you. Using Google Translate technology, Gmail will offer to translate the message from the original language to your own default language (or any other language you choose).

To enable this feature, within Gmail click on Gmail Labs (either the tab or the green beaker icon) and click "enable" under Translation. When Gmail detects one of your messages is in a language other than your default language, you'll see a header at the top of the message. Click the link that says Translate message to.... Your message will be translated inline (no need to open a new tab or window).

In other Apps related news, Google has made some big updates to Google Sites including allowing for hierarchical navigation of your Site's pages, refreshing the edit menu to be more consistent with Google Docs and switched the site settings area to vertical navigation to prepare for upcoming features, one of which, according to Jens Alfke of Google, is Google AdSense integration.

(Hat tip to Google Operating System  and The Official Google Apps Blog )