Shad Jessen and Erin Taylor will be presenting “What’s New in Google Apps?” Wednesday, February 24, 2010 in the ILC-118, 2:00 – 3:00 pm.
This one-hour presentation will discuss recent updates in Google Apps, including:
- Universal file upload in Google Docs
- Folder sharing in Google Docs
- Gmail mailbox proxy
- Google Calendar Labs
- Gmail and Google Docs drag & drop
- Google Calendar Tasks
Register for this free presentation on Employee Learning & Development’s website.
One year ago, Boise State University began moving faculty and staff in earnest to Google Apps for Education. We knew people would be concerned about the amount of disk space available to them, as they were accustomed to archiving old email to an offline repository.
To gear up for Google Apps, I decided to front-load as many emails into my account as possible just to show what the system could do. Though I had been using my Google account for more than I year at that time, I searched around for more email. My oldest emails date back to August 2006, and since moving to Google Apps I haven’t been deleting any email.
Today I will break 56,000 Gmail conversations in my account. Remember, a conversation is often more than a single email. I probably have over 100,000 individual email messages in my inbox. The size of all of these emails totals just about five gigabytes of space. It would take 5,120 floppy disks to back up this amount of information.
With that said, I am currently at 66% of my Google Apps account quota. A year ago I was at 46%; I am gaining on Google’s daily growth. If the rates stay the same, I have another two years before I will have to delete the 762 emails from Costco and other assorted emails that have piled up over the years.
But my hunch is that Google will up the limit far before we get there.
Maple computing software for engineers, mathematicians and scientists is now available for Boise State faculty and staff by joint funding from the Math Department and the Office of Information Technology.
For information on obtaining Maple, contact Otis Kenny, Department of Math at 426-3348.
More information about Maple can be found on Maplesoft’s website.
LabVIEW graphical programming software for engineers and scientists is also available for use by Boise State faculty and staff. To obtain LabVIEW software, visit the Office of Information Technology in the Business Building, B-112.
More information about LabVIEW can be found on the National Instruments website.
BroncoTec is hosting a series of free Apple computer workshops on February 10th. Workshops offered include “Mobile Learning with the Mac, iPod touch, and iPhone” and “Making Podcasts on the Mac.”
These workshops are open to all University employees and students.
Visit BroncoTec’s website for registration details and more information.
You can now upload any kind of file to your Google Apps account using Google Docs. This includes more than just the usual PDF, text, and Microsoft Office files; you can upload .exe files, .zip files, images, music, video, etc.
These files are then stored in the ‘cloud,’ accessible from any computer that has an Internet connection. And, because you’re using Google Docs, you can share these files with anybody.
You can use Google Docs as a backup location as well. For example if you manage a web site and would like to save a backup copy of the site somewhere other than on a physical computer, you can upload the files to your Google Apps account.
You can’t exceed 1 GB of total upload space (the total 1 GB of file upload space is separate from the 7 gigabytes of space associated with your e-mail account).
This new feature means that you may no longer have need to carry a USB flash drive, or other physical storage media around with you.
If you want to share your uploaded files with others, you might find it easiest to create and share a folder in Google Docs.
To access your free 1 GB of upload space, log in to Google Apps and click Documents at upper-left. Once Google Docs appears, click the Upload button at top-left, then click click ‘Select files to upload.’
More info on uploading files to Google Docs can be found on Google’s website.
Last year I facilitated a series of Google Apps training classes, and one of the most common misunderstandings from attendees was how Google intends for you to use Google Docs.
Many people in the classes held initially unfavorable impressions of Google Docs, based on uploading and converting Microsoft Office documents to Google Docs, and then being disappointed by the resulting formatting changes from the file conversion. That’s certainly understandable; Google’s document conversion filters can do a rather poor job of converting complexly-formatted Office documents. Think of 12 years ago, when WordPerfect and Microsoft Office were in widespread use, and how documents containing a large amount of formatting in one application sometimes wouldn’t translate well to the other.
To understand Google Docs, you have to think beyond Microsoft Office. A “document” in 2010 isn’t just a Word document, or an Excel spreadsheet; it could also be a PDF of a brochure, an HTML file from a web page, an RTF file exported from an email program, a simple TXT file containing…well, simple text.
Unless there is a specific need to only use Microsoft Office, we recommend the life of a document begin with Google Apps, especially if you want to collaborate on that document with other people. After your collaboration is complete, you can move on to exporting your Google document into the format intended for output (e.g., as a file on a website, an email, a PDF, etc.). Or you can keep the file as a Google Doc, and quickly share it with anyone else. Or even publish it as a web page and send viewers the address.
For one thing, starting a document in Google Docs gives you quick and easy access to that document wherever you are. On campus, off campus, using a smartphone, or using a public computer at a kiosk in France, just log in to Google Apps and access your file.
For another, as you’re creating your document, if you should lose your internet connection, suffer an untimely computer crash, or accidentally close your web browser, you won’t lose your work. Google saves your document every few seconds while you’re working on it.
But it’s collaboration where Google Docs really shines. Almost every thing I write, sooner or later, is a collaboration. I don’t know about you, but creating a document in Microsoft Word, emailing it out to six people to solicit their feedback, then coordinating all of the returned info using Track Changes (or, worse, incorporating their changes from separate documents into my initial document) is not the most efficient use of my time (or theirs).
Google Docs lets those six people collaborate with me on a document in real time. We all have the document open together, we can all work on it at the same time, we can all access a complete revision history at any point in time; it’s like sitting in front of a white board, except without the dry-erase marker stains on our sleeves.
When you’re finished with your initial collaboration, keep your document in Google Docs, or export it as a Microsoft Word file and bring it into Word to apply formatting. Or turn it into a PDF in Google Docs. Or an Excel doc. Or put it on the web with a few clicks and no HTML knowledge necessary. You have a lot of options.
However, there are some cases when you already have a Microsoft Word document and want to upload it to Google Docs. Not every uploaded document needs to be converted to Google Docs format; when you’re uploading you have a choice of converting the document or not converting. If you don’t convert, you can view the document within Google Docs and invite others to simultaneously view it with you, but you can’t edit it. Editing requires converting to Google Docs.
You can also use Google Docs as a “safety” for PowerPoint presentations. Upload your PowerPoint files to Google Docs with or without conversion, and always have them available to you wherever you are. Try importing a presentation as a Google Presentation and see how it looks; as long as you haven’t gone off the hook with your slide formatting, it should turn out just fine, and give you an easy method of sharing a presentation anywhere, with anyone.
Complete information on uploading and exporting documents with Google Docs can be found on Google’s website.
However you decide to use Google Docs in your workflow, view it as another tool in your toolbox, not as a replacement for Microsoft Office. Google Docs can be a powerful instrument for collaboration, and for secure, reliable storage. But there are some things Microsoft Office does much better. Both tools will continue to improve, and perhaps one day they’ll reliably talk to each other. Each has its uses. The trick is figuring out which is best for what purpose.
That’s where we come in. Call us at 426-4357, or email the Help Desk at helpdesk@boisestate.edu for Google Docs questions, connundrums, musings, and the like. Or, faculty and staff can submit an issue using Help Desk Self Service. We can help you out.
The OIT Help Desk now supports Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6.
Snow Leopard can be installed on Apple Macintosh computers with Intel processors and at least 2GB of RAM (Apple’s minimum system requirements state that only 1 GB of RAM is necessary, but in our experience 1 GB of RAM doesn’t cut it for University work).
Complete details on Snow Leopard features can be found on Apple’s website.
Licenses for Snow Leopard can be purchased from BroncoTec. Call BroncoTec at 426-5496, or visit them on the first floor of the Student Union Building.
The OIT Help Desk will install Snow Leopard on new Mac computers, or upgrade University-owned Macs provided requestors display proof of a valid single license for OS X 10.6.
Faculty and staff can pick up antivirus software for Snow Leopard to install on personally-owned computers beginning Monday, January 25th. Call the Help Desk at 426-4357, or email us at helpdesk@boisestate.edu for more information.
A couple of Google Apps fixes for Boise State were enabled this morning.
First, logging in to Google Apps while using the Google Chrome web browser no longer displays a separate authentication window.
Second, Offline Calendar mode now works correctly. While Offline Gmail has worked for some time, Offline Calendar mode previously directed you to our online authentication page, which of course wouldn’t work if you weren’t connected to the internet.
Now Offline Calendar works just like Offline Gmail; when you’re offline, you’ll be directed to an offline authentication page to access your Calendar items.
Learn more about Offline Calendar access for Google Apps on Google’s website.
RightAnswers asked us to produce a video about using their product at Boise State University. So we did; the video isn’t so much about the product itself as about how and why a knowledge base system is crucial to succeed in today’s support environment.
Visitors to the Idaho Statesman’s website December 23-24 may have received an unwanted early holiday gift in the form of a malware infection. From what we can ascertain, an advertisement on the Statesman’s site delivered a virus to some Windows XP computers on campus, which in turn downloaded and launched “Antivirus Live” malware.
The malware caused several pop-up windows to appear (including adult-oriented images), effectively hijacking web browsers. We were able to neutralize the malware by booting the infected computers into Safe Mode and running ComboFix.
Whether the malware-laden advertisement was relegated only to the Idaho Statesman’s website, or to other sites run by McClatchy, is unknown. But, it’s a certainty other computers besides those at Boise State were infected.
How to ward off infections like these in the future? Consider upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, make sure you’re running the very latest version of your web browser, and use updated, robust antivirus software.
Update 12/27: The Statesman has given us information stating their website is once again virus-free.
