Google Apps

Google Apps is a large collection of free software that you do not need to download or install onto your computer. It is available at no cost to you via a web browser.

Regardless of what computer operating system or whose computer you are using all of your files, settings and applications will remain the same.

To access Google Apps you must first register for a free Gmail account from http://www.google.co.nz.

Community organisations can utilise three main sets of the applications, productivity software, communications and web tools.

Productivity

Docs - Create written documents. Share and edit docs online with your work group.

Spread Sheets – Fully functional spread sheets with formulae. Share and edit spreadsheets online with your work group.

Presentations – Slide shows for speeches and visual appearances.

Notes – Creates text files similar to NotePad on Windows computers. Share and edit Notes online with your work group.

Communication

Gmail – An email application that includes searches, allows new folders and also has a spam filter.

GTalk – An instant messenger application that can synchronise all of your Gmail contacts onto your IM list.

Calendar – Choose to use the calendar for yourself or share with anyone else whom has a Google account.

Web Tools

Google Analytics - a powerful tool for analysing web traffic to your web site.

Blogger – An easy to use Blog tool.

Webmaster Tools – Creates reports and statistical information to enable you to manager how Google reads and finds your site.

Adsence – Add adverts to your web site so your organisation can try to earn some revenue.

Page Creator – Create a simple and effective web site and host it free of charge on the Google server. By default this will give you a Google address. To have your own domain name go to your Google site have the records changed on your domain name to point to your Google site.

Other useful applications include:

Google Friend Connect – You could ask your supporters and community to connect to your organisation via this application to show their support for your organisation. Although on the surface this tool may look like a social tool it will in fact promote your web site and your organisation. It will also assist you to bring together other like minded individuals.

IGoogle – Allows you to customise your Google home page with a myriad of tools such as clocks, weather etc.

Web History – is a record of all the web sites you have visited and searched for. An excellent resource for when you are researching and forget the site you were at the previous day.

Alerts – Ask Google to send you an email when your organisaiton is mentioned on a web site or a blog. Useful to keep a track of what people are saying about your organisation and who is referencing your material.

Book Search – Search inside a library of books. Some books only have previews available while others have full text available.

Google Book Search Partner Program – If your organisation has published books (either paper or electronically) that you would like to share with the world you can do so here.

Google in Your Language – Allows you to make Google available in your language (if it is one of the many that have been translated).

Picasa Web albums – An inexpensive online photo album to upload your photos and pictures to so you can share with your community.

Groups – Allows you to join an interest email discussion group or create your own. Google Groups is very similar to a listserv and is a cost effective manner to send emails to your supporters and have them subscribe to your organisation email group.

Reader – An RSS feed type tool that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds and web sites. Then you can access your subscriptions from any computer with Internet and a browser.

Google Wiki

Google Wiki allows you to customise search result rankings and to write comments about web sites that are produced from a Google search. The comments that you write are then viewable by anyone else using Google Wiki.

Google Wiki is only accessible once you have signed in to Google. Once you have signed into your Google account and perform a search you will notice Green boxes with arrows next to your search results. This is Google Wiki. Alternatively you can select Google Wiki from your accounts applications.

An example of modifying the Google search rankings is if you search for your organisation name or service and your page is ranked down the results page or on a subsequent page of search results, you can make your page ranked number one for your personal search results. Then you could add information in the comments area about your organisation. Perhaps a personal note to other Google Wiki users. This in turn could encourage other users to make your site ranked higher in their Google Wiki.

Adding comments about your organisation gives end users a human connection making them more likely to favour your organisation over others and to interact with your organisation more.

No doubt the more end users modify search results the more likely it is that Google will change their public search results.

To promote your web site more you could ask all of your stakeholders to participate in Google Wiki so you all can assist the Google search rankings and to provide a unbiased opinion of the quality and authenticity of your web site's content.

Your community organisation could make comments on various topics of interest and share opinions with others who are performing the same search on topics that are of interest to your group.

You could then form an online community of your stakeholders with Google Friend Connect (see relevant article) which allow you to keep in contact with a group of friends or community Stakeholders.

To use Google Wiki:

1. Sign in to or create your Google account.
2. Perform a search
3. Use the up arrow to move a search result up the page giving it a higher ranking.
4. Use the X button to delete a search item. A useful tool if an unrelated site has been included in your Google Search.
5. Make a comment by clicking the speech cloud at the end of the search summary.

Google Alerts

Know in real time what the world is saying about your organisation on the Internet.

It is often difficult to read and hear what people are saying your organsiation and more difficult to read it in a timely manner. Sometimes such delays could have an influence on potential funding, volunteer’s participation, action plans and other daily activities.

Google Alerts is an email service that notifies you via email of key words and phrases that appear in the Google search engine everywhere that Google searches.

This allows you to quickly monitor what anyone is publishing to the Internet about your organisation or to receive instant news from anywhere in the world on issues that are of concern to your organisation.

To access Google Alerts sign into your Google account and select the 'Alerts' application. You will then be presented with six options that you have Google monitor:

• Comprehensive – monitors the entire web that the Google Search engine indexes including all the options below
• Web – Web pages that the Google search engine indexes
• Blogger – Google Blogs
• Video – YouTube
• News – Google News Results
• Groups – Google Groups

You also have the choice to receive email alerts as they happen, daily or weekly alerts.

Via the 'Manage Alerts' button you can have multiple alerts of key words set up with the added option of sending alerts to various email addresses.

For your organisation you could create alerts for you organisaition name, services and key peoples names. Once you start to receive alerts you can customise the alerts to more suit your organisaiton.

http://www.google.com/alerts 

Google SideWiki

A new tool that Google has released to add to its extensive Toolbox is called Google SideWiki. http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/index.html

Google SideWiki is a tool that allows you to post public comments and information about web sites and offer valuable feedback and insights to the site.

Google SideWiki is a tool that allows you to post public comments and information about web sites and offer valuable feedback and insights to the site.
The comments are only viewable to those browsers that have Google Toolbar installed. Site owners have no control over the comments as they only appear with the Google Toolbar and not actually on the web site.
As an example if you have Google Toolbar installed you could make your own comments about this page and they will be made public to anyone who visits.

When you visit a web site and have your Google Toolbar activated, a question mark will appear in the top left hand side of the page if there are any comments. You then click the question mark to read and add comments. Alternatively if there are no existing comments then you can use the double arrow on the side of the page or the SideWiki button.

SideWiki is only available for those people with a Google account. It is also important to update your Google account profile with as many details as possible. This will make your comments more authoritive and less likely to appear as spam. If you make a scathing comment with a full and up to date Google Profile, your comment will not look malicious.
For your non profit organisation actively participating in comments can enhance your online profile and reputation.

An example of a helpful comment would be offering further information on a subject on someone else’s web site. Perhaps just a link to another site that the current site owner has not already included on their own site.

Site Owners

The dangers for organisations and Google SideWiki are that there is no way you can control what people will say on your web site via the Google SideWiki.
Your organisation will need to manually manage what is being said on your site, as at the moment there are no automated tools to do this. (It should be noted Google SideWiki is only 6 days old at the time of writing and changes may occur).

It is important to interact with feedback on your site whether it is good or negative. If there is a negative comment, ignoring it makes your organisation look worse as people now expect such comments to have interaction.

All comments are by default added to your Google profile as well as an RSS feed. You will also have the option to share your comment via Twitter, FaceBook, links and FaceBook. Thus allowing more opportunities to gain more recognition for your area of expertise and likewise more reliance should be placed on checking the comments.

As a site owner you have the opportunity to add an introduction to your site via the SideWiki. If you are not a current Google WebMaster Tools user, you will need to create a WebMaster account via your Google Account and link your web site to your profile http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34592 .

Specifications

Currently SideWiki is only available for a limited selection of browsers including IE 6 + and FireFox 2 +. Interestingly, it will not presently work with Google's own Chrome browser.

SideWiki is part of the Google Toolbar for your browser. Most of the extra features can be hidden by right clicking the Toolbar and hiding buttons.

Google Buzz

Introduction

Google recently rolled out an add-on to its Gmail accounts called “Google Buzz”. Google Buzz is a blogging service that allows you to keep in contact with your Gmail contacts and see all of their updates on the web including twitter, RSS, Picasa, websites, Google reader and various other sites they may subscribe to. You also have the option to follow other Buzz users based on their interests.

Google Buzz could be an effective manner for Not-for-profit Groups to interact and manage time, projects and share information in a manner that could duplicate an Intranet or an expensive membership system.

All comments, photos, updates etc. related to a topic can be read in one screen in a timeline. By default you will be able to read what other people are saying on the topic. This makes team collaboration a much simpler task. For example a topic on your next fundraising campaign might attract external information that you can add to your Buzz profile that will automatically inform your team.

Before you use Buzz

You need to have a Gmail account, a Google Profile and your Google contacts should be grouped accordingly.

Accessing Buzz

To access Buzz log in to your Gmail account. If you do not have an Gmail account you can sign up for free from the login option on your Google home page or at www.google.co.nz or at www.gmail.com . It should be noted that at the time of writing Buzz is yet to be translated into Māori and other various languages.

Obtain or Update your Google Profile

The first task is to complete your Google Profile which is associated with all of your Google apps such as Gmail, Web hosting, Chat etc. It is also a convenient place to check and manage your sidewiki entries.

A Google profile also assists with search engine rankings. If you do not have a website yet or it is performing poorly, your Google Profile may appear first in a search if it is fully completed.

Updating your profile

If you are logged into Google Buzz you can update your profile by clicking on the 'edit' option after your username.
OR
Log into your Google account and go to 'Account Settings' and select 'Profile'.

To ensure that you are identified and easily found in Google searches and Google Buzz, your Profile should include the following minimum information:

• An organisation logo or photo
• Add detailed information to the bio
• Allow Google to index your profile
• Add photos from Picasa and Flickr from your organisation
• As much contact information as you feel comfortable with being made public
• Add all of your websites, FriendFeed and Social Media links to your profile
• Create a Profile Link as this will make it easier to promote your Profile

Organise your Google contacts

Google contacts is where Google stores a list of anyone you have sent or received email from. It is also a place where you can maintain your personal contacts list.

Google Buzz allows posts to be visible to groups of contacts. But first you need to create the groups from within your contacts list.

To do this you must be logged in to Gmail or Buzz and select 'Contacts' from the side panel.
 
To create a new group select the button in the left hand corner with two people and a plus sign. It is important to create groups that you will remember and recognise. These groups can also be used for Gmail and most certainly for other new Google products in the future.

Suggestions for Groups include family, internal work colleagues, name of current project, interest groups and personal.

Getting started with Google Buzz

1. Add sites to Buzz by using the 'Connect Sites' option. If you have updated your Google Profile with enough information all of your links will be included by default. Add your Twitter, Picasa, Blogs, Google Reader feeds and much more. This will allow people to view your interests and attract them more to follow you. It will also create the one source of information to follow you everywhere on the web.
2. Google Buzz will suggest a list of contacts to follow. Follow the contacts you want to follow. It should be noted that even if your contacts with Gmail do not use Buzz, they will appear in your list by default. You can still follow them, waiting for when they begin to use Buzz.
3. Search for profiles using usernames and key words that are common to your organisation and follow the user.

Search Tips for Buzz

Although Google Buzz is initially a way to keep in contact with your Gmail contacts you can also follow other people. To do this efficiently there are a number of search tips.

• author:<insertname>@gmail.com – This will find all the messages written by a specific user (you can also use a partial name instead of an email address)
• commenter:<insertname>@gmail.com – This will find all the messages that have a comment from a specific user
• has:photo, has:video, has:link – This restricts the results to messages that include photos, videos or links (for example: communitynet has:photo)
• source:flickr, source:twitter, source:reader- This restricts the results to messages imported from Flickr, Twitter, Google Reader (for example: communitynet source:flickr).

If you are a Google Apps power user or are interested in saving your Buzz search results you can use the 'Quick Links' feature at Google Labs.

Buzz text formatting

1. *bold message* = Bold text
2. _italic message_ = Italic Text
3. -deleted message- = Strike Though text

Site owners

To maximise your search engine optimisation and publicity you should upgrade your Social Media toolbars or install a Google Buzz widget on your blogs and sites so that your readers who use Google Buzz can still share your site and Blog information.

WordPress has several stable widgets which are available now.
Site owners can use this free widget http://www.buzzcounter.net/

Name verification

It is not uncommon that usernames are used by individuals for illegal and immoral activities. The media is frequently reporting such stories. For organisations this is a real issue as anyone can assume an online identity and pretend to be you.

Presently only available in the USA but expected to be rolled-out internationally is a process called “verification”. This will place a green badge next to a user name in their profile. The badge has the word “Verified”. This gives you assurance that you are interacting with the real person of the username.

The verification process involves checks and physical identification.

Buzz and email

To send a contact a direct message in Buzz that will email the contact you can use the @ symbol in the same manner as Twitter. By using the @ you will email your contact. For example, typing @ktaiuru in Buzz will email me. This is a time saving feature if you are in Buzz and do not want to go back to Gmail to send am email to a contact.

The same is also possible if you are in Gmail and want to send a Buzz. You simply send an email to buzz@gmail.com from your Gmail account and it will send it as a Buzz from your Buzz account.

To have Buzz updates not reach your Inbox you can create a Gmail filter that makes Buzz updates skip the inbox automatically.

To do this:

1. Log in to Gmail
2. Select 'Create a filter' link
3. In the 'Has the words:' field enter label:buzz
4. Click Next Step (ignore Gmail's warning about filtering labels)
5. Select 'Skip the inbox' as the filter action
6. Save.

Managing Buzz messages

There are several options to remove contacts and Buzz messages as well as ignoring threads and people. They are all accessed via the down arrow which appears on each post.

1. 'Mute' will ignore the thread
2. 'View All' will show you all the Buzz messages form a user
3. 'Stop Following' will stop following the user
4. 'Report Abuse' is for spam or offensive Buzz posts.

To delete your own Buzz post simply scroll down the page to find it and select 'Delete'. You can also change the viewing permissions of your own post.

Permalinks

As with any other Blog system Buzz has built in Permalinks that allow you to link directly to a Buzz post. To access the permalink you need to click on the time of the Buzz message.

Tracking what is being said about you in Buzz

Buzz will email any replies to your Gmail account and as with your Gmail account, you can search Buzz in the same way.

The option of manually seaching Buzz for your organisation name and associated words is currently the best method for tracking comments not directed at you.

Adding Buzz threads to your favourite RSS Reader

You can subscribe to a contacts Buzz thread via any RSS reader by using the following link and replacing <USERNAME> with your contacts user name. Their username will be the first part of their Gmail email address.
http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/<USERNAME>/public/posted

Removing Google Buzz

If you have privacy concerns or feel that Buzz is taking up valuable space on your Gmail account you can remove Buzz.

At the bottom of your Gmail or Buzz screen is an option to “Turn Buzz off”. You can then reactivate at a later date.

Buzz on your mobile Device

Currently Buzz will operate on iPhone and Android. It should also work on other smart phones that Google Apps operates on.