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Googleholic for July 11, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!
In this edition:
- Live blog with Google Docs
- Google Mobile App for iPhone
- App Engine Hack-a-thon in Chicago
- Google Sites domain mapping
- Google Notebook bookmarklet
- Google News new design
Live blog with Google Docs
The Google Docs Blog has a great post about how to use Google Docs to easily live-blog an event or conference. There are too methods: embedding your Google Doc as an iFrame inside your blog, or by publishing your document as a blog entry and then updating and republishing that entry.
We had some problems getting the test to work with our WordPress blog (we're sure a little bit of playing around would fix the issue), but the idea is brilliant.
[via Official Google Docs Blog]
Google Mobile App for iPhone
With the official release of the 2.0 software and the App Store, the mobile development world is consumed with iPhone-mania. Google is no exception, and its first entry for the iPhone, Google Mobile App, is designed to make search as simple and effective as possible. You can search your contacts and the web, and Google pops up suggestions as you enter in your words. Google Mobile App also uses My Location to detect where you are so that you can quickly find locations nearby.
Google Mobile App is free and available in the US App Store (though it is coming soon to other stores).
[via Official Google Mac Blog]
App Engine Hack-a-thon in Chicago
If you live in the Chicagoland area and are interested in learning more about Google App Engine, Google is holding an all-day Hack-a-thon at its Chicago Office on Thursday July 31, 2008. From 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. you can get training on the major features of the App Engine API, Django, data modeling and how to incorporate App Engine with other web services.
You can build an app along with the Google team or create your own. Facilities, power and food will be provided -- so just bring your laptop and get ready to code. If you are interested, sign-up here.
[via Google App Engine Blog]
Google Sites domain mapping
Over the next week, Google Apps users will see a great new feature added to Google Sites: domain mapping. This is a really, really great addition because in the past, creating a Site in your Google Apps account left you with a URL like this: http://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/site-name -- which, let's be honest, is far from easy to remember, especially if you create more than one site or manage more than one Google Apps account. Wouldn't something like http://wiki.yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.com/site-name be easier to access and remember? Thankfully, this is exactly what is happening.
A new option in the Sites settings panel in the Google Apps dashboard allows you to map a site or group of sites to your domain or subdomain. The feature isn't available to all Google Apps users (we weren't able to test it on any of our Google Apps accounts), but will be rolling out in the coming week.
[via Google Sites Blog]
Google Notebook bookmarklet
The Google Notebook extension for Firefox is pretty awesome -- it lets you easily add any clip to your Google Notebook, but what about those of us that prefer to us a different browser for most of our day to day web work? Well, Google has just released a new Google Notebook bookmarklet so that even the Firefox-less can enjoy Google Notebook accessibility. We'll be honest, the bookmarklet isn't as nice or as useful as the Firefox extension, but it does let us "note" things in Safari, and that works for us!
[via Official Google Notebook Blog]
Google News new design
Google News has started testing a new redesign. The new design personalizes all pages, not just the front page, has "developing stories" areas and a "featured photos" section and a new auto-generated footer. Overall, the new design is much more "newspaper" like and we think easier to navigate.
Google is rolling out updates and tests to its News page, so you may see the updates, you may not. This testing period will help the team decide on the final new layout.
[via Google Operating System]
