Library & Information Services » google

Google Apps dropping support for IE8 on 11/15/2012

Chris Norris — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:21:15 +0000

Internet Explorer 10 launches on 10/26/2012, and as a result, Google will discontinue support for Internet Explorer 8 shortly afterwards, on 11/15/2012. After this date users accessing Google Apps services using Internet Explorer 8 will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser.

The latest versions of Google Chrome and Firefox are the recommended web browsers for Middlebury’s Google Apps instance.

Read more about this announcement from Google here.

Middlebury Google Apps: Drive = Documents

Chris Norris — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:50:04 +0000

Over the next several weeks, Google is releasing Google Drive — the newest member of the Google Apps suite, where you can keep everything and share anything. Google Drive replaces and enhances what you know today as your Google documents list.

What is Google Drive?

With Google Drive, you can securely upload any file or folder to the web and access the most up-to-date versions of those files from anywhere. You can access Google Drive in your web browser and can also download the Drive application to your Mac, PC, Android or iOS devices to seamlessly access files across any of these devices. You will have 5GB of included storage space for your Google Drive. For more information on Google Drive functionality, please see the product overview page or visit drive.google.com/start.

How will Google Drive be made available to Middlebury Google Apps?

Google Drive will become available on an opt-in basis over the next several weeks. Because Google is releasing Google Drive gradually, some users may not be able to get started immediately, but you can request to be notified when Google Drive is ready for you to opt in.

In the coming months, Google Drive will become the default and will replace the documents list as the way for users to access their files and documents. At this time, all users will have access to the desktop sync clients and mobile applications.

How is the Google Drive online interface different from my current Google documents list?

The Google Drive online interface looks similar to today’s Google documents list with a number of improvements, including new ways to organize your files and enhanced search functionality.

Learn more

To learn more about Google Drive functionality, please visit the Google Drive Help Center.

–Chris

A New Look for Middlebury Google Apps

Chris Norris — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:21:49 +0000

Earlier this year, Google announced a project to bring a new and improved Google experience. Google began rolling out a new look and feel across products to make the interfaces consistent, streamlined, and easy to use. The new look is a permanent change for all Google Apps users and the schedule will be as follows.

Docs: Tuesday December 13, 2011
Sites: Tuesday December 13, 2011
Calendar: Beginning of January 2012

Feel free to write to gadmin@middlebury.edu with any questions!

–Chris

Does tagging content make it easier to find with search? No.

Ian McBride — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:11:09 +0000

I’ve received this question from several people now. Below are two videos from Matt Cutts who works on Google’s Webspam team explaining how tagging content mostly does not affect their search results. This also means that tagging largely will not affect how results appear on Middlebury’s site, since we use Google to provide our search results.

Searching is new and improved!

Dan Frostman — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:07:28 +0000

Did you know that the search box on college web pages is now powered by Google? (You may have heard of them – they sort of specialize in searching.) So now when you are looking for something, you should be able to find it from the search box. Give it a try!

Google Search your Site(s)!

Ian McBride — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:47:03 +0000

Editors on the Middlebury and MIIS sites can now add a search box to their site that returns results from the current site, or a list of sites you specify. When you click “Add” in the Edit Console in Drupal, you’ll see a new content type named “Google Search”. Choosing this option shows you the following form:

Each URL that you enter will add to the search query using the “inurl” syntax. What this means is that your search results will be scoped to include only those pages that have that text in their URL. In the example above, the search will only return results from the LIS website, the LIS wiki, and the LIS blog. This would leave out the Library, Helpdesk, and Curricular Technology site, so a real example would include those URLs as well.

You don’t have to use the full URL either. You can use a domain, like www.middlebury.edu, to limit search results to just our main website. Or you can use a word, like “fellowships” which will include results from any page with that word in its URL.

The search form that a person visiting your site sees in compact and displays up to eight results as they type their search query, like the new Google Instant search does on Google’s website. Try it out on our News Archives site.

Feedback is welcome, so let me know if you have any questions about this or suggestions for improving this service.

Gmail and Google Calendar?

Carrie Macfarlane — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:19:54 +0000

Take a look at the Suggestions Board in the atrium. There’s a new topic!

We’ll be responding to comments about the previous topic (“What do you need most? What can you do without?”) on the Suggestions blog. There are two responses to Suggestions Board comments (printers and wireless) on the blog already.

Eating our own dogfood… yum

Alex Chapin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:30:22 +0000

The current tagline for the Curricular Technology blog is “eating our own dogfood… yum.” I recently changed this from “That’s Team with a capital T, baby!” in consultation with Bryan Carson.

The phrase, eating one’s own dogfood is frequently used by technology companies to indicate that employees in these companies use the software they are developing. This is done for various reasons including helping to test the software, gain familarity with the products being developed, expressing confidence in the product and so on.

Responding to the Curricular Technology Blog Tagline survey is a good example of eating one’s own dogfood. The survey was created with Google Apps which we have used quite a bit in our team work. The survey is essentially a form that is linked to a spreadsheet. It’s a great way to quickly gather information from others and can evolve as responses come in. For example, as others submit tagline suggestions, the form can be updated to include these new suggestions and also people to rate them.

Research: Support for Unicode, Diacritics and non-Latin-based character sets

Alex Chapin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:20:00 +0000

For updates on this research topic, see:
لإثسفهىل

Which of our current web applications or apps we are considering support Unicode, diacritics and non-latin based characters sets.

I know Segue supports all of these. I think Moodle does as well. Not sure about MediaWiki, Google Apps, WordPress and Drupal….

Research: WordPress Plugin for Displaying Google Docs

Alex Chapin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:55:14 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if Google Docs could be displayed in a blog or other content management system. That way, a bunch of people could collaborate on a text which could be displayed on a blog for others to comment upon. The comments on the blog could help inform the editing of the text.

Is there a WordPress plugin for displaying Google Docs? If so how well does it work? Is it well supported.