Google has been working to harden Google Apps for its arrival into the enterprise. The tools bring browser based productivity into another dimension.

And, where people are productive, security is to be questioned. In this short review, we look at the new feature Google offers admins and look a bit closer at security in a browser-based world.

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To further enable Google Apps administrators, the company has released a new cookie based reset tool for managing security between the client and the enterprise cloud. This functionality of Google Apps allows an administrator to flag a user for re-authentication on their next HTTP request to Google’s cloud apps.

This new feature is targeted at environments where a user of the the Google Apps cloud loses an IT asset and the company wants to remove access to any current for future page requests.

This feature shows how mobile and personal computer are again creeping together in security needs for cloud data service use.

This feature reminds us of the “remote wipe” in MobileMe that is offered for the iPhone. The iPhone versiion targets removing data from the physical device but for practical purposes is nearly akin to “cookie invalidated” by Google Apps, which forces log-out any active sessions of a cloud based application.

Both features target keeping sensitive information safe and can be activated at any time, killing an active user of the device. Google shares the goal of the tool here:

“Combined with the existing ability for administrators to reset user passwords, this new feature to reset users’ sign-in cookies improves security in the cloud in case of device theft or loss.”

Google goes into a bit more detail in the help file for the cookie reset feature, which describes how to find the feature to reset the cookie (in Users and groups: Passwords) and as an admin remove authorization from any current or future authenticated user or browser client:

“To prevent unauthorized access to an account, you can reset the sign-in cookies for that user, which has the effect of logging out that user from all current HTTP sessions, and requiring new authentication the next time that user tries to initiate an HTTP session to log in to Google Apps.”

The help file also describes how to find the feature, which shows up in the Users and but in our version of Google Apps (non premium) it didn’t show up in the password section as described.

So far, it looks like this security feature is getting a good response from the administrators that have responded to Google’s blog. We see it as a welcome effort on Google’s part towards preparing their cloud for the enterprise, but also it raises questions of the use of cookies and tying down access to machines (IP) vs. browser cookie.

Securing the browser for the cloud causes us to think of this question:

Are mobile phones (iPhone for example) inherently more secure than computer based browsers?

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Google is retiring the Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) program, and replacing it with the new Google AdWords Certification program.

"We’ve had a lot of great feedback from agencies and today we’re announcing changes designed to offer them better training and more rigorous certification in AdWords proficiency, and to lower costs for those who help advertisers get the most out of AdWords," says Penry Price, Vice President, Global Agency Development at Google. "We’re also making it easier for advertisers to find certified agency partners to work with them on digital advertising."

Features of the new training program include:

- New training materials to help agencies better understand recent changes in search marketing and AdWords functionality, available via webinar series, learning center, or on-site training at Google

- A redesigned Certified Partner badge, which includes a “Click to Verify” element so advertisers can view the partner’s profile page for additional information.

Google has also launched Google Partner Search, which a directory that pairs advertisers with Certified Partners, as well as new AdWords API pricing.

Google has launched a new Labs project called Google Follow Finder. It’s designed to help you expand your Twitter network.

To use Google Follow Finder, you can enter your Twitter account name and see a list of people Google thinks you might be interested in following (our own Twellow has a helpful suggestion feature too). Google’s tool will also let you enter other people’s Twitter names and get suggestions based on that.

"If you see someone you want to follow, just click ‘Follow on Twitter,’ log in, and they’ll be added to your following list in Twitter," explains Associate Product Manager Aaron Wise. "This integration is based on Twitter’s new @anywhere frameworks, which make it easy for any site to add Twitter functionality. We’re using the frameworks to provide dynamic information about Twitter accounts and one-click following."

It’s quite interesting that Google is this into getting you to expand your Twitter network, when you might think they would be more interested in getting you to use Buzz. But since your Twitter network can be integrated into your Buzz account, it’s probably just as well, for the sake of Buzz use.

This is the second Twitter-related announcement to come from Google today – the first being the replay feature in Google’s real-time search, which archives tweets and lets you browse them on a timeline.

On a related note, the @anywhere platform from Twitter is now available for anyone to use. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone talks about this on the company blog.

Rackspace launched an iPad app to manage a cloud infrastructure, one of the first to offer such a service.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not have apps for the iPhone nor the iPad platforms. It has historically not offered mobile apps for AWS.

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You can still access AWS on the iPad through the Safari browser. But is the experience as rich as what you would have as on a native app?

Mike Mayo built Rackspace’s iPad app. He says it is the functionality that gives apps their value. It’s evident in both consumer and enterprise apps. Users get a rich user experience. You can see it in the Racskpace cloud app.

Mayo humorously says that the app offers administrators “a life.” Meaning that you can go out for dinner without the anxiety of not knowing how the infrastructure is faring. If you see a problem, you can reboot, directly from the device.

The app does have a new service not available on the iPhone version. You can delete your servers on it. Mayo kept the feature off the iPhone due to the concern that it’s such a small device, easily left at a bar or restaurant. He feels people are less likely to leave an iPad due to its size. We’re not so sure. People leave their laptops behind all the time.

We could go into details about the app and what it offers but Robert Scoble’s video does a good job of that.

Mayo is currently developing a Rackpace cloud app for the Android.

Disclosure: RackSpace is a sponsor of ReadWriteCloud’s parent site, ReadWriteWeb.

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Twitter turned on its new “popular” tweets feature in its search page last night, bubbling the three most popular tweets to the top of any search result. Previously, search results were only offered according to time, not any form of relevancy.

In addition to the search feature showing up on search.twitter.com, the functionality has been turned on in Twitter’s search API, so we’re likely to see this sort of thing showing up in third-party clients soon, as well.

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Don’t be confused if popular search results aren’t showing up when you search directly from the Twitter homepage – you need to specifically go to search.twitter.com for these new results to come up. For some reason, searching from the right-hand sidebar gives only results ordered by time.

From the Twitter API Google Group on how tweets will be ordered:

With this new project, we want to make real-time search even more valuable by surfacing the best tweets about a particular topic, by considering recency, but also the interactions on a tweet. This means analyzing the author’s profile, as well as the number times the tweet has been retweeted, favorited, replied, and more. It’s an evolving algorithm that we’ll be iterating on & tuning until practically the end of time.

While the Twitter search returns only three results, the API should return more if desired. The API is opt-in, as we wrote last time, and offers the ability to get only new results, only popular results, or a mix.

We’re immediately wondering how this might be used with the geocoding variable. Will we see similar functionality to the location trending on Foursquare or Gowalla? What does mean to identify tweets as singular hubs of conversation, like we see with Techmeme? Trending topics are just that – topics surrounded by many tweets. This makes the focus center not around many people talking about a topic, but instead a few tweets that many people are centering around. We know we’ve seen similar implementations with the likes of TweetMeme, but now that it’s in the API, what will we see next?

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Update: YouTube is reportedly making the new design live on all YouTube video pages today.

Original Article: YouTube has unveiled a new version of its video pages. They are not rolled out as the default at this point, but users can opt-in to view them in the new format (they can easily opt out as well).

"In the coming weeks, we’ll be eager to hear what the community thinks and, as with many things in this newly designed user experience, we’ll incorporate their feedback in future iterations," a representative for YouTube tells WebProNews.

"YouTube is about creating and watching the world’s biggest video collection; therefore, the design should make the video the star," says YouTube. "To that end, the new look is more subdued, stripped down and simple than before. The design should help ease users into advanced features, while providing power users with all the functionality they want."

Here is a look at the design before and after (respectively):

The new page includes a "next up" video list. Other videos in the queue on the right side of the page will be based on information about how you found the video. If you get to the video through search, the rest of the search results will end up on the video page. If you arrive on a video from a playlist or recommendation, that will also be reflected in the queue.

More specific info about the video is featured under the video, with the description and stats in one place. A new expand capability is included to reduce clutter. Actions like sharing, rating, saving or flagging a video are also now all grouped in one button bar.

YouTube has replaced the five-star rating system with a like/dislike system. According to the company people pretty much just used the one star and five star options anyway. "Liking" a video will save it to your favorites.

The new design comes with some new size and quality controls in the player. "When you pick the size, we’ll serve you the ideal quality," says YouTube. "For those of you hungry for more control, you can pick the specific video quality (for example, SD, HD or 1080p) in an associated drop-down menu. We’ll warn you when we think there may be a better quality choice, but the control is in your hands."

Users will be able to search for other videos while a video is still playing, and the results will show on that same page. That will be a very nice addition.

Also, there is more prominent placement of channel/subscriber information, a new "see more videos" feature, and a change in channel banner placement. YouTube says that you may notice an absence of the "more from [your channel]" feature, but this is only temporary. It will be back.

Right now, YouTube is just letting users opt-in for the new design by clicking this link, but says the opt-in process will be made more accessible soon. If you have opted in, but wish to revert back to the old style, there is an opt-out link at the top of the new video page.
 

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> Google Gets Patent For YouTube Gaming

Twitter just launched an updated, more dynamic homepage. The old, static homepage that didn’t really explain how Twitter really works and just showed a list of trending topic and a search form. The new homepage, on the other hand, features a scrolling list of trending topics, a constantly updating view of tweets from popular Twitter users, a random sampling of suggested users and a new explanation of what Twitter is.

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We have to say, though, that Twitter’s new explanation of itself sounds a bit odd:

“Twitter is a rich source of instant information. Stay updated. Keep others updated. It’s a whole thing. You choose and customize every aspect of the service. Lots of people like it. We’d love it if you joined us.”

Interestingly, Twitter de-emphasizes the social networking features of the service here and stresses that Twitter is a source of “instant information.” The old homepage simply said: “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” According to Twitter’s own announcement, the company wants to stress that Twitter is “not just for status updates anymore”

The new homepage also now feature a link to Twitter’s FAQ for business users.

A Better Homepage for Novice Users?

Given that Twitter has always had a hard time converting new users to regular users, this new homepage is clearly an attempt to better explain the service’s features and functionality to new users. We will have to wait and see if this new homepage will do a better job at converting visitors to regular users.

The new explanation of Twitter on the homepage could surely use some tweaking, but the new focus on interesting tweets and users will immediately give newcomers a good idea of how they can use Twitter themselves.

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Google just announced a small but useful update to the chat feature in iGoogle and Orkut, Google’s social network. You can now use the chat feature to send photos, documents and other files directly to your contacts. More importantly, though, Google also announced that it plans to finally bring this file transfer functionality to Gmail’s built-in chat feature. Right now, if you want to transfer a file to your Google contacts, you either have to email them the file or use the Google Talk desktop app or a compatible instant messaging client.

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To use this feature, simply go to your chat widget in iGoogle or Orkut, start a chat and click on “Send a file…” in the “Actions” menu. The recipient will be able to either accept the incoming file or politely decline the transfer.

Chat in Gmail already features video and voice chat, but the file transfer feature is currently still missing. It always seemed rather strange to us that some of Google’s instant messaging services like the Google Talk desktop client already had this capability. Now, there isn’t even feature parity among the web-based version of Google Talk anymore. Hopefully Google will soon fulfill its promise and bring this feature to Gmail as well.

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It’s no secret that Google and Microsoft are in heavy competition in the enterprise application space. This competition may extend into a relatively new sub-category of this space – internal microblogging. Think Twitter, just for within the enterprise.

Now, Google Buzz isn’t exactly a Twitter clone, but you probably don’t have to look too far to see some similarities. Google said right when Buzz was announced that it would be making its way into the corporate environment eventually. "Within a few months, we also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within your organization," Google Enterprise Product Management Director said at that time.

Microsoft is testing a new product called OfficeTalk, which is much more of a Twitter clone than Buzz (right down to the 140 characters), but would essentially compete with Google’s internal version of Buzz in terms of basic functionality.

Microsoft explains OfficeTalk:

Ever wish you could share information broadly within your organization without emailing everyone? Ever wish you could keep the pulse of what people in your organization think is interesting? Microblogging has that potential. OfficeTalk is a concept test to explore the value of microblogging in the enterprise. OfficeTalk is deployed internally at Microsoft and has seen over 10,000 visitors and hundreds of messages posted daily. We’re now making OfficeTalk available to a few customers in a small pilot test. Because this is an early-stage concept, the OfficeTalk microblogging experience itself looks very similar to other well-known services. The key difference is that the enterprise owns the data since the OfficeTalk server is hosted in the customer’s organization.

While there could certainly be some practical uses for such a service, the idea of a corporate, internal Twitter-like service does not come without its skepticism. "Microsoft is testing a Twitter clone called OfficeTalk, which apparently combines Twitter’s corrosiveness to productivity with all of the stifled boredom your corporate intranet," says Valleywag’s Ryan Tate, for example. "Look, they copied the hashtags, follower counts and everything."

The skepticism isn’t lost on Microsoft’s Office Labs General Manager,  Chris Pratley, however. "What we we’re seeing is that you can make these things, but it’s not automatic that people want to microblog in their organizations," he’s quoted as saying. They’re just testing the product with a handful of businesses for now.

Would your business use an internal Twitter-like service, whether it be Buzz, OfficeTalk, or anything else? Do you see this as a need? Share your thoughts.

Portland, Oregon mobile service provider Urban Airship announced today that it now offers push notifications as a service – with a multi-media payload. The white label technology, called AirMail, sends users of iPhone, BlackBerry and soon Android phones a push notification that when clicked launches not just an app, but specific content like images, videos or text inside that app.

Developers who put the AirMail library into their apps will also receive full analytics showing how many recipients opened the messages, how long they spent viewing the content and more. AirMail is available only as a developer preview today but a preview video can be viewed below.

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The downside to using services like UrbanAirship is always dependence on 3rd party service providers. This newest feature is probably the startup’s most intimate integration yet from a technology perspective, but development required is non-trivial and the resulting functionality is likely to be a real boon to publishers.

If you’ve got multi-media in an iPhone app, this is a way for it to reach out and grab (with push) your users and keep them engaged.

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Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension.

Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There’s no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule “TAG” button and they can be searched from Chrome’s excellent omnibar. So, do you think this will prompt loyal Delicious users – many of whom had been holding out on Chrome in favor of Firefox – to switch to Google Chrome entirely?

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This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like:

<img src="http://www.search-internetmarketing.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/abe7a_1"

While this extension doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of Delicious’ other browser add-ons, the team noted that the public demand for a Chrome extension prompted them to release a beta earlier than they would have liked.

“It doesn’t have all the API’s needed and it’s missing a good chunk of the functionality we believe it needs, but we’re getting so many requests for the Chrome extension that we’re going to make this available sooner than we originally planned…

“As soon as Chrome is able to support the functionality needed we’ll ensure the features of this extension matches that of our other browser add-ons. There are still some interactions we’re not quite happy with that we’ll address shortly, but we wanted to give you an official Google Chrome extension as soon as possible.”

What do you think? Does the new Delicious extension make you want to use Chrome more? Or if you’re a Chrome fan, does this move give you a renewed interest in Delicious? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Anthony Tjan is a venture capitalist at the Boston-based VC firm Cue Ball, but he also blogs for The Harvard Business Review where last week he posted an article about packaged pricing deals in business. The article, The Pros and Cons of Bundled Pricing, points out the differences between bundles and “à la carte” pricing as well as benefits to both customers and businesses. Most Web startups offering an array of services will often bundle features into tiered pricing plans rather than an “à la carte” selection, and here’s why.

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Using bundled pricing over “à la carte” pricing isn’t just a simple decision of choosing the method that makes more money; bundled pricing can benefit businesses (and their customers) in other ways. While bundled pricing doesn’t always necessarily benefit the customer, it can provide them with a better overall experience with the service being sold.

Tjan’s example is a 5-star hotel that charges $750 per night, but the bottle of water in the room is an extra $10. To most people, $10 is a lot for a bottle of water and they will make sure they don’t crack it open lest they see that extra $10 on their bill. If the hotel chose to instead bundle the cost of the water into the room and charge $760 per night, they could advertise bottled water as a feature. In most cases, someone willing to pay $750 for a hotel room is also willing to pay $760, but they don’t know that they’re being charged $10 for the water, it’s just a hidden cost rolled into the bundle. They get to their room and think, “Wow! Free bottled water!”

The hotel in this example is banking on the percent of people who won’t drink the water that they unknowingly paid for in the bundle. As Tjan points out, the same can be said for Web startups and software services.

“Think also of the fact that while most users of software use only a fraction of the available functionality, it is the basic users who are subsidizing the long-tail product development of features used by a relatively small number of advanced users,” writes Tjan.

Bundled pricing can be a good and bad thing for both customers and businesses. In the case of the hotel, customers are paying a higher price which is an obvious benefit to the hotel, but in the end, the customers are also enjoying a better experience with the perceived “free” water. The opposite is true in Tjan’s alternate example of fast-food restaurant value meals. In this case, the customer benefits from a lower price by bundling a burger with fries and a drink, but the restaurant can also benefit from a more streamlined workflow in preparing the meal.

For customers, there are times when seeing a breakdown of a bundle’s pricing is advantageous, but most businesses are cautious about revealing such information. As Tjan points out, the key for businesses in this case is finding the right blend of these two ideas.

“The answer is simple: you should not confuse transparency with a pricing strategy. If you are the seller, focus on the total value provided which is fair for the customer and you,” writes Tjan. “Show the list of all activities performed for a service without individually valuing them. Providing individual price breakdown can kill any perceived or real synergistic total value.”

Obviously there are exceptions to any rule, and not every bundled pricing situation offers a mutual benefit to both parties. But are there situations when “à la carte” pricing could be beneficial to both customers and businesses? Let us know your thoughts on pricing in the comments.

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Your phone can translate foreign language text just by looking at it through Google Goggles. A South Korean telecom has released a product similar to Google Goggles. The social content Augmented Reality mobile browser junaio will have a new version released at SXSW next month and there’s now an 8 minute video from TED available detailing Microsoft’s plans for Bing, including Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality (AR), the practice of displaying data on top of our view of the world around us, is hot stuff. Below are the top stories on AR from around the web over the past 24 hours, selected with help from OneSpot. Watch this space: ReadWriteWeb will be releasing a research report on the use of AR for marketing very soon.

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Google Demos New Translation Functionality For Google Goggles
Geek Sugar

“We’ve been able to translate languages with the help of Google Translate for a while now, but this new function within Google Goggles (which I’m already a big fan of) kind of blows my mind.”

metaio @ SXSW 2010
Augmented Reality Blog

Metaio will present a whole new version of its social content mobile AR browser junaio at SXSW this year. The company’s Unifeye Mobile SDK is also among the finalists of the “Accelerator” competition.

A New Augmented Reality (AR) Application in Korea : Ovjet
GIS + AR (Augmented Reality)

“Korean mobile network provider SK Telecom has revealed a new augmented reality application called Ovjet for Android-platform mobile phones. It seems like quite similar to the concept of Google Goggles. “

OllieBray.com: Microsoft Bing Maps augmented reality demo at the TED 2010

Short 8 minute TED Talk from Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas on the company’s latest evolution of Bing Maps. Included an Augmented Reality demo. Here’s the video.

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Now that Google Chrome has entered the world of fully-extensible browsers, with its recent addition of extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, you’ve likely found yourself perusing the libraries and tweaking until your heart’s content. With that, however, comes the inevitable – browser crashes.

While Google Chrome doesn’t have a safe mode in the same way the Firefox or Windows does, it does offer another option that provides the same functionality and can save you a whole bunch of trouble.

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The folks over at the Google Operating System blog pointed out this tip today and we thought it was a worthwhile how-to for our readers.

If you’ve found yourself in the terrible position of having a broken version of Chrome and you don’t want to uninstall and start over from scratch, you can instead launch Chrome using “incognito mode”, which disables extensions and allows you to disable your the bad apple extensions.

Setting up a shortcut to launch Chrome in incognito mode is a simple four-step process:

1. We recommend first making a copy of your shortcut, that way you can access the browser normally too, once you’ve fixed whatever problem you’re experiencing.
2. Find your copied Chrome shortcut, right-click on it and select “Properties”.
3. Select the “Target” field and append “–incognito” to the end of the command.
4. Click “Apply” then “Okay” to save your changes.

Now, all you have to do is double-click on the edited shortcut to enter into a “Safe Mode” style Chrome. From here, all you’ll need to do is enter “chrome://extensions/” (minus the quotes) into the browser’s navigation bar to edit the extensions.

If you’re unsure which extension broke Chrome’s back, simply disable them all and switch back and forth between incognito Chrome and regular Chrome until you break it again.

And while we’re speaking of Chrome extensions, we recommend going and getting the ReadWriteWeb extension to keep up to date with everything we post here. After all, if your Chrome shuts down from extension overload, now you know how to fix it.

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