Advocate's Studio

Leaving no part of the business software suite untouched, Google has recently introduced its new e-Discovery product within its Apps for Business offerings. Called Vault, it serves to automatically store and save emails and chat sessions of users within a Google Apps ecosystem. Like any good e-Discovery product, Vault allows you to easily preserve, retain and retrieve information that may be needed in the course of litigation.

Vault is, like most Google offerings, cloud-based and quite easy to deploy according to reviewers. It is instant on and provides access to all  Gmail and on-the-record chats. It’s a bit different - instead of making copies of the tracked content and storing them in a separate storage locale, Vault merely changes how users “see” their content – when an end user “deletes” emails and IM sessions, they are removed from the user-interface view but retained on the Google Apps servers.

Vault costs $5 per user per month, on top of the $50 per user per year, $5 per user per month Google Apps fee. While it certainly isn’t “free”, like many Google products, the price is doable from a small business perspective.

Vault is not the only Google product that can be used for e-document preservation and retrieval – Google Message Discovery is already available and being used by Apps users, at a cost of $33 per user per year. Message Discovery operates more like a traditional e-discovery solution – with copies of docs stored in a separate section of the server. Google advises that the differences between Vault and Message Discovery include:

(1) Google Apps Vault is built natively in Google Apps and provides a true manage-in-place capability

(2) Vault can archive on-the-record chat messages

(3) Vault plans to support additional data types in the future (stay tuned for more information). GMD only supports email.

(4) There is no time limit on retention. GMD has a maximum retention period of 10 years

(5) Easy set-up through the Apps CPanel. GMD has a separate, non-integrated user interface

(6) Vault supports archiving email and on-the-record chat messages in all languages that Google Apps supports. GMD does not support as many languages, particularly double-byte languages.

(7) Vault can leverage existing migration tools for Gmail which gives customers more flexibility and can lower costs.

(8) Vault can be deployed “on-demand” and immediately begin applying information governance policies to the data that exists in your domain’s Gmail inboxes (legacy and newly created data). GMD starts capturing messages from the time that it is deployed and requires Historic Message Journaling to load historical email into the GMD archive.

At release, Vault is available to new Apps customers only. Google assures that it will be available to existing Apps customers in the future, with automated data migration for Message Discovery users. Google likely will expand Vault to other Google products as well, such as the Google Talk client and perhaps even Google voice transcripts.

Google has released the video below outlining it’s Vault product. Take a peek:

In case you still fax stuff, you can give your faxes the modern edge by leveraging Google Drive and the HelloFax application. HelloFax’s Google Drive integration permits faxing of any document from Google Drive and receive faxes from others in a dedicated HelloFax folder within the drive. It’s just one of the great third-party integrations coming out of the box with GDrive, one that makes tons of sense for business users of the GCloud. The HelloFax app will also allow you to edit and sign PDF documents in the browser – no more printing important documents to sign and then scan back into your computer for printing. This is pretty cool, given that the reason most people still fax is so that they can sign a document and send it back.

Go green and go HelloFax and say goodbye to printed documents. And, work with them via Google Drive. Pretty sweet combination.

I am all for specialist search engines when you have a precise idea about what you are looking for. Firefox is my serious research browser and I have the search box outfitted with scads of different search engines. You know what they say about “the right tool for the right job” and all.

The Next Web has a great list of specialized search engines dedicated to ferreting out specific information. The categories range from flights and travel, to blogs, to people, to images, to fora, to music, to audio and video, to resources, to domain names, to icons, to private search, to similar websites and to some all around great engines that do the job better than the Big G. Some of my favs on their list that I use all the time:

Hipmunk for travel

IceRocket.com for blogs and social search

TinEye.com for reverse image search

123people.com for searching people and their related info

DuckDuckGo.com for private search the rids you of the ads

Blekko.com for targeted, curated search

Greplin.com for searching all my connected social apps, emails, and other content on my iPhone and on the desktop

Happy hunting and pecking!

Hardcore Gmail users will love this – Gmelius is a cross-browser extension that offers lots of options for customizing and  improving your Gmail experience. First and foremost: Gmelius will allow you to excise the ads that show at the top of your inbox! Right now, it appears Gmelius has extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Opera – hopefully they will come to the aid of some  of those other browsers  soon.

Some of the other great features that are selectable within the extension include the ability to make the header auto-expandable, remove the People Widget, customize the navigation icons, add a row highlight, clear formatting from incoming emails to make them look-alike, add attachment icons for different types of docs such as Word or Powerpoint, disable the “consider including” box if you don’t want Gmail to suggest recipients to you, make the Google logo clickable (but watch out when you have multiple sign in’s activated), auto scroll to the top of your inbox when you click the black bar, and move email labels to the right in the inbox. In total, Gmelius is all about creating more space in the interface so that it becomes easier to work with your Gmail, definitely a good thing.

Gmelius insists that it will never access, read, store, alter or transmit your personal data. Gmelius code meets the latest Content Security Policy (CSP) recommendations, making sure its users can keep browsing the Web safely.

Gmelius is constantly updating the extension, with new features in settings shown with a “new” tag. Plus they appear committed to cleaning up bugs as quickly as possible.

The extension is free, but the developers ask for a donation. With the advent of Google Drive and an increase in storage size in your Gmail from 7 to 10 GB to celebrate, Gmelius offers yet another good reason to move your emailing activity to the Gmail cloud. Hope you enjoy this great new extension as much as I do.

It was a bit like waiting for Santa Claus but now Google fans have cause to rejoice – the fabled Google Drive has moved from myth to reality! And the reality ain’t too shabby (yes I said “ain’t”). So what’s it all about?

First, if you are a user of Google docs, you are going to love the integration of this cloud-based storage locker and your familiar Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. It works as a local, syncing file system for both your Google application files as well as any other files you might want to store in the Cloud. You get 5GB of storage off the bat for free and you can by more at VERY reasonable prices – especially as you purchase larger increments. Paid plans start at $2.49 per month for 25GB and any paid plan automatically jumps up your Gmail storage to 25GB. For less than $60 per year, you can get 100GB. A whopping 16TB will cost $800 per month. Another place Google Drive shines is per file size 10 GB per file. And it is secured with the same security you find in the rest of the Google Apps suite.

The app launched yesterday for Windows, Mac and Android users. IOS users will have to wait but Google did out screenshots of the iPad app so we know it’s coming. Linux users are out of luck for now.

There is a local app to download that serves as the conduit to the cloud – Dropbox and Windows SkyDrive Users will recognize the setup. You won’t be able to edit your Google Docs locally – click on the file in your local computer’s file finder or manager and your browser will open for editing. You can see them locally though, and find them in local search. You can view, share and comment on docs from the local Drive – maybe local editing is coming down the road. In any event, because the “file” created in drive is fully synced across devices, you will see your changes everywhere – just watch for versioning issues when you collaborate on changes with others.

Drive will store many different file types, including images. And, as one would expect from Google, the search is great. Documents are OCR’d and there is even rudimentary image recognition via Google Goggles – at least for the most obvious of images. Videos uploaded in Drive are coded like YouTube videos – its like having your own private YouTube.

Because Google Drive opened up its API as soon as possible, there are several third party apps that can work with Drive from the start.

Google Drive is trying to straddle the line between cross platform and proprietary apps. It’s third party partners are numerous and likely will increase. However, editing can only be accomplished via Google Docs. Not a bad compromise – simply convert your other compatible files, such as Microsoft Office apps, into GDocs format and you are good to go. You will be able to share stuff directly from Drive to Google + and attach files directly to Gmail.

Google Drive is entering a crowded field of competitors jockeying for first place in the Run for the Roses (like the timely Derby reference?). The Verge does a great job outlining the competition here. If you are already a Google user, then Google Drive is a no-brainier. If not, why not use those free 5GB to good use? Might make a believer out of you.