5 Tools to Googlize Your Business

Whether you love or hate Google, it’s hard to go a day without touching one of their services. From Internet inquiries to mapping your way to your next destination, the search engine giant has come a long way from its days operating out of a Menlo Park garage.

Today, Google is changing the way that we communicate on a personal and professional level. Although many organizations aren’t ready to leave the comfort of out-of-the-box software, there are many advantages to computing “in the cloud.” Web-based tools from companies such as Google offer cost-effective solutions (often free), better scalability, easier collaboration, and enhanced security. While these services aren’t for everyone, many small businesses are starting to make the switch to Internet applications without suffering any major technical setbacks.

To join the Google love affair, there are a few products that are worth trying out. They won’t take too much time to set up or install, and if you hate them there will be no nagging tech salesperson showing up on your door trying to convince you to give ‘em another shot.

1.Google Buzz.

This is one of the newest additions to the Google family. To access this product, you’ll need a Gmail account (see below). Buzz is aiming to compete with the Twitter and Facebook communities, among other social networks. In other words, it’s trying to improve online conversations. Last year Google launched Wave, which was trying to capture the social audience. While Wave did have some cool features, Buzz definitely looks more promising since it’s integrated within your Gmail account. What also makes it interesting in a business environment is the ability to have private or public real-time conversations, helping to increase your organization’s productivity with easier collaboration using comment threads with status updates.

2.Google Chrome.

This Google download is like the ugly stepsister in the browser world: it just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. While Mozilla’s Firefox is an excellent web browser, what makes Chrome even better is one simple thing: this Google product allows you to search directly from the address bar. Sure, this seems simply enough, but when you start to use Chrome on a regular basis you realize how much time you can save by entering your queries in the same place you normally type a full URL. You might call this lazy searching, but whatever you say about it, there’s no doubt it’s a winning feature.

3.Gmail.

Many corporate Internet email services make sending, searching, and sharing messages frustrating. With Gmail, aside from ease-of-use, there are many business advantages. For starters, Google offers you more email storage than you will ever need (and if you do need more, you can buy it at a reasonable price). Although managing emails is a fine art, with Gmail you don’t have to spend a lot of time organizing your messages because they are easily searchable in seconds. However, if you love organizing your email account, there are stars, filters, and labels to make Gmail sorting a breeze. Another obvious benefit to this Google service is the ability to check your email anywhere, anytime, on any computer with Internet access.

4.Google Calendar.

There is no more important tool in a business than a company’s calendar. With Google Calendar, you can easily manage all your meetings. The app’s built-in reminders make it easy for you to send a text message or email to yourself at scheduled times before an appointment. If you’re worried about your clients or customers calendar programs getting confused with your Google ways, Google Calendar plays nice with Microsoft Outlook, among other programs. Finally, even if you’re offline, you can still see your meetings.

5.Google Docs.

Word processing is a breeze in Google Docs. From creating documents to designing a presentation to crafting a spreadsheet, all of these items can be created and exported to popular file formats, such as DOC, PPT, and CSV. There is no new technology to learn within Docs since the terminology is the same as what you’d find in much of the business world’s popular software. Oh, and it’s free, just like everything on this list, which decreases your software license fees and increases your company’s productivity.

Six Sri Lankan cricket players wounded in bus attack in Pakistan

Six members of the Sri Lankan cricket squad were wounded when around a dozen gunmen attacked their bus as it drove under police escort on Tuesday to a stadium in the Pakistani city of Lahore, witnesses and officials said.

Lahore Police chief Habib-ur-Rehman said five people were killed in the attack by the unidentified gunmen, who fired AK 47s and rockets and hurled grenades as the team bus drove to the 60,000-seater Gaddafi stadium in the eastern city.

Sri Lanka's sports minister said five players and an assistant coach were wounded, two of whom were being treated in hospital.

"Police are chasing the terrorists," police chief Habib-ur-Rehman said. "They appeared to be trained men."

The attack had echoes with one on the Indian city of Mumbai in November which led to the Indian cricket team cancelling its planned tour of Pakistan.

India blamed that attack on Pakistan-trained militants and the incident sharply raised tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Sri Lanka, which had been invited to Pakistan after India pulled out, immediately cancelled the rest of the tour.

"We are trying to bring the team back as quickly as possible," a Sri Lankan cricket official said.

Pakistan TV showed footage of gunmen with rifles and backpacks running through the streets and firing on unidentified vehicles.

The driver of the Sri Lankan team coach said one of the attackers had thrown a grenade under the bus, but it did not detonate.

A witness told Reuters he believed two police commandos were killed along with a regular policeman and a traffic warden.

Shopkeeper Ahmed Ali said the two police commandos had been driving behind the team bus when they were hit.

"It was a very heavy firing and I heard at least two explosions at the time," said a Reuters witness who had been on his way to cover the test match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Cricketer Thilan Samaraweera seemed to be the worst hit, suffering a thigh injury, a player on the team bus who did not wish to be identified told Reuters by phone.

It was unclear whether injuries were caused by bullets, shrapnel or flying shards of glass.

Google Launched Knol --- Unit Of Knowladge

Knol Is Open To Every One


A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product called Knol. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone.

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: knol.google.com

Satyam Chairman Ramalinga Raju Arrested, Board scrapped

The chairman of Satyam Computer Services was arrested on Friday on charges of cheating and forgery, and the government dissolved the outsourcer's board as authorities moved to limit fallout from India's biggest corporate scandal.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju, who resigned on Wednesday after revealing years of accounting fraud, was expected to appear before the market regulator on Saturday. The events have called into question the future of the outsourcing company,

In a late night development, Raju and his brother B. Rama Raju, Satyam co-founder and managing director, were arrested on charges of criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, cheating, falsification of record and forgery, Reuters was told by S.S.P. Yadav, police chief of Andhra Pradesh, whose capital Hyderabad is home to Satyam.

Earlier in the day, Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta said the government would appoint 10 new members to the Satyam board, which would meet within seven days. There was no move to take over Satyam's management at this time, he said.

"The government is considering appointment of suitable persons as directors of Satyam," Gupta told a news conference in New Delhi. "We are determined to reach the truth but are equally concerned with the fate of employees and other stakeholders."

A Satyam spokeswoman said the company welcomed the government's decision, which would restore the confidence of all employees, customers and shareholders. However, she said Satyam had no comment on the arrests.

In a bid to ease the worries of rattled investors, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said auditors' certification of corporate results from the December quarter would be peer reviewed.

The government barred Satyam's board from holding its scheduled meeting on Saturday, which was called to consider options such as inviting a takeover or strategic investor and appointing an investment banker.

Analysts said Satyam's very existence was threatened by the scandal, which stand-in Chief Executive Ram Mynampati said has pushed the company into a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

Satyam shares slumped to 11.50 rupees (24 U.S. cents), their lowest since March 1998 and a far cry from a 2008 high of 544 rupees, before ending down 40 percent at 23.85 rupees ahead of the board's dissolution.

The company's market value has shriveled to $330 million, from more than $7 billion six months ago.

NONEXISTENT CASH

The chief financial officer offered to resign after Raju's admission that profit had been overstated for years and that about $1 billion, or 94 percent of the cash and bank balances on Satyam's books at end-September, did not exist.

"There's a big question mark over everything. We don't know what kind of business model they have now," said Amar Ambani, vice-president of research at broker India Infoline.

"Raju's declaration says that at the operating level the margin was 3 percent, so at the net level it must have been a loss, which makes it extremely unviable. They have been borrowing to pay salaries, which means they have no cash at all," Ambani said.

The stock has fallen 87 percent in two trading days, pulling the broader market down. Shares in Satyam's main rivals, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro rose on expectations they would benefit from Satyam's circumstances.

Satyam will be cut from India's benchmark stock index, the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-share Sensex from Monday.

Analysts said recent hopes that Satyam could survive by being taken over had been dashed, given the scope of the scandal and potential for big legal losses.

"The largest scandal in India's corporate history calls into question the viability of the company as an independent entity," consultancy Forrester said in a Jan. 8 research note.

"As a result, sourcing and IT executives need to actively review their exposure to the company and their options as a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the company.

"Both clients and employees will desert Satyam as a result of competitive wooing," it said.

Satyam specialises in business software and back-office services for clients including General Electric and Nestle.

National Australia Bank Ltd, Australia's top lender, said it was reviewing a contract with Satyam for system development and support to 2011.

L&T SITTING PAT

The chairman of Larsen & Toubro, India's top engineering and construction firm, said the uncertainty around Satyam meant L&T had no plans to alter its near 4 percent stake in the outsourcer, which it built up in early January.

"When we invested, our idea was to strike some sort of go-to-market strategy, some sort of strategic alliance, if it was possible," A.M. Naik told CNBC TV18. He noted that Satyam's share price was about 188 rupees before Raju's resignation bombshell, far higher than the price at which L&T had bought it.

Naik did not rule out an alliance with Satyam once there was clarity on its losses and liabilities, including any from law suits. L&T runs a mid-sized outsourcing unit called L&T Infotech.

Several securities fraud class action lawsuits have already been filed in the U.S. on behalf of investors who bought Satyam American Depository Receipts (ADRs) in the last five years.