Search from any XHTML-capable browsing device!

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

We're always excited when a developer, customer, or partner takes such great interest in our products and in our community that they spend the time and effort to contribute their own improvements. I've recently had the pleasure of working with software engineer and web standards aficionado Joe D'Andrea who has made it his personal mission to take our Google Search Appliance into the wonderful world of web standards compliance. He's created a new XSLT stylesheet that displays our search results in a way that conforms to the XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 specifications. In doing so he's completely separated the markup from the styling in our default stylesheet.

What does this mean to you? Well for starters it means that you could install this single stylesheet into your Google Search Appliance and provide a search experience that automatically adapts to the device its being viewed on! On a computer screen Joe provides the familar look we all love. On printed paper the astute eye notices some added conveniences. What about a mobile phone? Ok, now we're talking. The drastic transformation into a Google Mobile-like interface seems like magic. But thats nothing. Go ahead and try your favorite text-based or speech-based browser! Ah, there's nothing quite like having your search results read to you like poetic verse...

Read more about the many other benefits in Joe's own blog post. He's published the stylesheet, along with lots of screenshots and notes, as a project on Google's open source hosting platform.

If you would like to contribute to our growing list of open source projects related to our Enterprise products, drop us a note and let us know what interesting things you're working on!

Thanks Joe!

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Google en fuego?

Posted by Kevin Gough, Enterprise Product Marketing Manager

Well according to Ken Yarmosh, author of the TECHNOSIGHT blog, Google product manager Rajen Sheth was "on fire" during his keynote at today's The New New Internet conference. Rajen spoke about Google's approach to developing web-based enterprise software and our new Google Apps for Your Domain offering. Upon hearing Ken's proclamation, Rajen responded, "I'm fired?" No Rajen, quite the opposite. Read Ken's synopsis of Rajen's talk and view a few video clips from it.

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New version of Google Search Appliance!

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Search Product Manager

As a product manager it’s always fun to work on cool, interesting technology and then release it to customers. Today we shipped an all-new version of the Google Search Appliance with increased document capacity and some great new features. With this new release, the GB-5005 can now search up to 10 million documents while the GB-8008 can search a whopping 30 million. (By the way, if you ask nicely, we can build them even bigger! Just let us know.)

We also added some cool features such as date and number range search. So now you can restrict your search to only those documents authored between say, January 1st and September 19th 2006. Similarly, when you're looking for that special Digital Camera, you can restrict your search to cameras in the $250 to $1000 price range. My wife would perhaps like me to restrict this search to the $250 to $500 range ;-)

Finally something special for our international friends; we now have our administrative interface, product documentation and search interface available in an additional 10 languages, now totaling 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

If you are a customer, you can grab the update from our support site. If you aren't yet able to find things inside your enterprise, check out the Google Search Appliance and see if its right for you.

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Xythos OneBox and Webinar

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

Xythos Software provides document and file management products for educational institutions, government organizations, and commercial organizations who need secure and easy to use methods to manage and share their information. They just made access to that information even easier for their customers who own a Google Search Appliance by creating a OneBox for Enterprise module.

On October 18th, Xythos will be hosting a web seminar to discuss the module, how it was built, and what it can do for organizations. Our own David Bercovich will join them. You can find out more and sign up for the web seminar on their web site. The OneBox module is available now in our OneBox Gallery.

This accomplishment offers a great example of how any individual or organization can create and publish a useful OneBox module, without even having a Google Search Appliance of their own!

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Great Feature or Greatest Feature!?

Posted by Andria McCool, Google Enterprise Federal Marketing Manager

I don't know about you, but a few of my favorite things are Google Earth and Stephen Colbert's 435 part series "Better know a District". You can only imagine how excited I was to see that Google Earth has updated its US Government Layer so everyone can know more about their districts! We've updated the congressional boundaries, and added a layer for both US Senators and US Representatives. With embedded search for Google Images – you are only 2 clicks away from a picture of your favorite Representative! Check it out in the latest version of Google Earth!

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Kiwi search for SharePoint

Posted by Rodrigo Vaca, Enterprise Product Marketing Manager

We're always excited to hear when our enterprise search products help improve employee productivity and reduce costs, especially when those are are taxpayer dollars. The State Services Commission of New Zealand recently set a Google Mini out to do just that, specifically providing top-quality search across their SharePoint portal.

"We needed a product to replace our legacy search tool. It had to be simple to integrate with the SharePoint Services sites which make up the PSI, and be as user friendly as possible. An excellent search function is vital to the PSI and the Google Mini functionality fulfilled all the criteria," said State Services deputy commissioner of ICT Laurence Millar.

We couldn't agree more... happy searching!

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Forbes says SMBs win with Google apps

Posted by Kevin Gough, Google Enterprise

This week, Google applications won in four out of six categories and got runner up in a fifth category in Forbes' review of the best web-based applications for SMBs. Google winners included Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Notebook and Google Spreadsheets. These accolades came only a week after we launched Google Apps for Your Domain, our suite of integrated productivity tools that includes Gmail and Google Calendar. If the whole is better than the sum of its parts, then Google Apps for Your Domain is going to make SMBs even more effective and given really positive initial feedback, we hope that it too finds a place in the winners circle next year.

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Windows Access Connector sample code available

Posted by Jeff Ling, Enterprise Product Solutions Engineer

We just released the Windows Access Connector Sample Code. It provides an implementation framework of the SAML based security SPI. A customized authentication and authorization implementation can be provided as simple as a single class, where the rest of the communication with the appliance has already been handled. It gives a solid implementation of the abstract SAML protocol.

This Access Connector also provides sample code to do Windows Integrated Authentication using the Google Search Appliance SAML SPI. It is now included as the default security implementation of this sample code. It uses the features provided by Windows kerberos extension to allow authenticated domain users to search secure intranet documents seamlessly.

Take a look and let us know what you think. The project is open source and available from our Enterprise developer site at http://code.google.com/enterprise.

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FCW Tabs Google 'Most Influential'

Posted by Mike Bradshaw, Head of Federal for Google Enterprise

For years now, Google has been providing high-powered, user-friendly information systems to the U.S. Government. From visualizing the world in rich 3D images with Google Earth Enterprise to finding information inside agencies with the Google Search Appliance and most recently providing citizens with high-quality, Google search across government information on the Internet with Google U.S. Government Search, these systems are used by government employees and citizens alike. We're excited to be recognized as the most influential commercial company providing technology to the federal IT market by one of the most influential federal IT publications, Federal Computer Week.

You can learn more out our federal solutions.

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A Map of Whole Foods

You won’t find any unhealthy food at Whole Foods and from now on finding a Whole Foods near you is easier than hitting the fast food joint on the corner – using the new store finder powered by Google Maps for Enterprise. Type in your zip code (or select your city) and you’ll see a Google Map showing the Whole Foods locations near you including address, hours and store website. Now you have no excuse when your mother complains that you are not eating well!

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