Security In The Cloud – Achilles Heel or Added Benefit?

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Security In The Cloud – Achilles Heel or Added Benefit?

Call us (949) 243-7498

www.clouditoc.us

One-stop shop for help with Google Apps

Visit us at our new home to see this post!

One-stop shop for help with Google Apps

Call us (949) 243-7498

www.clouditoc.us

Create, edit and present with Google Slides offline

Visit us at our new home to see this post!

Create, edit and present with Google Slides offline

Call us (949) 243-7498

www.clouditoc.us

Reminder: No more exporting Google documents to Office 97-2003 formats as of 1/31

Our blog has moved to our new home at Cloud IT!

Export Google Docs, Sheets and Slides format files to Office Open XML formats

Visit Cloud IT (formerly On-Site Technical Solutions) for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

How to Place the Gmail Signature Above the Text in a Reply

One of our clients had asked us to show them how to place signatures in replies above the original text instead of at the bottom of the reply. We weren't quite quick enough and I didn't know how to do that, so thank you Theresa!

Enable Gmail Labs 

First, if the Gmail account is within a domain in Google Apps, Labs must be enabled for the domain. Here are the instructions to enable Labs in the domain: 

Enable Gmail Labs for your users

1. Sign in to the Google Apps administrator control panel.
   The URL is https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/primary-domain-name, where primary-domain-name is the domain name you used to sign up for Google Apps.
2. Click the Settings tab and then select Email in the left column.
3. Click the check box Enable Gmail Labs for my users.
4. Click Save changes.

(There may be a delay before the change takes effect.)

Note that enabling Gmail Labs makes them available for all users. If you have multiple domains associated with your Google Apps account, the setting applies to all domains.

Here's the link to the help page

Enable Gmail Signature Tweaks

Once Labs is available, individual users can enable the Gmail Signature Tweaks to alter the placement of their signatures on replies. 

To get to labs, click on the gear on the Gmail page and then click settings. 

Click Labs 

and then either scroll or search for "tweak" and select enable. Don't forget to save the settings and you're all set! You'll see your signature before you starting your replies going forward. 

Here's a video from Google Gooru on activating Signature tweak:

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

 

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Gmail went down, but the cloud is still safe...

Gmail went down today at 0942 and was back up at 1046, according to Google (Google Mail - Service Details). Google says the outage affected less than 10% of their user base, with some estimating it at 1.5%. Assuming 350 million Gmail users, that's 5.25 million people affected. Not good! 

Of course that 5.25 million included one of our recently migrated clients where we had touted the reliability of Google Apps, including Gmail.   



Here is a chart from Wikipedia on Gmail outages since 2008:

The last major outage affected 1.5 million users in February, 2011. I'm pretty sure that even with the 6.3 million users affected in 2011 and today Google is still hitting their uptime requirement of 99.9%. Hence our continuing to promote Google and their business products. 

Last week one of our VOIP vendors, Next Level Internet, was down for part of their client base for about an hour because their data center was struck by lightning. The air conditioning quit working and when the temperature reached 130 degrees they shut down some of their servers to prevent long-term damage. During the Southern California blackout last year Next Level stayed online by cutting to their backup generators. They are now looking for backup solutions for a loss of only AC in the data center. 

As unhappy as we are with these outages, we're still happy to recommend both Google and Next Level Internet. They're still two of the most reliable, cost effective technical options out there for small business. 

We would be - and will be - much more concerned if these issues resulted in a loss of data or become more frequent and widespread. For now, Google (and Next Level Internet) still beat or meet their competitors in like functionality and uptime. 

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

 

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