Google Alerts?

Who knew about google alerts? Not me. This sounds like the greatest idea ever...

Just head over to http://www.google.com/alerts and fill out the form. You basically setup a search query, and Google will email (or send as a feed to your feed reader) any time that query returns new results. Talk about training the information to come to you!

Possible uses:

Following a news story

Keeping tabs on what people are saying about you

Following certain sports or sporting events

Keeping up with technology

You can set it up to email you in three different modes:

1. As it happens
2. Daily
3. Weekly

You have the ability to chose how many results you want to see in each alert. In addition you can focus the query in on certain types of media, like just blogs or videos.

I can't wait to start setting up alerts!

Google Apps for Education - New Features!

On April 15th Google rolled out some new features for Google Docs. You can read about these new features here. Or you can watch the video below.

I was curious if these new features would be available in Google Apps for Education. After a little digging I found out that they are! You just have to enable them for your domain. You can follow the directions below to do this.

1. Login as an administrator for your account
2. From the administrative dashboard click on domain settings
3. About half way down check the option to enable pre-release settings

Now each user in your domain will have the option to turn the new features on. The steps to do this are listed below.

To turn on the new document editor:

1. Login to your Google Apps for Education docs account
2. Click on settings up at the top right
3. Click on the editing tab
4. Select new version of google documents

To turn on the new features for spreadsheets:

1. Login to your Google Apps for Education docs account
2. Create a spreadsheet
3. Click on new version up at the top right