By far a much better solution than the aforementioned, Dlvr.it has over the past several months become my de-facto personal feed publisher. All my personal feeds have went off flawlessly through Dlvr.it. It’s a powerful little tool, so after getting some finicky Feedburner Socialize results over the last few weeks, I finally decided to turn over the Rubis RSS feed to Dlvr.it. Much to my surprise, I realized that Dlvr.it has a Google Analytics setting for source feeds which all but sinks the Socialize function.

To be fair, I didn’t make the time to figure out what was going on with Feedburner’s Socialize feature, so I have no idea if it’s my problem or working as designed. Nonetheless, if you just need something quick and easy to publish feeds checkout Dlvr.it

Enable Text Messaging in Gmail Labs

Go to Settings > Labs > Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat.

As a deterrent to abuse, Google enforces a simple quote algorithm that decreases by 1 when you send and increases by 5 when you receive. Additionally, if your SMS allowance ever dips to zero it will refresh to 50 within 24 hours. Help Article

It wasn’t exactly clear how to go about connecting the dots…so we tossed together a quick how-to video and guide to help you get started.

Checkout our latest user guide…

Getting Started with Producteev and Google Apps

3 Things We Loved

1. YEAH! Multiple paths to creating tasks
2. Super useful Google Gadget integration
3. Slick little iPhone app

2 Things We Want

1. Tighter integration with Google Apps (Docs and Contextual Gadget)
2. 2-way calendar sync (editing calendar entries doesn’t update the task on the Producteev side)

There are so many time saving nuggets baked into Google Apps that it’s no surprise that you may have overlooked this one. This guide shows you how to save time and increase productivity by using Templates in Google Docs. By the time you finish (5-8 minutes) you’ll see how it can save you time.

Checkout our latest user guide…

Template Creation Basics in Google Docs

Important: Enable new version of Google Docs, see the guide or go to Google Docs > Settings > Edit and enable the new version.

Automatically Decline Events: Lets you block off times in your calendar when you are unavailable. Invitations sent for any events during this period will be automatically declined. After you enable this feature, you’ll find a “Busy (decline invitations)” option in the “Show me as” field.

Event Attachments: Attach a Google document, spreadsheet or presentation to your event, or upload a file from your computer. Important: guests do not automatically have permission to view Google Docs attachments. You must share each attached document.

Smart Rescheduler: Helps you re-schedule an event by analyzing everybody’s schedule, evaluating conflicts, obtaining conference rooms and proposing the best meeting times. It’s like magic.

World Clock: Keep track of the time around the world. Plus: when you click an event, you’ll see the start time in each time zone as well.

To add one of these labs to your calendar, click Settings > Labs within your Google Calendar.

Have a great weekend!

Here are a few things you may not know about Folder sharing…similar to document sharing but with a bit of a twist.

Check out our latest user guide…

Productive Sharing Tips for Google Docs Folders

So here you have it, our favorite Labs that you should take a look at…

Canned Responses: Similar to creating a template. Particularly useful if you find yourself writing the same email repeatedly.

Create a Document: This little guy packs a big punch. It gives a couple options that aren’t specific to creating a document. Expand and Collapse all conversations, Highlighted search and of course Create a Document. The create a document is great when you need to move an email conversation into a document for team collaboration.

Google Docs previews in mail: Take a quick peak and any Google Doc you receive…it’s such a natural extension.

Google Voice: Listen to voicemail right from your Gmail window. You’ll need a Google Voice account to use it…but offers all sorts of benefits.

Inserting Images: I really like this because I’m always taking screenshots. It’s nice to be able to add an image inline to your email and it gives auto-sizing options too.

Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat: Bingo! Sometimes you know that someone is out of the office and you just need to send an SMS…without picking up your phone.

Nested Labels: An immediate hit! Nesting is going to help simplify the user interface of your Gmail account and help bundle things. It’s particularly nice if you have a lot of labels defined. To nest labels, you just add a forward slash. For example, Basket, Basket/Vegetables, Basket/Vegetables/Broccoli, Basket/Fruits, Basket/Fruits/Banana

Have a great weekend!

For many people, the idea of having all of your email tightly bundled together must just be too easy, too fast and too convenient. Imagine how the world would crumble if you could get more done in less time? Heaven for bid you actually eat lunch AWAY from your desk, leave the office at a normal time or maybe spend a little time doing work instead of trying to figure out what work you need to be doing.

Alright, I didn’t always “get” threading in Gmail. In fact, it took switching to Mac before I really started to break my unproductive habits. In Outlook I was always trying to change the user interface, I thought folders and color coding was the answer to making related messages standout. I wasted hours of my professional and personal life trying to “keep things together” and unfortunately it was all for not.

Threading, in Gmail, some say is just too much change. It’s awkward, unnatural and too confusing. I’m not sure what’s confusing about “keeping like messages” together. If you haven’t spent a week in Gmail threading…you’re missing out on life…literally. Digging through your clunky desktop mail application is like swimming with your shoes on…sure, you can do it but sooner or later you’re going to loose something or worse…

Checkout our latest user guide…

Don’t Let Conversations Stop You From Being Productive

IMPORTANT: Before you get all freaky with threads take a minute to look our recent guide on Labels and Filters. If you receive a lot of email messages with the same subject line but from different people, you may want to set a Label and/or Filter to automate. Also, I’m not oblivious to the reality that threading has it’s shortcomings…but I rationalize that there are far fewer than the alternatives.

5. Landing Page Search Option

When you navigate to http://google.com/enterprise/marketplace at the top of the page, you’ll notice the search box indicates your search will be conducted across the entire site. Alternatively, if you choose a sub-category from the left navigation bar the same search box gives you the ability to search within the sub-category or the entire site.

4. Google Apps vs. Enterprise Search

If you’re not already familiar with the Google product offering for businesses this might cause you to wonder a bit. So for clarification…

• Google Apps is related to Email, Docs, Calendar, Sites, Chat, Video, Postini Services, Mobile, Contacts, Groups, Moderator and custom applications.
• Enterprise Search consists of Google Search Appliance, Commerce Search, Site Search, and Google Mini.

3. Products vs. Services

Due to the way in which Google Apps Marketplace functions for vendors the difference between products and services, can be somewhat misleading. Vendors get the option to define their offering as a service or product. Unfortunately, this is a bit of an industry wrinkle that unfortunately isn’t easily solved. For instance, “product” vendors sell typically sell their software as a service (SaaS) and many service companies sell their “service” as a product. In a perfect world we would all agree on a naming convention and stop confusing you all but for now please bare with us.

2. Seek and Ye Shall Find

We’re really looking forward to increased search capability in the marketplace. As good as Google is at search, they seem to have held off on making search “Googley”. Our guess is the omission was deliberate and things will be enhanced in future releases. In the meantime, you can get a fairly good results if you use descriptors in the search field, for instance, “topic location”. Keep in mind the search term is being used against the entire listing, so it may not be readily apparent why a particular result was returned until you view the listing details.

1. Page by Page Navigation

We saved the best for last! Go to the marketplace, click on a Google Apps sub-category (example: Small Business Implementation), scroll to the bottom of the page. Notice the 1 Next links. If you select, Next you’ll get more pages which seems fairly obvious but it took us a bit to find our own listing, so we’re guessing that others may have missed it too.