“

(Via Grants New Opportunity List by Agency.)

With the multitude of single sign-on modules out there for Drupal, it’s easy to miss the fact that Drupal has a built-in single sign on mechanism already. No modules, no configuration, just 20 easy lines of PHP in your site’s settings.php file. This solution works for a lot of clients, but the set of requirements is pretty specific as to when you can use this approach. This includes:

• The sites sharing a single log-in must be on the same domain. For example:

• www.example.com
• forums.example.com
• subsite.example.com

If your site fits within those requirements, you’re on your way to simple, efficient, and easy Single Sign-on!

The concept for this single sign-on approach is based around Drupal’s ability to prefix database tables. As you may know, you can run multiple Drupal sites on the same MySQL database. However, most sites are not configured this way, each site is given it’s own dedicated database. Drupal’s table prefixing can be combined with MySQL’s ability to query across databases to make a simple ’shared table’ across multiple sites. Then you just need to set a cookie domain so that the two sites share session information and you’re done!

read more »”

(Via Lullabot – Articles.)

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been busy adding new functionality to make communicating and sharing with Google Apps easier than ever, whether you use Google Apps for work, for school or at home.

Web clipboard for Google Docs
As more and more people are getting work done in the cloud with Google Docs, a common stumbling block has been copying and pasting formatted content between documents, spreadsheets and presentations. On Wednesday we made this a whole lot easier with a web clipboard for Google Docs. Just highlight what you want to copy, select from the web clipboard menu, move to your other Google Docs window and choose what you want to paste from the web clipboard menu. Your pasted content will retain its original formatting so you don’t have to spend time reformatting.

New saving buttons in Google Docs
One of the most frustrating things about using traditional software is losing your work if something unexpected happens before you remember to save. Google Docs helps solve this problem by frequently saving your latest changes automatically. Still, we’ve heard from people that they want that extra reassurance that autosave is happening, and to be able to manually save their work more easily. New saving buttons in Google Docs do just that. The buttons let you know when your document is fully saved, in the process of being autosaved or has unsaved changes that haven’t been picked up by autosave yet. Now, if there are unsaved changes the ‘Save now’ button is clickable.

Google Buzz
Last week we launched Google Buzz, a new way to start conversations about things you find interesting, like photos, videos, webpages or whatever might be on your mind. Buzz lets you share right from Gmail, or from your mobile phone. You can connect other sites you use like Twitter, Picasa, and Google Reader, and you can post buzz privately or publicly. Since we released Google Buzz, we quickly made a number of improvements based on input from users, and we’re committed to keep improving it. Individuals can use Google Buzz now, and we plan to make it available to businesses and universities using Google Apps within a few months.

Google Apps Script for Google Sites
Google Apps Script lets you create programmatic interactions between a whole variety of Google services including contacts, calendars, email, finance data, spreadsheets and more. Businesses often use scripts to automate repetitive processes. Last week, we added Google Sites to the list of products that you can control with scripts. Now, instead of manually updating the content in a site, you can use Google Apps Script to automatically populate pages in your site with calendar data, contact information and data from the other services that work with Google Apps Script. Scripts can even add attachments and be used to update the sharing preferences for your site.

Who’s gone Google?
With 3,500 employees, Lincoln Property Company is one of the largest property management firms in the United States. Recently, Lincoln Property made the decision to switch to Google Apps from their complex and costly Novell Groupwise email infrastructure. Not only will they save an estimated $200,000 per year, they’ll finally be able to equip every single employee with email, instant messaging and calendars — not just the 950 desk-based workers who previously had email access.

The Google Apps train keeps rolling in the education space as well. Seven million students around the world are now using Google Apps at school! DePauw University and Davenport University are just a couple of the most recent schools to switch to Google Apps.

Hope you’re enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you’re using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

“

(Via Official Google Blog: Network effects: Introducing the Google Apps ….)

What merchants don’t know about the technical side of protecting customer data can be costly.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) describes 12 system and procedural requirements for securing customer credit card data that is transmitted, processed, or stored by an online merchant.

In order to accept credit cards as a form of online payment, merchants are expected to comply with the PCI DSS standard. In an effort to meet this requirement, online stores dutifully encrypt data transmissions with a secure socket layer (SSL) or even extended validation SSL, which is great, and implement a policy of not storing credit card data, which is also important. What is often overlooked, however, is that an online store is res…

”

(Via Practical eCommerce Articles.)

	Get more from Google Apps with Premier Edition Google Apps Premier Edition gives your business the business-grade experience with lower total cost of ownership with features like: * 24/7 phone support * 99.9% uptime SLA * 3x more email storage * Blackberry and Microsoft Outlook interoperability * Increased security and administrative controls Join us to learn more about these features and more ways your business can benefit from Google Apps Premier Edition.	From: GoogleApps Views: 2048 2 ratings
	Time: 45:39	More in Science & Technology

“

(Via YouTube – GoogleApps’s Channel.)

Next Post
Previous Post
11 Competitive Intelligence Tools for SMBs

Small Business Trends November 18, 2009 By Lisa Barone
It’s not stalking. It’s research. It’s you doing research on your competitors to help you stay up-to-date on what they’re doing so you know which direction you should go. It’s not stalking and everyone’s doing it.

Here’s a list of 11 tools that can help you track your competitors movements on the Web and give you actionable information that you can use. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a savvy site owner.  We’ll start off gentle.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are great little inventions because they allow you track virtually anything and have it delivered either to your email or RSS. What kinds of stuff should you be tracking? The name of our competitor’s company, their employee names, their CEO, product names, locations, mentions of new features, etc. What kinds of media are you looking for? Their blogs, social profiles, pho”

(Via .)

New update information

Site templates launched in Google Sites Posted: 17 Nov 2009 03:07 AM PST New feature launched that enables users at a domain to access a gallery of site templates so that page layouts, navigation links, embedded gadgets, content, themes and other site attributes are already done. Administrators also have the ability to upload custom templates that will be highlighted for users to see when creating a new site. Users can also create a site template and upload it to a domain template gallery so that everybody at the domain has access to the template. Editions included: Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions Languages included: Control Panel: US English Templates: Templates provided by Google are English-only initially. The templates feature is available for all languages supported by Google Sites. How to access what’s new: Administrators: In your control panel under ‘Sites settings’, click on the new ‘Templates’ tab. - You can choose to enable/disable custom templates using the checkbox. - You can also choose which template set is highlighted to users, the default templates provided by Google or custom templates uploaded by you. - To highlight your own custom templates, select the checkbox ‘Highlight custom templates uploaded by you’ and enter in the URL of the site you uploaded. This will highlight your custom templates to your users from the template gallery. Note that you must first create and upload your template site in order for it to be highlighted. - To add categories to classify the custom templates when users are selecting a template, enter in a category in the ‘categories’ textbox e.g. project management. Users & Administrators To upload a site template to the domain’s template gallery: 1. Open up the site you want to add to the gallery. Note, the site must be published and you must be an owner to submit the site. 2. Select ‘More actions’, ‘Manage site’, ‘General’, and choose ‘Publish this site as a template’. 3. Choose a template name, a category, enter a description and click ‘Submit template’. 4. Your site template will appear in the gallery for everyone to see within hours. For more information: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-web-powered-workspace-for-todays.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/11/get-started-with-google-sites-templates.html Get these product update alerts by email Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Today’s post is written as a resource for the Kent State University Entrepreneur Extravaganza where I will be a presenter with Rob Felber of Felber & Felber Marketing. Click here to read his post.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve come to realize that knowing how to improve your networking will improve your ability to market and brand your business.

Why is networking so important to entrepreneurs?

1. Starting and running a business requires  many facets of talent and experience.
2.  Having friends and business acquaintances who can help you find the right answers and resources is powerful.
3. By networking you get connected to other people who can and will help.
4. When you know a lot of people, there are more answers at your fingertips
5. As an entrepreneur, you need resources to bring your idea to market

Step-by Step Networking:

Keep your business cards in your right pocket, with your left pocket free to put their business cards.  If there are name tags provided put it on the right side of our lapel (people look to the right  when they shake hands.)

Don’t have a plate of food in one hand and a drink in the other.  How can  you shake hands? Grasp a business card? Don’t be chewing when someone wants to introduce you to someone else.  Just because there is food there, doesn’t mean you have to eat it.

Depending on the event, on your way there think about some casual small talk subjects for some of the casual conversations: weather, sports or other general, non controversial topics.  Have some short good answers ready for the common opening questions: where are you from? how did you get involved in this organization (if the event is hosted by an organization) and the favorite: ‘what do you do?’

A good networker is always ready for the what to you do with their 30 second commercial/elevator speech.  I’ve found that just launching into the full 30 seconds is a real conversation killer, so be prepared to  have a more back and forth conversation.

The 30 second commercial works when you are seated in a room of business professionals and the person at the microphone says: let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves, where we are from and what we do.  When it’s your turn, you stand, take a breath and tell the group who you help, why it is helpful to them, the name of your company and your name.  Meanwhile, you’ll be listening to the others to figure out who else you’ll need to meet before the event is over.

After the event:
Follow up after an event makes all the difference.  Either enter the contacts into your database or use an online contact system like Linked In.  Send an email to the person you promised to supply information to. Write a handwritten note to someone you will want to stay in contact with.  Perhaps schedule a phone call or meet for coffee to get to know more about the person and their resources.

You’ll want to reach out and connect two people who could help each other. That is where networking really gets strong.  When you become the connector you become the resource.

Online Networking
Many of the same concepts apply on line.  Your 30 second commercial is incorporated into your summary statement on LinkedIn. Or much shorter on your 140 character profile on Twitter.  Some advantages of online networking: you can move at your own pace, on your own time. It is searchable to find who you want or what you need, even when you don’t remember or know their name. 

Networking on line or in person is a key for entrepreneurs.

Helpful Links to Improve Your Networking Results:

• How to Build Your Network
• Top 10 Professional Networks for Women in Finance
• 10 Online Networking Tips for Entrepreneurs
• Tips for Effective Business Networking
• Business Networking Advice: Interviews
• 50 Ideas for Using Twitter for Business

”

(Via Branding and Marketing.)

One question that repeatedly comes up in any discussion of web single-sign on is ‘How do I get my desktop apps to play?’. Often, Enterprise Single Sign-on (ESSO) is the answer – deploying an agent to the client desktop to automatically populate the username/password popup for Outlook, or whatever desktop app you’re working with. This has always felt a bit clunky to me, particularly since you need a credential store somewhere in the system, but it works well enough for the username/password case.

The ESSO approach breaks, however, if you’ve moved to a federated identity model, perhaps outsourcing your email to Google Apps and using SAML for single sign-on so that, instead of end users logging in to the email system directly, they authenticate to an identity provider (IdP) within your enterprise, which sends a SAML assertion (a signed XML document containing the user’s identifier and possibly other information) to Google as part of the web single sign-on process. Now the problem becomes: how do you use a fat email client such as Outlook, when (by design) Google knows nothing about the end users’ passwords?

Last week at Internet Identity Workshop 9 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, Google presented an approach to this problem, leveraging OAuth as the glue between the web SSO world of SAML and the desktop view of Outlook. Well, they would have presented it, if the wifi had been more reliable; as it was, the Google engineers explained their solution to me

It works like this:

1. A Google plugin in Outlook intercepts the authentication process, obtains an (unauthorized) OAuth request token from Google’s OAuth service provider (SP) endpoint and invokes the browser with a SAML SP URL, including the request token as a query parameter.
2. The Google SAML SP redirects to the user’s enterprise IdP.
3. The user authenticates to the enterprise IdP (in the browser via whatever mechanism has been configured – typically username/password).
4. The enterprise IdP redirects to Google with a signed SAML assertion containing the user’s Google identifier.
5. Google returns a page for the user to give permission for Outlook to access their email; the user gives consent, submitting a form back to Google. This is the OAuth protocol step that authorizes the request token and permits an OAuth access token to be issued later.
6. Browser shows ‘Success’ page.
7. Outlook plugin detects success (I guess it watches the window title), requests an OAuth access token from the Google OAuth SP (sending the, now authorized, request token), and uses the access token as the password in subsequent IMAP/SMTP/POP3 authentications with the Google mail server.

The OAuth consent page (step 5 above) seems a little clumsy, but, without it, if the user were already logged in to the enterprise identity provider, there would be no user interaction in the process, allowing a desktop app to obtain the OAuth tokens, and, thus, access to the user’s email account, without the user’s consent. Probably not a good thing

All of this is documented in the following articles at Google – many thanks to Eric Sachs for pointing me to the links:

• OAuth for Installed Applications – how to use OAuth to access Google Apps from a desktop app. The article doesn’t explicitly call out SAML, but, if you have enabled SAML on your Google Apps deployment, it gets used between steps 4 and 5 in the flow documented there.
• UX research on Desktop Apps using federated login and/or OAuth – an older article describing the approach taken by Google.

(Via Superpatterns.)

A Chat with the Designer of the Google Logo