Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - October, 2009

[Jay Boren]

[BCC: googlefornonp...@googlegroups.com]

Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - October, 2009

We hope you enjoy this month's update from the Google for Non-Profits team. A reminder that you can find and search all of the old newsletters and other emails sent to this list at the Google group site. Also, please be sure to join the googlefornonprofits-discuss group. This group offers an email forum for members to ask and answer questions about Google tools for non-profits.

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Custom Search

Google Grants news & upcoming seminars

Gmail security tips

Updates to Google Docs

USA Water Polo goes Google

Cool new products and features

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Custom Search

Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) allows you to harness the power of Google search for your own website. This product recently turned three years old and some great improvement have been made in the past month. One new feature is Custom Search Themes, which allows you to customize the presentation of search results to better fit the look and feel of your site. In addition, you can create a custom search element for your site using Google Web Elements. Instructions for doing so can be found in this recent post from the AdSense blog. CSE also optimizes for mobile browsers so that people visiting your site from their smartphones can see search results formatted for these devices.

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Google Grants news & upcoming seminars

This month Google grantee Kidpower was featured on the Google Grants blog. Be sure to check out the blog post here to learn about how they made the most of their Google Grant and watch the video of the panel discussion in which Kidpower participated at this year's Google Grants Summit here. 

OMG! The Google Grants Ongoing Management Guide (OMG) will be rolled-out to all grantees worldwide in the next few months.  Check out this blog post to learn more about how OMG can help you actively manage your AdWords account and to download the PDF guide.  

The Google Translator Toolkit is a great tool for anyone running AdWords campaigns in multiple languages. The toolkit helps make translation easier with features like: translation search, bilingual dictionaries, and custom terminology databases. See this post from the AdWords blog to learn more.

There are several free AdWords seminars coming up in the next month.  Be sure to visit this site to see the schedule and sign up.

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Gmail security tips

Google takes security very seriously and does everything possible to protect the data of all users. When using Gmail there are certain things that every user should know to ensure that they don't inadvertently compromise their own security. Check out this post from the Official Gmail Blog on several simple things you can do to make sure your information is as secure as possible.

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Updates to Google Docs

There have been some great updates and additions to Google Docs this month. As part of Google's ongoing Data Liberation efforts, you are now able to export up to 500 megabites of documents at once. Learn more from this post on the Official Google Blog. A complementary feature to easy file export is Google Docs new multi-file uploader. Select multiple files from your computer and upload them all to Google Docs with one click.  

A great feature for everyone who uses Google Docs at work is shared folders.  This new feature allows you to easily create folders and select which of your files are stored in those folders. Share a folder with anyone to give them view or edit access to all of the files within the shared folder. This is a great way to handle larger projects and organize groups of files for online collaboration and editing.  

As some of you may have already noticed, there is a new feature in Gmail labs called "Google Docs previews". When enabled, every time you receive an email with a link to a Google Doc, there will be a "show preview" option at the bottom of the email. Using this feature allows you to review the shared Doc or Spreadsheet in your Gmail window, without having to open a new tab or window and switch back and forth between them. You can learn more from this post on the Google Docs Blog. 

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USA Water Polo goes Google

Non-profit organizations make up an important part of the thousands of organization who "go Google" every day by switching to Google Apps to manage all of their online communication and collaboration. USA Water Polo is one non-profit that switched all 35,000 of its staff and volunteers to Google Apps. CEO Chris Ramsey says, "With Google Apps for Non-profits we are able to provide a really high quality product at an incredible value, and this empowers us to run our own network without the cost and upkeep synonymous with a dedicated IT department." To read the whole story, see this post from the Google Grants Blog. 

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Cool new products and features

Android, Google's mobile phone operating system, is all over the news these days. Android version 2.0 (known around the Googleplex as "Eclair") is being released soon and several brand new Android phones will be hitting the shelves this month. One of the most exciting new features for Android 2.0 is a turn-by-turn navigation system that uses Google Maps to get you to your destination.  Because the navigation system is based in the cloud, you can find your destination by using a Google search, re-route around areas with high traffic and view your destination in Google Street View. Learn more and watch the demo here.

Google PowerMeter is a free electricity usage monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much energy your home is consuming. Until recently you could only use Google PowerMeter if your utility provider had signed up to be a partner. This month, Google announced the first device partners in the US and UK. This means that anyone who wishes to buy a monitoring device will be able to use Google PowerMeter. Learn more about Google PowerMeter-enabled devices in the US here and in the UK here.

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That's it for this month's newsletter. As always, please send any suggestions for the newsletter or Google for Non-Profits site our way.

Have a great week!

Jay from the Google for Non-Profits team