JibJab helps visitors find their online funny bone with Google Site Search

Editor’s note: Today’s guest post comes from Chris Poe, Engineering Director at JibJab Media. JibJab.com is a digital entertainment studio that creates, produces and distributes humorous online content. From offbeat eCards to personalized videos and satirical viral videos, JibJab is on a mission to help more people share more laughs than any other company in the history of the world.

We could all use a good laugh from time to time. Which is why we’re thrilled to announce that, as of today, search on JibJab.com is powered by Google Site Search, making it even easier for our visitors to explore and find their favorite funny items:



In evaluating a website search engine, we chose Google Site Search for its ability to help users find the perfect eCard or video, fast, while allowing our developers to control the look and feel of the results. We also appreciated the fact that Google Site Search provided XML results for full customization of each search query, and gave us a hands-free search solution that requires little-to-no custom maintenance.

This, hopefully, will allow our visitors to find more of what they’re looking for on our site - good laughs!

Posted by: Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Go-Go (Gmail contextual) Gadgets - get more done right from your inbox

The email inbox has become the hub for most people’s business day. With Gmail contextual gadgets, available in the Google Apps Marketplace, instead of having to open additional applications to take action or get more information, these applications intelligently bring what you need right into your inbox. Gmail contextual gadgets scan for triggers, such as names or purchase order numbers, within a message and present relevant actions in-line with the email. Attend our webinar on Sept 8th to learn more about this feature. Here are a few examples of the wide range of applications that offer Gmail contextual gadgets in the Marketplace.

Customer management (CRM) solutions are one of the most sought after applications in the Marketplace. The newly launched Solve360 contextual gadget demonstrates the advantages of having access to CRM information within a message. Alongside each Gmail message, Solve360’s gadget shows off a clean, at-a-glance view of everything your team knows about the person behind the message. Before taking further action, you can examine the customer’s previous interactions and special considerations. Advanced customer management is now no more complicated than a few extra clicks inside an email exchange with a client.

Video Demonstration

Tracking time can be quite cumbersome for employees and businesses, so Harvest has developed a web-based solution for managing your timesheets. With Harvest for Google Apps, entering time is as simple as filling out a timesheet right within Gmail. Harvest sends automatic reminder emails to employees to fill out relevant timesheets. With contextual gadgets, these emails display the recipient’s timesheet right below the body of the message so users can fill out and submit their timesheet without ever leaving their inbox. Bringing this crucial task right into your email takes out unnecessary steps and helps you save time and stay on track.

Video Demonstration

Smartsheet, a popular project management solution, offers integration across various Google Apps products. With their Gmail contextual gadget, any email that references a Smartsheet item allows task management right from your inbox. This functionality is interactive with your daily needs - as Smartsheet tracks project progress, if it detects a change in status based on your parameters, it will deliver an email to your inbox. Right from that email, you will be able to fully assess and edit each aspect of the project. The volatility of project management just got that much smoother.

Video Demonstration

Gist demonstrates how deeply rooted and useful social networks have become. This application delivers social media in a way that changes how you manage relationships. Gist removes the noise from individual email alerts, eliminates the hassle of going to multiple services for updates, and automates the delivery of the most important information about the contacts in your professional network. With their Gmail contextual gadget, you can better understand the context of each email without any extra work and better frame your actions. Valuable social information is available to you exactly where you need it - your inbox.

Video Demonstration

These are just four of the applications in the Google Apps Marketplace that have taken Gmail contextual gadgets to the next level. For more contextual gadgets, check out:

• Project and collaboration apps: Manymoon, Socialwok
• Relationship management apps: Applane, Rapportive, Kwaga
• Productivity apps: Organizer, AwayFind, Pixetell

Remember to sign up for our webinar on Sept 8th to learn more about these great gadgets.

Webinar:
All about Gmail contextual gadgets: Learn how to access Line of Business data from your inbox
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here


Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team

The Harvard Age Curve - Part II

Last year I published an article about the age of matriculating students for the Class of 2010 at HBS versus other schools. Dee Leopold recently published new data on the HBS admissions blog for the Class of 2012 as follows:

Since I got a lot of positive feedback after my last article, I decided to briefly revisit the topic given this new information.

I'll make the same assumption I made last time, which is that students on average graduate from undergrad at age 22; the numbers who graduate later probably roughly balance those that graduate earlier. I then subtracted a year to calculate the approximate age at time of application (average time from application to matriculation is around 9 months). Comparing the two data sets show little change:

The data compares class sizes of 900 and 909, so I normalized the data and made the followng observations in the difference between the two years:

• Age group 23 and under: Down 23 students
• Age group 24-26: Up 29 students
• Age group 27-29: Up 17 students
• Age group 30 and over: Down 5 students
• Overall mean age change: from 24.9 up to 25.1

Don't forget this is age at time of application. It means that the average HBS grad is 28 years old. While the age average technically went up slightly, it's not a very significant difference. More significant is the slight drop in students with under 2 years of work experience, which looks like it got absorbed by those with 3-5 years of experience. Although I would emphasize that these are very small percentages changes and it's very likely that none of the slight differences are intentional.

For those wondering about the best time to apply, let's look at percentage of students matriculating by age groups at time of application:

• Age 23 and younger: 10%
• Age 24-26: 78%
• Age 27-29: 12%
  
• Age 30+: 1%

The numbers definitely speak for themselves and probably don't need any added insight. I will say that over my year at HBS I have come to form an extreme respect for the institution and its methods. There are certainly those that question the age skew at Harvard, and I think it's always worth discussing, but I will say that after a year at HBS, I have come to give them a high degree of trust. They've been the best at what they do for a long time!

HBS Military Class of 2012

While I'm on the subject of discussing admit demographics, I'll also follow up on the post I made last year regarding the military Class of 2011 at HBS.

HBS has made a very genuine effort to provide active duty military personnel the opportunity to attend and succeed at HBS. The new HBS Class Co-President is former military, and military personnel continue to be regarded in very high regard on campus. It's definitely our responsibility not to take that for granted and to continue to earn that respect by contributing to the Harvard community and upholding its long tradition of excellence.

In addition to increasing the GI Bill Yellow Ribbon package to $10k/year (matched by the VA for a total of $20k), the Class of 2012 also shows a 19% increase in former active duty US military personnel.

At 4-5% of the total class, HBS has taken a leading position among the top MBA programs as a school that places a premium on military experience.

I'll note that there were also three foreign military personnel from non-compulsory service nations to be admitted as well (2x Britain, 1x Greece). There are also at least three women matriculating from the military, compared to none in Class of 2011 and two in the Class of 2010.

So it looks like soldiers and sailors really increased their game this year, and unfortunately I won't be around HBS next year to report on the Class of 2013, so this will have to be the best information out there for a while.

Note: As usual, I'll clarify that my data is not from admissions and is therefore not necessarily perfect and is definitely not official. It is however very close.

Building your web presence with Google Sites and Google Places

Google Sites makes creating a website as simple as editing a document. With dozens of site templates and new features like horizontal navigation or global footers, you can easily create a site for your team or project and share it with your colleagues, your entire organization, or the world.

We've also seen small and medium sized businesses use Google Sites as a fast and convenient way to build their official web site. Combined with Google Places, Google Sites is a great way for small businesses to start building their presence on the web. To learn more, see our blog post on the Google SMB Blog or go straight to the Getting Started Guide for Google Sites and Google Places.

Posted by Lisa Ding, Google Sites Team