Google took to the Official Google Enterprise Blog today to share that the U.S. Coast Guard Academy is the first service academy to adopt the Google Apps platform. The 1,100 cadets at the academy started transitioning to Google Apps in January for all of their email, collaboration, and course assignments. They’ve even taken advantage of video chat features to collaborate and communicate with friends and family back home.

Google described out one group of cadets collaborated using a number of Google services to create a Google Site for their mini gas turbine engine project:

The cadets are also using these tools to improve collaboration on team projects. One group of four cadets created a Google Site for their capstone project designing a mini gas turbine engine. They could simultaneously edit spreadsheets, use video chat to share ideas, and even work together with students and professors from other universities to gather input. The cadets are a driving force of change across the campus. Today, nearly half the faculty and staff have converted to Google Apps and that number continues to climb.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is the one of the oldest federal service academies having been founded in the late 1880′s with a small campus in Connecticut. No word on whether Google+, which is now also available to Google Apps users, has also been made available to cadets.
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Alongside the announcement of their new Google Music store, Google has announced the “artist hub” allowing users to upload and sell their original content- full albums or individual songs-  as well as build and customize their artist page for display in the store. An artist can even make changes to their uploaded content at any time, including adding or editing tracks, editing an artist bio page, or including “new demos, live recordings and unreleased tracks”.

The service essentially works the same way developers sell their apps through the Android Market. Goog says artists will keep 70% of revenues and also get to set the sale price of their music. There will also be a one time fee of $25, but no other fees associated with the service.

Once users purchase an artist’s uploaded music, the artist will be able to manage their revenues and track profits through a “Payments” tab within the artist hub. One of the first notable artists using the service is DJ Tiesto, who will be debuting his new single today. Visit music.google.com/artists/ to learn more.

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Google’s Think Insight research portal for marketers, which provides trends, infograhpics, videos, and quick stats based on hundreds of Google studies, is officially out of beta and ready for public consumption.

The site includes an extensive research library, facts & stats, and a selection of planning tools- Real-Time Insights Finder (pictured below) allows you to find what people are searching for, clicking, and watching online in real-time, there’s insights into mobile usage with Our Mobile Planet Tool, as well as tools for search and benchmark tools for getting insights on ad campaigns and industry trends.

What type of info will you find on Think Insights? Google shares a few examples:
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Update: Google has now pulled the app from the App Store following a notifications bug many users have reported experiencing. Apps guy at Google David Giouard sent out the following tweet: “Googla culpa! Sorry but we pushed a bad version of our iOS app for Gmail. More info shortly – we’re working on it.” Google issued the following apology via their Twitter account:

Following reports that Google was about to launch a native iOS Gmail app, they just announced an official app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. More sceenshots below.

We’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

Features listed on the iTunes page include notifications for new messages, threaded conversation views, the much-needed priority inbox feature, the ability to send and open attachments, and of course, search capabilities. You will also have access to archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam. It looks like we are finally getting the full-fledged, feature-rich native Gmail experience on iOS. We’ll have to take some time to really dig into the app and see how it stacks up. More screenshots after the break.

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