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Friday 5: Simple productivity apps [Video]

No matter your workflow, you probably use a number of productivity apps throughout the day — or if you don’t, there’s a good chance they’d make your life easier. Finding the right apps can be difficult though, and some of the more advanced ones can just be too complex and intimidating for a lot of users. To make things a little easier, we’ve put together a short list of simple, approachable apps that could help make you a bit more productive.


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Outlook 2.0.0 for Android APK is available to download, here’s what it looks like

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Not long ago, Microsoft announced it would be bringing an updated look to its Outlook app for Android, killing Sunrise in the process. While iPhone users got the updated redesign almost immediately, Android users had to wait a little. Today, Outlook 2.0.0 is finally available to download with some refreshed user interface design and a couple of new features. You can download the app directly from APK Mirror, or wait for it to hit the Play Store officially (it shouldn’t be too long until the update hits).


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Google’s new Microsoft Office plugin allows users to open and save Drive files

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Google has a new plugin out for Microsoft Office (Windows only, for now) which makes it possible to access files stored in Drive from Office and save edits back to the cloud storage service, as well as create new files in Office and save them directly to Drive. The plugin works with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (2007, 2010, and 2013 versions), and Office 365.

Here’s what saving a new document looks like in Word once the plugin is installed:

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This plugin isn’t anything monumental, but Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity applications still has an undeniably significant hold on the corporate market. By making Drive more interoperable with the suite, Google can ease people into trying its cloud-based applications for getting work done, initially by pushing the benefit of Drive for sharing files with teams, and easily accessing files across devices. It’s a strategy Google’s competitors have claimed to use to gain a foothold in the corporate world – get enough average employees in a company using your product for some of their needs, and eventually IT will budge and consider switching over for everything. Google has a website up dedicated to the new plugin.

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Google continues enterprise push for Google apps with delegated contacts search

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Google has announced a new feature for enterprise users of Google Apps: the ability for assistants and other team members to search for particular people in their boss’s contacts list.

Contacts delegation allows enterprise users to delegate full access to the contacts in their “My Contacts” group without granting access to their mail or anything else in their accounts. […]

To save users time when locating specific delegated contacts, we’ve now added search functionality. Delegates can search delegator contacts by selecting the delegator contact group in the navigation pane, and then searching.

It’s not the most exciting of new features, but is one of those small things that can make a worthwhile difference to a PA who might have to contact a dozen or more people a day – and every improvement like that helps Google build its case for broader enterprise adoption of Google Apps.

Google Drive is down (update: Back for some)

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Update (3:24 ET): I’m back online. are you?

If you are having issues with Google Drive, you aren’t alone. We’ve just lost our access to our online documents though our local sync seems to be working fine. Google’s Apps status page just went code orange indicating they are investigating the issue. Now let’s start talking about how safe your documents are in the Cloud.

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Google adds ability to open Microsoft Office files directly in Chrome on Mac & PC

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Previously only available to Chromebook users, Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Mac and Windows users will now have the ability to open Microsoft Office files directly within Chrome. The functionality works for users running the latest Chrome Beta and requires installation of the Chrome Office Viewer (Beta) extension.

In addition to saving you time, the Chrome Office Viewer also protects you from malware delivered via Office files. Just like with web pages and PDFs, we’ve added a specialized sandbox to impede attackers who use compromised Office files to try to steal private information or monitor your activities.

The McClatchy Company, third-largest newspaper publisher in the US, goes Google Apps

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Listen, the recession has obviously helped Google Apps hit the ground running, but the number of high-profile organizations adopting the Google-hosted suite of productivity web apps is growing at an alarming rate (if you’re Microsoft, that is). Lately, Google has won over the #1 hotel chain and today we learn that The McClatchy Company, the country’s third-largest newspaper publisher, has made the switch.

“Historically, each newspaper has operated independently with on-premise software and their own various business operation departments and specifically IT. To date, our technology has been both destandardized and decentralized”, says Terry Geiger, director of corporate IT with The McClatchy Company. Blame that on Microsoft’s technology, he says…


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