The reason just about everyone in the world is enamored by Google is because of their innovative web apps that make life a whole lot easier. Google is constantly cooking up something new and innovative in their top-secret labs. Take a look at some of their latest that you may not have heard about.

Google Timelines

Google Timelines is part of their Experimental Search project. By adding view:timeline to any search, you can now get a visual about the dates most commonly referenced in connection with your search term. Perhaps it’s not something that everyone needs, but I would venture to guess that the people who do will be sold on using Google.

Local Voice Search

Wow! With local voice search, you can call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) and speak the name of the listing or category you’re looking for, then get connected to the business for free or have the results sent by SMS to your cell.

Google Notebook

Keep a little virtual notebook of things you find on the web without leaving your browser. Take a tour of Google Notebook »

You can find lots more of Google’s awesome web apps at their Google Labs page.

All of this success begs the question… what kind of web apps could you create to make your website more sticky? What would make the lives of your customers easier? There are literally hundreds of great ideas waiting to be developed.

If you’re in a niche industry, you’re the perfect person to come up with a great idea that your target audience or peers need. Maybe you’ve already got an idea. If so, look us up. Chances are, it’s a lot simpler and more affordable to create than you might imagine…

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Just after Microsoft declared that it would finally get on the bandwagon and start putting more focus on developing SaaS (Software as a Service) applications, Google announced that it may partner with the SaaS leader and innovator Salesforce.com.

This was one heck of a smart move for SalesForce.  Now all of the search engine marketers, who spent approximately $35 billion last year, have a serious incentive to integrate SalesForce into their operations. 

According the Sales Force, the merger would:

The new offering delivers seamless integration with the leading advertising platform, allowing users to buy keywords and instantly create ads directly within Salesforce that are compliant with Google’s editorial policies. With Salesforce for Google AdWords, companies can easily correlate ad clicks with sales metrics such as leads, opportunities, deals, and revenue. Customers can deploy Salesforce for Google AdWords to:

• Simplify the process of search marketing
• Track and correlate clicks to leads, sales opportunities, and deals
• Measure exactly which ads and keywords are generating leads and results
• Increase the ROI of their online advertising programs
• Easily manage the entire process directly within Salesforce

We knew SalesForce was going to become more important to businesses in the future, which is why we began in-depth training and offering implementation to our clients over the past year.  But we had no idea that SalesForce was in talks to partner with Google and couldn’t be more pleased!

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It’s confirmed that Google is doing much more than just dabbling in online apps, they are now entering into the web based apps space with full Google force.  The new tagline says it all:

Search, Ads and Apps

Over the last year, Google has consumed the company’s Writely (creators of a web based word processor app), iRows (web based spreadsheet app), and most recently Tonic (web base slide show app).

Just the other week, a representative from Google said their goal wasn’t to go head to head with Microsoft in the office application world, but based on its new tagline, it appears that this is exactly what Google is doing.

Google will offer the web based office-type apps for free to the regular user and will license use for a fee to companies.  Yay!  That’s one way to cut down on pirated software.  Let’s face it - it’s difficult for the average user to pay the steep price for Microsoft Office. 

Will Google overtake Microsoft?  That remains to be seen.  The downside to web apps is that they are currently much slower than desktop apps – however much more convenient, useful, and now free. 

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We’ve been doing a lot of integrations for customers with Responsys this year – an extremely powerful and intuitive email marketing software.  Just when we thought we couldn’t be more impressed, Responsys bought the predictive analytics company Loyalty Matrix. 

What is predictive analytics?  To quote Wikipedia:

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that process current and historical data in order to make “predictions” about future events.

I am intensely looking forward to working with the result of the combination of these two forces.  Responsys was already the most intuitive email marketing software available and I assume that the purchase of Loyalty Matrix will increase that exponentially. 

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In the past there were Google Desktop Gadgets – these are nifty little items that anyone could add to their Google personalized home page.  These gadgets were primarily custom programmed by enthusiasts and companies seeking a way to stay in front of viewers but now anyone can build a gadget.

The new personalized gadgets allow individuals to upload personal information into a web app that others can place on their homepage for a literal “portal” into a friend’s world.  Instead of focusing on mass appeal like the previous gadgets, Google is billing the new gadgets have a more personalized, intimate appeal. 

But can you use the new Google Gadgets for business – you bet!  There are any number of ways that you can personalize these new gadgets to stay in front of the people you want to stay in front of.  Keep in mind that, like everything in the world of social media marketing, you’re gadget has got to be interesting and useful to earn the real estate of you target audience’s homepage. 

Here are some ideas:

Framed photo – Display an image of a featured daily product or service – offer featured products or services at a nice % discount.   

Free Form – Use it to send tips or breaking news of interest to your target audience

Countdown – Display the time left until a featured event or sale

These are ideas for 3 of the 7 new gadgets – how many more can you come up with?

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