Posted by Laurent Bortoluzzi, Vice President of IT, LXR

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Laurent Bortoluzzi, CIO of LXR. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, LXR is a collection of hotels and resorts across the United States and the Caribbean. LXR joins other hotels like IHG and Delta Hotels that are already using Google Apps. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map.

At LXR we’re committed to service and continually look for ways to enhance the comfort and enjoyment of our guests. Our 7,000 talented and hard-working employees make the difference in providing a great experience at our 20 resorts and hotels. As CIO, it’s important to me that I provide the LXR team with the best tools to optimize the way they work and ultimately provide excellent hospitality. We recently decided that one of the ways we could do this was to move to Google Apps.

With the help of Google Apps Reseller, Cloud Sherpas, we’re migrating 3,000 mailboxes to Google Apps. We’ve deployed four hotel properties as well as our sales and marketing teams and everything has gone smoothly. Based on the surveys we sent out to employees following the deployment, they’re extremely happy with Gmail and are already starting to use Google Docs. Notably, there was no negative feedback, and in fact, a majority (75 percent) of employees said they’re glad we switched to Google Apps.

Our marketing department is particularly excited about using Google Sites to share creative files. They’ve found Sites so intuitive that they don’t need any help from the IT team to set up new project sites. I also think our employees will see tremendous benefits from the ability to collaborate on documents instead of sending emails with attachments back and forth. It’s been amazing to see how many features have been added to Google Docs and how much the product has evolved since we first started evaluating Google Apps last year. Google Docs will prevent us from having to upgrade licences for most of our employees.

Our HR department is excited about video chat with Google Talk. We typically fly recruits to Florida for interviews, but by using Google Talk’s video chat for initial interviews, we’ll not only save money on travel costs, but also the time it takes to arrange several rounds of interview travel.

I’ve also started looking at the Google Apps Marketplace. There are so many applications that we can use, from work flow to expense report applications. Processes that are pretty cumbersome today could get an overhaul with applications that will integrate seamlessly with Google Apps.

Since Google Apps is web-based, our employees can get their information from any device, wherever they are and the IT team can spend less time managing software updates on company supplied laptops and Blackberries. Access to real time information is extremely important in the hospitality industry.

The way we see it at LXR, the web is the future. Google Apps allows us to focus on business-critical projects that increase revenue and save costs, while making both our employees and our executive team happy.

Posted by Irene Chung, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

Google Calendar is an essential tool for organizing your time and sharing your schedule with friends and coworkers. But what about letting others know about your preferred availability? Likewise, when you look at a business's online calendar, do you wonder why you can't just book an open slot instead of remembering to call during regular business hours? Now, with appointment slots in Google Calendar, any individual or business can manage appointment availability online 24/7.

Creating appointment slots

To get started, set up blocks of time you’d like to offer as appointment slots. Simply click anywhere on your calendar and then on "Appointment slots.” From there, create a single block of time or automatically split a larger block of time into smaller appointment slots.


Every Google Calendar has its own personal appointments sign up page; you can embed it on your website or give the URL directly to friends and clients. You can find the URL for your appointment page at the top of the set-up page, which you can access via the Edit details link.


Signing up for an appointment slot

When someone visits your sign up page, their calendar is overlaid for convenience and they can sign up directly for any available appointment slot. When they sign up, Google Calendar conveniently creates a new shared event on both of your calendars.


At Google, many people are already using appointment slots to manage their office hours. We’re starting to roll it out widely today, and appointment slots should be available for everyone within the next few days.

Posted by Adrian Soghoian, Google Apps & Postini Team

Is your organization running Microsoft® Exchange 2003 or 2007 and looking to upgrade its archiving and continuity capabilities?

Google Message Continuity and Google Message Discovery are helping businesses increase email reliability and reduce risk by moving key services – such as spam and virus filtering, email archiving, and email continuity – to the cloud. Join us for a live webinar on June 8th to learn how Gables Residential and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago were able to deploy Google Postini services to reduce IT infrastructure costs and pave the way for a 100% web environment.

What: Google Postini services webinar (1 hr.)

When: Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST

Who:

• James Hamrick, Director of IT at Gables Residential
• Eric Geiger, VP of IT Operations at Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago
• Adam Swidler, Senior Manager with Google

Click here to register. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team

Editor’s note: From time to time we like to showcase how our customers are building fun and innovative products with Google Maps. Colleen Logan, VP of Marketing for Icon Health & Fitness, explains how a Google Maps API Premier powered treadmill helps exercisers reach personal fitness goals.

Most people use Google Maps for reasons of pure function: Where is that new restaurant? How do I get there? How long will it take? We thought Google Maps could be used for an entirely different purpose – as entertainment while working out on the NordicTrack home fitness equipment.

People buy fitness equipment for a range of reasons – train for a race, lose weight or simply stay in shape – but a universal challenge for most is staying motivated and finding the time to exercise. In order to reach their goals, more people are turning to technology for time-saving, motivating exercise. We thought the visuals provided by Google Maps, combined with our fitness products and iFit website might be so compelling, consumers would have more fun and stay on track. Even if the only time you can squeeze in exercise is in the evenings when kids are asleep in or in the early, snowy mornings of winter before a long day at work, the iFit exercise equipment can bring the experience of exercising on varied terrain into your home.



For example, if you wanted to experience a run through San Francisco’s hilly terrain, you can go to the iFit website and draw a running route on Google Maps. When you get on one of our treadmills, such as the NordicTrack Elite 9500 Pro, the treadmill pulls up Google Maps on the screen with the newly drawn running route. The treadmill mimics the incline of the real world route you are running, thanks to the elevation service of the Google Maps API. The runner experiences a real life running route by seeing the runner’s location move about Google Maps with Street View images flying by a she reaches new personal records.



To learn more about the Google Maps powered “smart fitness” treadmills visit the website of NordicTrack.

Posted by Teresa Wu, Community Manager

(Cross-posted from the Google Docs Blog.)

You make Google products what they are -- and the feedback you share with us every day helps shape the future of our products. We’re always listening to your requests via blogs, Twitter, our forum, and other channels, and for the next two weeks, we’re bringing back a more structured way to get your input on Google Docs by opening up our Product Ideas page.

On this page, you can submit your ideas, read other users’ suggestions, and vote up your favorites. We’ll use the top ideas to help us prioritize our development in the coming months. After the two-week period, we'll follow up with a blog post summarizing the results. While we may not work on all of the top ideas immediately, we’ll let you know which of the ideas we’re working on.

We hope you’ll use this as an opportunity to help us prioritize the Google Docs features which are important to you -- for your business, in the classroom, or at home. Start submitting your ideas, big or small -- we look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Editors note: We’re specifically looking to hear your Google Docs product ideas and suggestions. If you’re seeking help, please post your support questions to the Help Forum. Off topic submissions may be removed.

Posted by Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog and Google Docs Blog.)

For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers. For example, desktop notifications for Gmail and drag-and-drop file upload in Google Docs require advanced browsers that support HTML5. Older browsers just don’t have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience.

For this reason, soon Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

So if it’s been a a while since your last update, we encourage you to get the latest version of your favorite browser. There are many to choose from:

• Chrome
  
• Firefox
  
• Internet Explorer
  
• Safari

As the world moves more to the web, these new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.

Posted by Grace Kwak, Product Manager

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog.)

Today we’re adding two features that make it easier to customize Google Calendar. First, you can now change your default event length from the standard 30 minute slot. If you frequently create 15 minute meetings, for example, you can now make 15 minutes the default length for all your events. This way, you don’t need to click into the event page to change the duration every time.



You can change the default length of your events from the Calendar settings page. Next to the “Default meeting length” option, choose the length you’d like from the drop-down menu on the right. From there, you can also enable “Speedy meetings,” which automatically shortens events that are 30 minutes or longer to allow you to prep for your next meeting or get to your next appointment if you have a packed schedule.



Second, for those of you who still prefer paper and print your calendar, you can now select a specific date range in the print dialog box. Google Calendar will automatically format your printout for the date range you choose.

We hope you find these new customization options useful. Let us know what you think in the Google Calendar Help Forum.

Editors note: These features are currently launching to all Rapid Release Google Apps accounts.