However, today it inspired me to think about what it would be to have “A Day in My Life Without Google”.  As the writer describes his experience with Google in his life, I thought of many other Google Apps I use daily.

• Reader
• Search
• Sites
• iGoogle
• Google Gadgets
• Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Forms
• Google Groups
• Google Marker and Customer Search Engines
• and as Google says…even more!

I do not even want to imagine “A Day in My Life Without Google”.

If you are looking for solutions, time saving tools and more effective and productive communications in your personal life or business,  Go Google!!

This article is a great place to start!!
http://sparxoo.com/2010/04/23/living-with-google-a-day-in-the-life/

With the new groups support you can not only see a list of domain shared groups but a list of members and owners as well. Every group created in Google Groups for your domain will now appear in Dito Directory for easy management for your admins and users alike. You can even copy your groups to your domain shared contacts. Please note that groups is only available for admins in Dito Directory Lite so upgrade to Directory Pro by clicking the “buy now” link in the application.

The new edit details panel has been completely redesigned from the ground up for more efficient usage. Also, there is now support for company and department information for each contact. The search functionality has been expanded to include these new fields as well.

These exciting new features are out now in Dito Directory v1.1. If you are not seeing groups please contact your domain administrator. Learn more about Dito Directory here and if you have not added it to your domain visit: google.com/appsmarketplace.

Using Dito Directory with Google Apps provides external contact management for organizations and is built using Google App Engine and Google Web Toolkit. Dito Directory integrates seamlessly with Google Apps and uses OpenID for authentication.

“We are very happy to have Dito Directory in the Google Apps Marketplace,” says Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise. “Through the Google Apps Marketplace, software vendors like Dito are helping us build a rich ecosystem of integrated apps that work seamlessly with Google Apps, allowing IT administrators to leverage the benefits of cloud computing and extend Google Apps to meet more of their business needs. We are happy to offer Dito Directory to the millions of Google Apps users who have embraced the cloud.”

Learn more about Dito Directory here and be sure to visit google.com/appsmarketplace.

Dito is happy to announce the fourth in our series of free webinars.  This month we will be showing you how to create, manage and analyze data with Google Forms.  The webinar will be Wednesday, March 17th at 1:00pm EST.  Register now to reserve your spot !

With Google Docs, you can quickly create a form or survey, email it to your friends, family, or colleagues, and keep track of the answers in one spreadsheet.

Forms can help you gather customer feedback, find out what visitors think about your website redesign, or get confirmation on who is coming to the company’s holiday party.

During the webinar we will cover the following topics:
• Business uses for Google Forms
• Creating new forms or forms from templates
• Choosing the right “question type” to solicit information from your users
• Sending your form by email or embedding it in a website
• Setting up custom confirmation messages
• Analyzing form data using Google Spreadsheets
• Displaying survey results in graphical format
• Controlling who access to fill out a form and see the form results

Webinar Details:

Date and Time: Monday, February 15th, 4pm – 5pm EST
Audience: Beginner – Intermediate Users
Editions: Standard, Premier and Education
Time: 60 minutes
Registration Web Link: http://learn.ditoweb.com/febwebinar

You will learn how to:

• Create a shared team calendar that multiple people can edit
• Create a special events calendar that is shared with entire domain
• Grant calendar access to selected coworker’s like an Administrative Assistant or Manager
• Configure the amount of information you share with your domain – Free/Busy or Event Details
• Share your calendar with users outside your domain
• Publish a calendar to a website
• Publish a calendar to a Google Site

As always, we’ll have a live Q&A at the end of the webinar so come and by and bring your Google Calendar questions!

If you are going to Google I/O this year please stop by and say hello to team Dito. We will be showcasing some of our new custom applications for Google Apps. We would also like to thank Google for inviting us to this wonderful and informative event.

More information on the Developers Sandbox: http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sandbox.html

Using Labels and Filters to Manage Your Inbox
January 15th, 2010
11am EST
Register: http://learn.ditoweb.com/janwebinar

Are your emails piling up in your inbox?  Did you have a system for organizing mail in Outlook with folders but now aren’t sure how to use labels?  Want to create filters to make sure that your junkmail bypasses your inbox?  If the answer to these questions is “yes” than this webinar is for you!

During this webinar Director of Learning and Google Apps Expert Susan Cline will show you how to organize your inbox with labels, filters, and how to incorporate email management strategies into your Gmail usage.

1. Labels
   • Differences between Labels and Folders
   • Creating and Editing Label Names
   • Assigning colors to labels
   • Adding a label to a message in the inbox
   • “Move To” – Moving a message out of the inbox and into the label area
   • Searching for labels
   • Showing/Hiding Labels in mailbox
2. Filters
   • Purpose of filters
   • How to create a new Filter
   • Use a message as a template for a filter
   • Filter mailing lists
   • Filter messages to add labels
   • Create messages to forward messages
   • Editing and Deleting Filters
3. Email Management Techniques Supported by Labels and Filters

We will also have a live Question and Answer period at the end of the session.

Sign up today!

Xmarks

If you are like me and have tons of bookmarks floating around and use multiple computers Xmarks is a must have. While the Chrome bookmark sync has potential it is still limited to just the Chrome browser. For me that is an absolute killer as I do tend to drift through several browsers depending on what development work I am doing. One thing that is missing from Xmarks that some folks do not like is the inability to synch up passwords and that is where Chrome’s own bookmark sync may eventually triumph. Also, Xmarks is still buggy so if you have hundreds of bookmarks that are not organized in some way you may get some serious memory leak issues. Overall it is a must have and a great place to start.

Google Mail Checker Plus

The next must have extension, especially if you are a heavy Gmail user, is Google Mail Checker Plus. I have a personal gmail account as well as a work google mail account and it has driven me nuts that there is no easy notifier app to deal with two accounts. What really makes this extension shine is the slick drop down window that gives you a one sentence summary of unread email for both accounts. From this drop down window you can quickly mark it as read, spam or archive. It makes my heavy email days between my personal and work email go so smoothly that I have no idea how to live without it now.

Google Apps Shortcuts

As a heavy user of Google Apps my workflow has been greatly impacted by this useful extension. I mainly use docs, spreadsheets et all on my work domain so links to my personal gmail account just won’t fly. This extension allows me to add in my domain and now I can create docs and access my work info from the tool bar. It also adds in a link to the company website which is a nice touch for those that often need to visit your site. Between this and the Google Mail checker plus my abilities to multitask have expanded exponentially.

Google Tasks

This is yet another extension that provides some much needed organization to my life. This allows me to track, create, edit and generally maintain all my tasks not only from my works domain but also my personal gmail account. To me, that was the killer feature, to be able to switch between my personal and work tasks, that set this iteration of Google Tasks extension a part from the rest. While Remember the Milk is a sweet web app and has a really nice Chrome extension it was out of my google apps work flow. This one is more a matter of preference but I recommend google tasks for  google apps users.

Google Wave Notifier

This just could’t be a Chrome extension list without a google wave notifier making the cut. Just like the google mail checker plus this extension provides a drop down window that shows a quick one line summary of the wave and the new element in the wave. Google wave has its issues, especially with not knowing where the last entry was placed but this extension drops you directly into the body of the wave. It brings you to exact new element within that wave greatly enhancing wave’s abilities as well as making it a lot like the new email it has been touted to be.

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)

This extension is pretty straightforward and a must have. It allows you to read and see PDF’s and PowerPoint presentation right in the Chrome browser. Safari and Firefox both have long had this ability so it is nice that Chrome has this one from the get go.

RSS Subscription Extensions (by Google)

This is another must have extension to start off with. It adds one-click subscriptions to rss feeds from your tool bar and is one of those extensions that is simply needed.

Evernote Web Clipper

Yes, there are Chrome extensions that have nothing to do with google and goole apps. If you are a big note taker and do not know what evernote is go to that site now. This app pretty much does everything you want for a note taking app and this extension allows for a quick, easy way to add clips from any website. Personally, I use this heavily for articles and mainly compiling the ultimate recipe list.

Chrome Bird and Brizzly

There simply is no way to talk about extensions without mentioning twitter. Both Chrome Bird and Brizzly offer a slick and easy way to keep track of the most recent tweets as well as composing some of your own. Chrome Bird comes with a nice badge notifier that displays how many unread tweets there are, but its support for only one twitter account is a big limitation. Suprisingly Brizzly does not have the badge notifications, but offers multiple twitter accounts (up to five actually) and adds in facebook support. Brizzly’s interface is also way more slick than Chrome Bird, if that is something you are concearned about. Bottom line is that both extensions are very nice twitter options but Brizzly has to win out with its multi account and facebook support.

Shareaholic

The description of this extension pretty much covers it: “Share, save, or email the page you’re visiting using services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Google Reader and over 80 more.” This really is the most dead simple method to share anything and everything you find on the web through pretty much any medium you can think of. The twitter sharing for me is just getting dangerous at this point.

Facebook for Google Chrome

There are a few extensions out there that do something to or with Facebook. I personally love this extension as it provides a quick pop up window in which I can see the essentials. I can update my status and even comment on others pictures, comments and the like. I actually almost never go to the Facebook site now between this extension and Brizzly.

AniWeather

I live in the Bay Area where the weather is either raining or not. Well, you can throw in a smattering of fog but that just about covers the gist of the weather out here. However, I still love to check out what is going on outside so I don’t walk out in shorts while its raining. This extension has a nice interface with some nifty animations and you can add many different locales in case you want to know what the weather is like in Bejing. It gets its data from weather.com and its radar info from weather.gov or NOAA for those weather buffs out there.

Conclusion

This is just a quick list of the 12 extensions that I have found the most useful in my daily routine. There are so many more out there I am positive you can find an extension for just about anything. One very exciting aspect of these Chrome extensions is how easy they are to put together. They are built around the same stuff that goes into building your typical webpage. So expect to see this list of extensions to continue to grow and allow Chrome to be a serious competitor to Firefox and its exhaustive library of extensions. Once Google gets this running in the Mac beta I expect to see Chrome’s market share continue to climb. It also affords a peek into the concept behind the Chrome OS and Google’s focus on the cloud. These extensions really capture the power of so many of the growing and excellent web apps out there. It really allows me to pretty much do everything I need to just in my browser alone. Check out these extensions and let me know (in the comments below) of the ones you use out there as I am sure there are many that I have missed.

Update:I forgot to add the link to get to Chrome Extensions and I added the individual links to the title of each section above.

“We recognize the need to provide enterprise-level training in order to accelerate the sizes and types of businesses moving to Google Apps” said Dan McNelis, Principal and Co-Founder of Dito, LLC.

With offices in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and D.C. metropolitan areas, Dito, LLC offers a unique combination of Deployment, Training, Custom Development, and Support services for Google Apps.