Posted by David Bercovich, Product Marketing Manager

Not surprisingly, we’re big fans of emphasizing the search box on websites and intranets, as search puts the entire contents of a site at the visitor’s fingertips. That is why we are pleased to highlight the City of Virginia Beach, a Google Search Appliance customer, who redesigned their website around search. So whether you are looking for info on parks or parking in Virginia Beach, its only a search away.

Posted by Rodrigo Vaca, Google Enterprise

¡Hola! We're happy to announce that today we launched our Google Search Appliance and Google Mini products in Mexico. We have been getting requests from customers there for a long time. We're happy to finally say "Yes! It’s available in Mexico!”

Customers in Mexico can get the Google Enterprise search appliances through local companies like GT Consulting, MAR Consultoría, BearingPoint, Deloitte Consulting, Arteria Comunicaciones, Mobile Data, ParaByte, CasaMex and DELL.

In fact, we even got our first Google Enterprise Mexico customer a couple days before the actual launch: Grupo Sanborns. Grupo Sanborns is one of Mexico’s most important restaurant and retail chains. They’re deploying the appliances as I blog, and are ready to go live in the next day or so.

Isn’t that cool? They got the boxes only a few days ago!

Rodrigo

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Enterprise Partner Team

Educarchile took advantage of the "turn on, dial up" power of Google Apps recently when they made Google Apps Education Edition available to all their users on the educarchile.cl domain.

Educarchile, created by the Chilean Ministry of Education and Fundación Chile, was founded in order to diminish the digital gap among the poorer schools and students in Chile by spreading the use of communication technologies with educational purposes. Google Apps furthers that mission by bringing the same powerful messaging and collaboration tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets, currently used by Google employees, to every Educarchile member. In one fell swoop.

Fast is great, but a key requirement was simplicity. We're constantly asked "why can't it just work like Gmail and Google.com?" The good news is that it can. On a tight deadline, they were able to meet other user experience requirements like Single Sign On with the help of Google Apps APIs and Google Enterprise Professional partner LTech. Suddenly the same user name and password just works with all of Google Apps.

We look forward to spreading this kind of power to more users like Educarchile.

Posted by Noah Doyle, Google Enterprise Product Team

I was reading legendary Jonathan's blog this morning and found an entry that made me blush! Thanks Jonathan for your compliment on our Google Maps for mobile product. I use Google Maps on my BlackBerry® too! And yes the word "cool" doesn't do it justice. I liked that description of it better and thought I would share it with our customers as well.

Have you tried Google Maps on your mobile? If not, try it now and don't forget it's free. Google Maps for mobile works on many mobile devices including devices connected to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. You can find more details here and for corporate users here.

At Google we have a core philosophy that states - "You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer". You will find our Google Search Appliance and Google Apps products provide mobile access as well.

Posted by David Bercovich, Product Marketing Manager

Tired of writing down an address on the back of an envelope or printing out a map before driving somewhere that you just checked out online? Google and BMW have teamed up to enable users to send business listings directly to their cars enabled with BMW’s Assist Service. Check out this video.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Team

At Google, we live by the mantra that fast is better than slow. So we were excited to see our friends at Microcost did a video of the Google Apps sign-up process. From 0-60 in under a minute is pretty impressive. Now I wish I could read my email that fast!

If you want to give Google Apps a test drive, check it out at http://www.google.com/a

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Team

Following last week's release of Google Apps, there is a lot of excitement about the Start Page functionality which allows users to preview and access their inboxes and calendars, find relevant information from your organization or business, and search the web. Why do users like this so much? Because the ideal end-user portal not only has company information like dashboards, business data feeds, and enterprise search, but also combines personal information like news and stock tickers, weather, sports scores, and various RSS feeds from favorite news sources and blogs. The Google Start Page in Google Apps gives users just that, access to the thousands of Google Personalized Homepage Modules from which they can pick and choose what best serves their information needs.

In a great move to further break down this barrier between the traditional enterprise and the vast amount of information and resources available on the Internet, IBM announced support for Google Gadgets within WebSphere. I think this is a major win for users everywhere, and furthers the trend of bringing great consumer driven innovation into the old world of enterprise IT.