Use Google Apps seamlessly with corporate BlackBerry smartphones

If your employer has provided you with a BlackBerry smartphone, you may be accustomed to its built-in email, calendar, and address book applications. The Google Apps Enterprise team has just announced that we will soon release Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which enables you to use these familiar applications with Google Apps.

Google Apps is our hosted solution for enterprise messaging and collaboration. It includes Gmail, Google Calendar, and more. Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server connects your BlackBerry Enterprise Server directly to the Google cloud, and creates a seamless experience between Google Apps and the built-in BlackBerry smartphone applications for mail, calendar, and address book. The Google Enterprise blog has more details about the offering.

If you're an IT administrator interested in Google Apps, you should know that Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is currently in beta testing with select companies and universities. We are targeting a July 2009 release for Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers, at no additional cost. This week we're at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, so if you happen to be at WES, come visit us at Booth #105. We'll also be talking about Google Apps and other Google Mobile products at our breakout session tomorrow, so we hope to see you there!

Posted by Hong Zhang, Software Engineer

Do more with Google Latitude!

When we launched Google Latitude a couple of months ago, we were flooded with feature suggestions. One frequent request was to allow you to share your location with even more people and not just your Latitude friends. Today, we're launching two applications that do just that!

• Google public location badge lets you publish your Latitude location on your public website or blog. You can just embed the standard badge -- like this or you can use the KML or JSON feeds directly. Read more about the badge on our Blogger Buzz. When you enable this application, your location will be shared publicly and you will not be able to control who can or cannot see it. For your privacy, you may choose to share your best available location, share only your city-level location, or simply never enable the badge.

• Google Talk location status (beta) lets you share your Latitude location with all your Gmail chat and Google Talk contacts. It will automatically update your status message to your current city as you move, and anyone who can chat with you will be able to see this location status. Of course, you can easily change back to your custom status message at any time.

Visit google.com/latitude/apps to enable these applications. They are two separate apps, so you can select which one(s) you'd like to use and customize exactly how you'd like to share your Latitude location. You must be an existing Google Latitude user; if you're not already, you can sign up here!

Please note that we take your privacy very seriously, and your location will not be shared with any application without your consent. Both apps adhere to the same terms and conditions -- you must explicitly opt in to the application and of course, you can always disable an app by going back to the app's page.

These applications are only available in the US for now, but they'll soon be ready for all the same languages and countries that Google Latitude supports.

Hope you enjoy these, and stay tuned for more Latitude goodies. Also, we love feedback, so please tell us what you think in our Help Forum or suggest ideas for apps on our Product Ideas page (be sure to include "Latitude" so we can search for them!).

Posted by Rohan Seth, Software Engineer, Google Mobile