Screens go Google at the Digital Signage Expo

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Work

Editors note: Chrome offers secure, customizable and easily manageable devices and apps for today’s business. Join us for Chrome Live, April 22-24, to learn how web-based solutions can help maximize your company’s productivity. Register here.

Since last year’s Digital Signage Expo and the introduction of Chrome’s single app kiosk mode, many customers and developers have built digital signage applications on Chromeboxes. Chromeboxes are secure, easy to manage and cost effective, making them ideal to display content and engage customers in any location. Chicos chose Chrome to manage and display content on over 5000 screens across more than 1500 stores.

We’ve done more with the Chrome platform to make signage even easier, adding new features that make it seamless to plan signage content and manage device health. Today, we’re announcing these capabilities:

• The Chrome Sign Builder helps you create intelligent digital signs that are easy to build, schedule and deploy. You can add and manage content for any number of screens, and schedule that content to run when needed, across many screens at different times of day. A great example of this in action: displaying breakfast, lunch and dinner menus at various restaurant locations across multiple time zones.

• The Chrome App Builder makes it easy to build third-party kiosk apps. You can set up applications to eliminate the “first-run” configuration process and rapidly deploy across multiple screens. We have several third party partners whove built solutions for signage including Stratos, Rise, Arreya, Wondersign, Four Winds Interactive, Scala, and Industry Weapon; and were adding more to this ecosystem.

• Ongoing reporting monitors the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts from Chrome device management if a screen goes down, and can remotely reboot the device to get it back online without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

In addition, today AOPEN announced three new commercial Chrome OS devices that will add more durability to digital signage. By working with AOPEN, we can offer more rugged hardware equipped to handle harsh conditions — like a hot and greasy back-of-house line at a restaurant.

If you’d like to learn more about these new devices and management features, visit us at the Digital Signage Expo in booth 2218 to see them in action or online. You can also register now for Chrome Live, a digital conference we’re hosting April 22-24.

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Belgian employment agency VDAB offers job services at the speed of Google Apps

Posted by Michael De Blauwe, Project Leader of the Innovation Lab at VDAB

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Michael De Blauwe, project leader of the Innovation Lab at VDAB, the public employment bureau for Belgium’s Flanders region.

In the past, clients walked into one of our employment offices and waited to meet with one of our consultants. Today, they don’t have to leave home to get face-to-face feedback on their resumes or participate in mock interviews. Timing is critical for job seekers, and at VDAB – the public employment bureau for Flanders – we’re using Google Apps to more quickly and efficiently help people in need of job services and training. We’re also reaching more people while saving money by reducing the number of physical employment centers by nearly 30%.

What used to take a week for an in-person resume workshop followed by a practice interview, now happens in less than 24 hours. Our thousands of employment specialists use Google Hangouts and Google Docs to review customers’ resumes and coach them on interview skills. This digital transformation has been a hit with job seekers. In 2013, we had 4,920 people use our new e-coaching services, and 83% said they would recommend it to friends.

We’re not just using Apps to serve more people — we’re delivering better service. VDAB job coaches now use Google Drive to store resources and Docs to comment on clients’ resumes while speaking with them on Hangouts. All of a client’s job-related files are stored in one place, with all feedback contained within the document.

Our team also works together more efficiently. Because our coaches work from different locations throughout Flanders, it’s helpful to have a central repository that allows people to share information and work together from different locations. We use Google Drive to share information about job openings and Google Sheets to track customer queries in a single document that everyone can access. Before Google, we’d send thousands of emails back and forth to share resources, respond to customers, and schedule appointments.

When we made a company-wide push behind Apps in 2012, using our early Google adopters to inform others, we found that it was already taking hold. Now that all of VDAB has switched to Apps, we’re moving faster, helping more people build their job-seeking skills and matching more employers with qualified candidates.

We worked with Capgemini, a Google Apps Premier Partner in Belgium, who performed this successful migration.

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The clock is ticking HTC at MWC 2015

Since few years every March means a lot of fascination and excitement in the Android world. March is a special month for thousands of Android users, especially those using devices from the ambitious and inventive Taiwan manufacturer - HTC.

HTC is not the biggest company out there, but during past years HTC introduced by far the most innovation in their products and trends in the Android devices design. Empty words? Sycophancy? No.

The HTC One M7 introduced in March 2013 has received numerous awards and accolades, including being named "Best New Mobile Device" by the GSM Association at Mobile World Congress 2013, and was named the best smartphone of 2013 at the same conference in 2014.

One year later, in March 2014 HTC introduced the HTC One M8. Just like its predecessor, the One M8 received most awards in the mobile devices industry, including "Phone of the Year" at the T3 Gadget Awards 2014.

One of the HTC One M9 renders

This year HTC is not going to rest on its laurels. On March 1st, right before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (March, 2nd) HTC will present the successor of the HTC One M8. Some say it will be called "One M9", some say it will be called "Hima". Honestly? Name doesnt matter to me. All I know is that the design line of the HTC One series will be kept and the incoming high-end HTC smartphone will set new trends for the 2015. The expected device specification looks promising. Also what we can be sure of, the HTC One M9 will be running Android Lollipop out of the box with the refreshed HTC Sense 7.0 user interface. Personally, I cant wait!

Oh, and one more thing.

It wont be made of plastic.

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!

For latest news follow Android Revolution HD on popular social platforms:

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Our commitment to protecting your Google Apps information

Posted by Marc Crandall, Head of Global Compliance, Google for Work

Editors note: Our guest blogger this week is Marc Crandall, Head of Global Compliance at Google for Work. A lawyer and long time Googler, Marc focuses on regulatory matters involving privacy and security.

We regularly hear from our customers that assessing data protection compliance in various countries around the world can be challenging. Protecting the privacy and security of our customers’ information is a top priority, and we take compliance very seriously. That’s why weve been working hard to make things a bit easier for you.

We recently launched a new legal and compliance section of the Google Admin console where Google Apps administrators can find pointers to useful information, such as security and privacy certifications, third-party audits and data center and subprocessor information. This will be helpful to everyone, from those who manage their own domain to legal, security and privacy compliance specialists.

Another important resource for Google Apps for Work customers is our data processing amendment, which we’ve offered to customers since 2012. Customers that use our products for Work and for Education are often subject to data protection and compliance regulations. To help address this, in addition to our commercial agreements, we offer a data processing amendment that describes Google’s specific data protection commitments for your Google Apps information.

If you operate in a regulated industry, having Google’s data protection obligations in writing helps demonstrate to regulators that we take significant and concrete steps to protect your information. For customers subject to laws implementing the European Union’s Data Protection Directive, our data processing amendment also contractually binds us to remain enrolled in the U.S Department of Commerce Safe Harbor Program. And we indicate that Google Apps customers may opt-in to model contract clauses with Google.

While the data processing amendment does not affect the functionality of Google Apps, we believe customers with regulatory compliance considerations will find the amendment useful. You can access the data processing amendment from within the Admin console.

Millions of organizations use Google for Work today — they come from all sectors and more than half of our customers operate outside of the United States. You rely on Google to provide strong data protection capabilities, in compliance to your specific needs. With these tools in place, we hope to make it easier for you and third parties to verify that. For more information, visit our Google for Work and Google for Education trust site.

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Nokia N9 to come at the MWC with a 1 2 GHz CPU 12 MP camera

With the MWC fast approaching, rumors about the MeeGo-running Nokia N9 are starting to intensify again. If the Finnish source is to be trusted one of the most hotly anticipated smartphones of this year will make its debut at the congress in less than a month.
There will also be some serious hardware under the hood. Apparently the Nokia N9 will be the first Nokia smartphone to pack a 1.2 GHz CPU. The machine-translated source mentions something about it being an Intel Atom, but we cant imagine a way of stuffing the good old x86 Atom in a smarphone. Instead our guess is the N9 is based on the Intel Moorestown platform, which is essentially a smartphone SoC (system-on-a-chip) with an Intel Atom core as its heart.
Next, the Nokia N9 is supposed to have the same 12 megapiexel camera as the N8. Considering the qualities of the large-sensor unit inside the Nokia Symbian^3 flagship, thats just excellent news for all cameraphone lovers. Top of the line smarphones havent been doing too great in the camera department recently, so the N9 might be the first true all in one device.
The final exciting Nokia N9 rumor is its LTE connectivity. Even the source claims that this isnt confirmed yet so you need to take this with an extra pinch of salt.
Theres less than four weeks remaining until the MWC kicks off so well find if the rest of it is true pretty soon. Heres hoping that the whole list gets confirmed!
Source (in Suomi)

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