If you have yet to be transitioned to the new Google+ interface, here’s what it looks like and also the introductory video they included in my welcome when they transitioned me:

Juan Perez of IDG asked me some questions about how Abraham Harrison is dealing with the bold, unexpected move, of changing CEOs from Eric Schmidt to Larry Page, in Computer World, in the article Will Page back Google’s enterprise unit?, and I offered my humble opinion:

Chris Abraham, president of the Abraham Harrison digital marketing and social media agency, is also confident in his company’s investment in Google Apps for Business. “If Google had brought in an outsider, there might be more of a concern, but the fact that it’s a co-founder taking the reins is reassuring,” he said in a phone interview.

The lovely Lindsey Mastis called me today, asking me if I would drive up to the headquarters of WUSA Channel 9: 4100 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, to make a statement and give some advice about yesterday’s Gmail outage, including my company’s worldwide use of Google Apps Premiere.  I donned my monkey suit and shot up there and got to record a segment that ended up being called How To Survive A Google Outage:

WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) — On Thursday morning at 10:30, Gmail went down. For those who rely on Google solely, work came to a halt.

But Technology Strategist Chris Abraham knew what to do.

He backs up everything.

“Have another copy in another place then you can continue working,” he said.

Abraham suggests forwarding a copy of all your e-mails to another account, like Yahoo or HotMail.

When it comes to documents stored on Google, Abraham says save a copy on your hard drive every week.

“Google also allows you to download all your contacts as either an outlook export, or as a CSV file– which is a type of data file,” he said.

There are dozens of programs online to help people and business backup their data. And you can do this for free.

Google even has a site called Apps Status Dashboard with the latest outage updates and ways to get around programs with problems.

Abraham says the only reason his company could continue to work during the outage, is because he created a backup plan ahead of time.

Segment Featured on Main Page of WUSA9

Google does everything you could ever want, just a little ghetto. That’s why Google is permabeta — because they are interested in being everything to everyone first, and then refining over time.  Well, Gmail and Google Mail now offers the ability to be able to attach more than one file at a time to an email, something that everyone else has always done, even Google Video and YouTube, if you know where to look.  And so does Facebook and Flickr as well.  And now, Gmail! Huzzah!

If you use Google Mail for your email needs and get frustrated that you can’t select more then one file at once well you can now rejoice because Google have enabled the feature in their service. The system works a bit like the flickr uploader where when selecting a file you hold down CTRL and select the other files you want to attach and what’s even better when you attach them you can see each attachment uploading through the new progress bar. This is another great feature added to an already amazing email service. (Via Neowin)

Google is now fully able to attain the Holy Grail of email: the unified mailbox, via Lifehacker and the Google Blog:

Earlier this month a feature appeared in Gmail Labs: multiple inboxes based on labels. Zach Gellar, over at The Official Gmail Blog, has a great tip for leveraging the multiple-inbox trick into a full fledged control panel for multiple email accounts:

1. Turn on Multiple Inboxes from the Labs tab under Settings.
2. Set up a filter to auto-archive all mail sent to your work or school address.
3. Customize one of your multiple inboxes to show mail sent to your other address. To do this, go to the Multiple Inboxes tab under Settings and set up one of the panes to search for mail sent to your other address.
4. (Optional) Use a “custom from” address so that replies will be sent from Gmail but as if they’re from your other account. This way, your coworkers or classmates won’t know the difference.

Once you’ve set your email to be forwarded and properly labeled, you can use the other inboxes not as subdivisions of your primary Gmail account, but as inboxes for separate email accounts. Genius!

Everyone knows I hate Second Life but some people know that I love IM and IRC.  So, if this Google’s Lively actually acts like an IRC with avatars, I think I might use it — as long as the interface isn’t too heavy and I can “play” it on my x61 ThinkPad.  I was really into MUDs and MOOs back in the day, so this might be right down my alley.  My business partner, Mark, said to me, “I’m kinda praying this bombs..” We’ll see. Via Wired.

ExploringLively, Google’s Virtual World

Google is well-known for expanding into unpredictable areas, but virtual worlds? Google’sLively is a cross betweenSecond Life and IRC: pick an avatar, add clothing, enter a room, and chat. It’s all a bit confusing at first, as there isn’t really much else to do yet. You can create your own rooms and add furniture (including TVs playing YouTube videos), dress up your avatar and interact with objects, but original content creation is being left out of users’ hands.

While clicking through the catalog and dressing up my little guy (with a sweet bacon hat and overalls) I noticed a cryptic “Price: Free,” which suggests the exchanging of currency at some point or another.

The rooms themselves are pretty interesting: some of the popular ones include World of Warcraft and Guild Wars themes, a Digg Lounge, and even a Western-themed area, for folks who just can’t get enough Gunsmoke. I checked out the “Dragon Tower,” and watched avatars stand around while fires crackled. Nice sound effects though.

It’s only been out for about a day, so people are still getting their feet wet. And as with all Google Labs projects, it’s in (perpetual) beta, so expect the occasional glitch. Check it out. There is a small download, but (unlikeSecond Life) the entire thing runs out of a browser — Windows only, for now.

Lively [Google]

Last week, Mark was contacted by a reporter from IDG who wanted to know about how Abraham Harrison LLC uses Google Apps Premier, and Mark Harrison, our CEO, obliged. The article was published online today, For Web Apps, Get a Service Guarantee, in PC World (via Marketing Conversation):

For example, the Google Apps Premier Edition suite contains an availability guarantee only for its Gmail portion (for 99.9 percent uptime) and offers no commitment for the other components, which include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software.

“It would be comforting to have an SLA that covered the entire suite,” says Mark Harrison, founding partner of Abraham Harrison LLC, provider of online marketing services.

Abraham Harrison, founded in 2007, has been using Google Apps Premier Edition for about one year, and the uptime of its hosted applications and services, though not 100 percent, has been excellent, according to Harrison. Downtime incidents have been rare and brief, and have never proven disruptive to the company’s operations, he says. “We’ve never been crippled by an outage,” Harrison says.

Still, should a significant Google Apps outage occur, it certainly would impact the company, which is highly dependent on the suite. The company chose Google Apps in order to give its geographically-dispersed staff an array of software to use for communication and collaboration. In addition to the suite’s productivity applications, the company also uses Google Talk instant messenger and Gmail for e-mail. The company’s 22 employees, located in six countries and four continents, operate in 14 different time zones, and since most of their work is collaborative, Google Apps–which lets users jointly edit documents located on a central server–was a better alternative than e-mailing Microsoft Office documents back and forth.

Harrison would also like to see Google Apps provide an offline component that would allow users to work on their local PCs when disconnected from the Internet, a capability he knows Google is pursuing with its Gears technology.

That Harrison would feel more at ease with an SLA is telling. His company isn’t an ordinary Google Apps customer. Although the relationship between Google and Abraham Harrison is purely of the vendor-client type, meaning that the company receives no compensation from Google, the Google Apps team has singled it out as a model small business whose feedback it regularly seeks. As a result, Harrison is in close contact with the Google Apps team.

The thing I love most about Google is that they always offer data-portability. That said, it isn’t always easy to do. I run my entire Global Business on the strong back of Google Apps Premier. Sometimes my Director of Client Services, Saul, harangues me to make backups. Theoretically, it is possible. Now, thanks to Google Operating System and Blogoscoped Forum the possible has become practical, Export All Your Documents from Google Docs:

Google Docs & Spreadsheets doesn’t provide you a way to export all your files at once. But if you use Firefox, there’s a Greasemonkey script that creates a page with links to downloadable versions of your documents and spreadsheets.

We use Google Apps Premier every day at Abraham Harrison. We’re also proud to be a featured Google Apps Premier case study. So cool. Via Marketing Conversation.

Abraham Harrison manages a successful virtual business using Google Apps Premier Edition.

Business

To many traditional PR, ad and marketing agencies, the Internet is just another medium, but to Abraham Harrison, it is another culture—one that calls for a completely new approach to marketing. “Abraham Harrison specializes in everything from blogger outreach to influencer identification, brand protection and social media consulting for clients like Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and T. Rowe Price.” “Ten percent of the people in the world influence the other 90 percent in terms of purchases and other decisions. What many companies do not realize is that the people who are tipping the scales are increasingly the world’s online denizens, and they may not have fancy titles,” explains CEO Mark Harrison.

Approach

When it comes to running its own business, Abraham Harrison remains true to its Internet-centric roots. Besides the two founders, the team consists of 14 contractors spread across the United States, Europe, India and Africa, who often move from one place to another for extended periods of time.

Solution

Whether they are vacationing in the Alps or living on the island of Mauritius, Abraham Harrison employees stay in touch and collaborate using Google Apps Premier Edition. “I plan to move from Washington D.C. to Berlin for a while, but it really doesn’t matter because of our virtual work environment based on Google Apps,” says President and COO Chris Abraham. “Google Apps gives us a structured, integrated way to stay connected and collaborate.”

Abraham initially made the decision to use Google Apps based on Gmail’s spam protection, generous storage quotas and ease of sifting through messages. Although Gmail was the initial allure, the extended team has quickly embraced Google Apps as an integrated communication and collaboration system. The company uses Docs & Spreadsheets to help staff track hours as well as create and collaborate on strategy documents, presentations and other client materials. Google Calendar allows everyone to work flexible hours while still saying coordinated, despite being spread across 10 time zones. Using Google Talk, employees exchange insights during conference calls, much like passing notes across a table to share ideas. And the initially unseen benefits of Gmail are becoming apparent; Abraham Harrison is often brought in to work on accounts under the auspices of larger marketing, PR or ad firms and Google Apps makes it easy and automatic for the firm to send out perfectly branded email addresses (mark@largerfirm.com).

“The integration and functionality of Google Apps just keeps getting better,” says Abraham. “I am always amazed when someone sends me an email from Microsoft Outlook or another application and it gets inserted as a temporary event on my Google Calendar.”

Several employees also access Google Apps not just on their PCs, but also from mobile phones and other devices like the BlackBerry. “I can be out hiking in the Alps, and still stay in touch on the work front,” says Harrison. “I even use Google Gears to help ensure that when I lose Internet connectivity on a train, I don’t lose any data.”

Results

For Abraham Harrison, Google Apps Premier Edition gives staff powerful communication and collaboration tools that have brought productivity to the next level. Google Apps is bringing an expert team of relationship marketing experts together from around the world to produce results for clients. “Google Apps are beautifully designed, and have definitely been a factor in our rapid expansion,” says Harrison. “We’re big Google fans, and look forward to even bigger and better enhancements to Google Apps.”

About Google Apps

Google Apps is a suite of applications that includes Gmail (webmail services), Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Talk (instant messaging and voice over IP), and a Start Page for creating a customizable homepage on a specific domain. Google Apps offers editions tailored to specific customer needs, including a Standard Edition (ideal for family domains), Education Edition (K-12 schools, colleges and universities), Premier Edition (businesses of all sizes) and Partner Edition (Internet Service Providers and portals).

…or to learn more, sign up for an online seminar.

I just logged into my Google Apps Premier Docs & Spreadsheets account a couple hours ago and was pleasantly surprised by the new gorgeous and easier-to-navigate UI. My Project Manager commented, simply, “looks so much cleaner.”

All of my company’s calendaring, email, contacts, and documents are managed using
.

To be honest, it is one of the major — the only — reason why I can manage a completely virtual and international shop. I am based in DC, my partner lives in Berlin, and two of my team live in New Jersey and Michigan. It is brilliant.