Google Enterprise Blog: Edit images right in Google Slides and Drawings, plus 2 more |  |
- Edit images right in Google Slides and Drawings
- Google Cloud Platform Live: Blending IaaS and PaaS, Moore’s Law for the cloud
- Women in Tech: a chat with Bethany Kemp from Design Within Reach
| Edit images right in Google Slides and Drawings Posted: 25 Mar 2014 01:43 PM PDT (Cross-posted on the Drive Blog.) Google Slides and Drawings make it easy for you to tell a story and share your ideas. And a big part of storytelling is the images you use to bring a concept to life. Now it's even easier to get those images just right, because Slides will let you crop, apply shape masks, and add borders to your images right within your presentation. Cropping To crop an image, select it and click on the crop image icon in the toolbar.   To crop your image to a particular shape, apply a mask from the pull-down menu next to the crop icon.   Add a border to your image by clicking on the line weight icon, and give it a little extra pop by changing the line color.     | ||
| Google Cloud Platform Live: Blending IaaS and PaaS, Moore’s Law for the cloud Posted: 25 Mar 2014 10:00 AM PDT (Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog) Editor's note: Tune in to Google Cloud Platform Live for more information about our announcements. And join us during our 27-city Google Cloud Platform Roadshow which kicks off in Paris on April 7. Today, at Google Cloud Platform Live we're introducing the next set of improvements to Cloud Platform: lower and simpler pricing, cloud-based DevOps tooling, Managed Virtual Machines (VM) for App Engine, real-time Big Data analytics with Google BigQuery, and more. Industry-leading, simplified pricing The original promise of cloud computing was simple: virtualize hardware, pay only for what you use, with no upfront capital expenditures and lower prices than on-premise solutions. But pricing hasn't followed Moore's Law: over the past five years, hardware costs improved by 20-30% annually but public cloud prices fell at just 8% per year. We think cloud pricing should track Moore's Law, so we're simplifying and reducing prices for our various on-demand, pay-as-you-go services by 30-85%:
Sustained-Use discounts In addition to lower on-demand prices, you'll save even more money with Sustained-Use Discounts for steady-state workloads. Discounts start automatically when you use a VM for over 25% of the month. When you use a VM for an entire month, you save an additional 30% over the new on-demand prices, for a total reduction of 53% over our original prices.
Making developers more productive in the cloud We're also introducing features that make development more productive:
We're working on even more features to ensure that our platform is the most productive place for developers. Stay tuned. Introducing Managed Virtual Machines You shouldn't have to choose between the flexibility of VMs and the auto-management and scaling provided by App Engine. Managed VMs let you run any binary inside a VM and turn it into a part of your App Engine app with just a few lines of code. App Engine will automatically manage these VMs for you. Expanded Compute Engine operating system support We now support Windows Server 2008 R2 on Compute Engine in limited preview and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are now available to everyone. Real-Time Big Data BigQuery lets you run interactive SQL queries against datasets of any size in seconds using a fully managed service, with no setup and no configuration. Starting today, with BigQuery Streaming, you can ingest 100,000 records per second per table with near-instant updates, so you can analyze massive data streams in real time. Yet, BigQuery is very affordable: on-demand queries now only cost $5 per TB and 5 GB/sec reserved query capacity starts at $20,000/month, 75% lower than other providers. Conclusion This is an exciting time to be a developer and build apps for a global audience. Today we've focused a lot on productivity, making it easier to build and test in the cloud, using the tools you're already familiar with. Managed VMs give you the freedom to combine flexible VMs with the auto-management of App Engine. BigQuery allows big data analysis to just work, at any scale. And on top of all of that, we're making it more affordable than it's ever been before, reintroducing Moore's Law to the cloud: the cost of virtualized hardware should fall in line with the cost of the underlying real hardware. And you automatically get discounts for sustained use with no long-term contracts, no lock-in, and no upfront costs, so you get the best price and the best performance without needing a PhD in Finance. We've made a lot of progress this first quarter and you'll hear even more at Google I/O in June.   | ||
| Women in Tech: a chat with Bethany Kemp from Design Within Reach Posted: 24 Mar 2014 07:29 PM PDT Editor's note: From Ada Lovelace to the ladies of ENIAC, women have played an important part in driving technology forward. As Women's History Month winds down, we're highlighting a handful of women who are making strides, driving change and shaping the future of technology. Today, we hear from Bethany Kemp, VP of Technology & Information Systems for Design Within Reach, a Google Apps customer. How and when did you first get involved in IT? I first joined Design Within Reach in 2001, back when it was much smaller, starting in the call center. By 2002, I'd worked my way up into a shipping coordinator role. In 2004, they decided to move my part of the business from San Francisco to Kentucky - but I didn't want to leave San Francisco. The head of IT, who I had worked closely with and who had seen how I ran operations in the shipping center, asked me to stay and join his team as Systems Coordinator. My first major task was to roll out a new ERP for the company. It was a custom system, so I had to write up all the documentation and run user training. It was a pretty big job for my first time in IT, but a great way to dive in headfirst. Aside from a two year stint running operations, I've been in IT for almost ten years now. Managing operations gave me a good idea of the challenges the business faced - it was a good experience to work hand-in-hand with that team as the company grew. I liked operations, but I also realized along the way that I wanted to tackle our business needs by giving our developers opportunities to make cool stuff, so I moved back to IT. I've been there ever since.  What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in IT? I believe two especially significant changes have affected the the world of technology, the way businesses work and the role of IT leaders. First is the mobile revolution. My users want to work from their phones or tablets, not their desktops. Our sales teams rely on their applications working from their mobile devices, whether they're in the store or on location with clients. It's a totally different way of working and a great opportunity for my team to help create a more personal customer experience - not to mention close sales faster. The second significant change is the move to cloud computing. Before, I had to conduct a long evaluation process to understand the costs and the impact on our current environment before choosing a new IT solution. Then, we had to build the hardware environment to support those IT investments. Now, I can get an application or new system up and running in a couple months, and if we don't like it, we can stop using it without worrying about lost money or time. The cloud has enabled great innovation. There are so many options for businesses out there, and applications can be integrated and improved so quickly. This level of choice has given more power back to us and our users, and it challenges the provider to always create the best, newest and most exciting products and experiences, because the users has the option of just turning it off and using another option. The move to cloud computing has also changed the role and make-up of my team. Before, when someone came to me with a request for help tackling a problem, I'd either say it wasn't possible or would take 2 years to implement. Now I can say yes, and figure out how to do it right away. And I don't need a lot of developers; I have business analysts and administrators who know the business. That's a great feeling for me and for my team. I feel like IT is now a business driving role, not just a support role. What advice would you give other women interested in tech? I learned early on not to be afraid of tackling something I'm not yet an expert in. I feel that women sometimes hesitate before volunteering to do something new that they're not comfortable with. Technology is still predominantly male, but you shouldn't be intimidated by being the only woman in the room. You'll earn respect in whatever you do by being comfortable with who you are and confident in your knowledge. The last thing I'll say is that women need to stick with IT and look for opportunities to support other women in the industry. The more of us that stay in IT and the more we support each other, the more technology can change for the better.   |
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