How Google Apps and Gmail Image Caching Affects Marketing Emails

MailChimp has done a good job clarifying the confusion on the impact of Google's recent change to how images embedded in emails are displayed. Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo, for example, misunderstood the impact of the change but has since revised his article with updated information.

Many of our customers use MailChimp or Constant Contact for email marketing since they integrate beautifully with Norada's Solve360 CRM and other CRM solutions. MailChimp also integrates with Google Apps so that you don't need to remember yet another password and can better protect your account with Google's free two-factor authentication.

Google Apps and Gmail accounts represent about 475 million users worldwide.

The key points are:

• The tracking of unique opens of marketing emails by Gmail web interface users is improved by this Google Gmail change.
• The tracking of repeat opens by recipient is defeated by the image caching used by Gmail for web interface users.
• Gmail users that access their email via POP or IMAP clients like Outlook, native iPhone mail, etc., are not affected by the change since the client software opens the images.
• The privacy of Gmail and Google Apps users is greatly improved by the change since your own computer's IP address, which can disclose your physical location, as well as browser and version, operating system, and more, is no longer disclosed to the sender by the unique images embedded in emails by all the leading email marketing software solutions.

Certainly reach out to us at Interlockit.com if you'd like to learn more about this change.

BlackBerry is repositioning itself as a device management company—but is already being beaten by Google

BlackBerry recently published an open letter to its "valued enterprise customers and partners," to remind everyone that they "are very much alive, thank you." The newly-minted CEO, John Chen, makes an important—and telling—concession to the "new" mobile computing landscape: recognizing "that BlackBerry devices are not for everyone."

Unfortunately BlackBerry devices are losing ground faster than ever according to data released by Gartner last month. BlackBerry now sits at a mere 1.8% of the global smartphone market, compared with 5.2% at the same time last year.

As a result of their declining sales of smartphones to end users, BlackBerry is beginning to reposition itself to focus on a handful of what it sees as key areas: enterprise mobile management (EMM) solutions and embedded systems, as well as cross-platform instant messaging (BBM).

It's not hard to see why BlackBerry sees the need to pivot away from what has traditionally been its strength, but unfortunately it's pivoting straight into a marketplace where it's pricing itself out of contention. BlackBerry's enterprise management capability revolves around the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), a software package that requires you to either manage an on-site server or pay for hosting one in the cloud, in addition to the $19 per year management fee. Add to that the fact that the newest version of BES (10.2) can't manage BlackBerry devices running older versions of the BlackBerry operating system and you need to double your server count just to be able to manage both generations of devices.

As if all that wasn't enough, the $19 license fee is charged per device, so if you have two devices, each one of them needs its own license fee. And who doesn't have a smartphone and a tablet these days? In fact, a Sophos survey says consumers are carrying an average of 2.9 mobile devices each.

Google Apps for Business and Education includes bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 in the $50 per user per year price tag—which includes activation on an unlimited number of mobile devices. We've tested management of BlackBerry 10 devices from the Google Apps console and it provides remote wipe and monitoring capabilities just as it would for any other device. There's really no need for a BES.

For about $12 more per year than two BES device fees per user, you can have an all-in-one, cloud-based productivity suite that includes BYOD management features and can replace your Exchange, Lotus Notes, or other email and documents solution. Sticking with BlackBerry means you're on the receiving end of all the IT headaches involved with patching, securing, and managing yet another server (or two!).

All of us at Interlock IT live close to BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo and sincerely hope that they can find a successful market niche. BES 10.2 does have some advanced security features not found in other products. But the BYOD market is a highly competitive space already well-covered by giants like Google so BlackBerry has a tall, competitive mountain to climb.

Does anybody remember Palm?

As Windows XP and Exchange 2003 approach end of life, Google Apps can fill the gap

Microsoft's Windows XP is one of the most successful operating systems ever released, selling over 400 million licenses during its lifetime. When coupled with Exchange 2003, the two systems were hugely profitable for Microsoft. Businesses simply don't want to move away from products that still work well. However, after over twelve years of powering many of the world’s computers, Windows XP and Exchange Server 2003 will officially retire on April 8th, 2014.  This means that security patches will no longer be released by Microsoft leaving your Windows XP computers more susceptible to attacks, vulnerabilities, and other nasties.

However, Google has committed to support Chrome on Windows XP until at least April of 2015. Since unpatched browser bugs are often used by attackers to infect computers, this is great news for the millions of users still using Windows XP.

As of November 2013, Windows XP still accounts for a whopping 31.2% of desktop operating systems worldwide. Unfortunately no solid numbers are available for Exchange 2003's market share, but in March of this year The Radicati Group released its report, “Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and Outlook Market Analysis, 2013-2017” which pegs overall Exchange usage at 51% of email systems in the Business Email and Collaboration market.

Google Apps for Business provides a powerful alternative to any Exchange Server or Outlook email system and relieves the pressure of constantly having to upgrade by doing all the heavy lifting for you. You're always on the newest version of Google Apps and you never have to worry about upgrading servers or micro-managing a fleet of incompatible devices, as nearly any device with a web browser will work.

So if you're near the end of Exchange Server 2003's life cycle, why not boost your company's productivity with Google Apps for Business? Contact us today to find out why Google Apps is the right fit for you!

Introducing the new Google bar and restoring Single Sign On (SSO) for Marketplace Apps

Google Apps is a constantly-evolving suite of the best web applications for businesses. As part of their quest to always make everything just a little bit better, Google recently rolled out a new navigation option that replaces the old Google bar.

The new Google bar.

The new app launcher replaces the traditional black navigation bar with a simple grid that is designed to keep the experience consistent across Android, Chrome OS, and the web. The complaint we've heard is that you now need at least one extra click and sometimes two in order to get to services that you used to be able to get to very quickly. As well, all your Google Apps Marketplace applications are hidden under the grey "More" link. We've had multiple customers contact us saying the links have simply disappeared, because it's not immediately obvious where they might be.

Not a big fan of the new navigation system? Not to worry! There is a way to avoid all the hunting, and it involves taking advantage of the excellent Bookmark Bar in the Chrome web browser. If you're using Chrome, press Ctrl+Shift+B (on Windows and Chrome OS) or ⌘-Shift-B (on a Mac) to show or hide the bar; you'll see it appear or disappear beneath the address bar if you've done it right. To add a bookmark to this bar, follow the instructions below (these show you how to add a single sign-on bookmark for Solve360):

1. Click the Chrome menu button () on the browser toolbar.
2. Select Bookmarks.
3. Select Bookmark manager. You can also get to the Bookmark manager by using the hotkey Ctrl+Shift+O (on Windows and Chrome OS) or ⌘-Shift-O (on a Mac).
4. Right-click on Bookmark bar in the left-hand navigation pane and click Add page....
   
5. Name it Solve360 and paste this URL: https://secure.solve360.com/marketplace/?domain=yourdomain.com (where yourdomain.com is replaced with your primary domain name).
   
6. Press Enter. You're done!

Now you'll have one-click access to Solve360 from anywhere in your browser, not just from your inbox. You can also hold down Shift while you click the bookmark to open it in a new window, and Ctrl+Click or click with your middle mouse button to open it in a new tab.

You can configure the same functionality for other services, such as FreshBooks (https://secure.freshbooks.com/google.php?domain=yourdomain.com) and Xero (https://login.xero.com/Signin/SignInWithGoogle?domain=yourdomain.com).

All you need is the URL that the service redirects to as soon as you click a link. Need help finding out exactly what that is? Contact us and we can do all the heavy lifting for you!

Generating quotes with Google Apps Script and Solve360

Norada's Solve360 CRM is a low cost but very fully-featured cloud-based CRM, and while it integrates deeply with Google Apps, it still needs some custom work every now and then to unlock its full potential. Luckily, we can offer it a helping hand by leveraging the Solve360 API and Google Apps Script.

Rick Klassen of Klassen Specialty Hydraulics contacted us at InterlockIT.com to see if we could streamline the "tedious" quoting system that they had been using: searching for a similar quote, editing it manually to reflect the new requirements, and then saving it to a new folder on a local server, all followed by opening a spreadsheet that doubled as a database and adding the details of the new quote. And forget about trying to create a new quote from a mobile device or when you were out of the office!

We found that with a bit of custom work, we could make Rick's life much easier, and that's exactly what we did. Here's how.

To start, we need to establish the conditions that allow Solve360 and Google Apps to talk to each other--we want to automate repetitive things, so an activity template is used in Solve360. We insert it, and kick off the first of two scripts by clicking "Create new quote":

Insert an activity template to get started.

Now we can use Google Forms to gather the information we need.

The first stage of our quote generator. This particular utility has a number of these pages, with various branches of logic.

Once the user submits the Google Form, the second script is executed. The second script processes the latest submission, reading it from the spreadsheet in which Google Form submissions are saved, and performs a number of actions on it. In a later blog post, we'll detail exactly how some of the scripts work.

Success!

The user receives the above email and in one click can view the completed quote, an excerpt of which is below. It's a live Google Document so the user can continue to make changes to the quote.

Finally, the Solve360 record for the contact is once more updated. This time we can see that the script has added two follow-ups with different dates, created a direct link back to the above Google Document so it can be reached quickly and easily, and inserted an Opportunity record that allows you to track the progress of the deal as it moves forwards.

Here are the final activities that the script adds to the Solve360 record.

As Rick told us, "We have a powerful and flexible solution that not only saves time in the quote creation process, but takes care of the data entry, management, and even reminds our sales people to follow up - all automatically." Creating quotes can now be done from anywhere with an internet connection, and everyone who needs access has it right away.

"These days my colleagues and I can create quotes in a snap (from desktop or mobile), and we each get an email whenever a new quote has been created so we can collaborate on it in real-time, then send it to the customer. This can all happen in a matter of minutes from start to finish."

All this is done in the background, completely transparently to the user, and takes the hard work out of creating quotes, leaving you to focus on the important things—like closing the deal.

The future of malware - Google Apps protects you

In the last few weeks, a relatively new "ransomware" package has been making its way through the world's computer systems, spreading via email. The email messages where the malware lives appear to come from legitimate sources (banks, accountants, and more) but are really just highly sophisticated phishing messages.

Of course, your best course of action if you aren't expecting a message to have an attachment is always to not open that attachment and instead call the sender directly to verify it. While Google has very, very good spam and phishing detection, it's not perfect, and the last line of defense is you.

The message you'll see once your files are encrypted.

The malware, called CryptoLocker, works by scanning your computer and any network shares for a huge variety of files, including Office documents, pictures, PDFs, and Outlook PST files, among others, and then encrypting them with a nigh-unbreakable 2048-bit RSA encryption key. Once the encryption process is complete, you'll be presented with the message above, demanding a $300 payout to unlock your files and warning you that attempting to remove the software will immediately destroy the private key stored on the remote server.

According to a number of posters on a month-old reddit thread detailing the malware, paying the $300 ransom does work and you will be provided with a key that will decrypt all your files.

The advantage of Google Apps

But it would be much easier to simply not have to worry about this kind of thing at all, wouldn't it? Thankfully, Google Apps protects you from this kind of attack by blocking the sending or receiving of any and all .exe files, even those contained in archived zip files. The best defense is, as always, staying vigilant, but it's nice to know that you don't have to worry about opening any suspicious .exe files, since Google stops them from ever getting to you.

Can your current email system do that? If it can't, it might be time to consider switching to one that allows you to focus on the important things and not worry about whether or not every message you receive contains a hidden malware payload.