Member Avatar for blud

Recently I've been selected to participate on quite a few of the google 'beta' projects, such as analytics, Company based e-mail, and their google page maker.

First off, let me just say that all of the google projects are wonderful. I've been playing with the google analystics recently and the improvements over it's predecesor (urchin) are just outstanding. (Note: I never got to try Urchin 6 'On-Demand', so I may be overstating this comment).

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the google page maker, but once again, google has overshot my expectations. Personally after using this product though it's really simple web interface, I think many people would never use anything else. I showed this feature to my wife, and even she could use it without any issues. She is not a computer guru, but she does have more than basic knowledge of applications such as microsoft office etc. After showing this to a few of my friends, I have come to the conclusion that even someone with very basic computer knowledge can put a decent looking web page together using this tool.

Last but not least, my IT Consulting company recently got selected to beta for the 'google hosted webmail'. Imagine you logging into gmail, except everything that currently says google, is replaced with your company logo, or your domain name. It has all the same wonderful features of gmail (large storage space, spam filtering, google chat login), but with your domain name. The most interesting feature I found about this project, is that it allowed me to login to google chat using my own domain name! The only downside, is I'm not able to transfer all my messages from my gmail account to my new google hosted mail account, but other than that this project is amazing.

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Practical addendum to the notes from and the question from : the following focuses on durable, actionable points that complement first‑hand beta impressions — ways people commonly gain early access, practical migration approaches for hosted mail, and simple best practices for lightweight site builders.

Common ways to surface for beta invites include keeping a visible public profile (blog, forum, open projects), subscribing to product announcement lists and product forums, participating in discussion or bug‑reporting communities, and documenting real use cases (screenshots, short demos). Companies that sign up for hosted services or partner programs also often receive early access. Clear, specific applications when requesting access tend to get faster responses than generic requests.

Typical, reliable mail‑migration workflow is client‑side copy using a desktop mail client: enable IMAP (or POP if IMAP is unavailable) on the source account, add both source and destination accounts to the client, then copy messages/folders in small batches so uploads do not hit server limits. Expect Gmail labels to become folders when moved; plan folder/label mapping ahead and test with a small subset first. For ongoing mail, enable forwarding on the old account and set the new account to send using the old address as an alias. For very large archives, export to an MBOX or similar archive and import via the client. Common troubleshooting: duplicate downloads from POP, upload timeouts (work in smaller batches and check client sync settings), and attachment size limits — split large threads if needed.

For simple site builders, keep navigation shallow, use descriptive titles and headings for SEO, optimize and resize images before upload, and retain a local copy of HTML/assets so content is portable if the hosted tool changes. Also check the host’s export/backups and data‑portability terms before relying on a beta service for business content.

These notes aim to extend ’s hands‑on observations and answer ’s curiosity with practical steps and cautions; product features and migration tooling change over time, so verify current vendor documentation for the latest utilities.

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Member Avatar for kub365

Google makes some nice tools. How'd you get involved in the beta program?

Member Avatar for blud

I was just really lucky, I was part of a blogging site that google took over, and sent out gmail invites (I was first to get one of those), and since then, they have been sending me e-mails regarding being involved in many of their beta's.

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