Using Google Apps (Docs, Drive, Calendar, etc.) to organize your department

[John Casper Jr.]

Hello all -

Looking to crowdsource ideas/best practices for using all of Google's various functions to run your sports department.

I know enough about these apps to get by, but I'm guessing there are more tech savvy people out there who have them under control.

Anyone who's used them, please share your success stories.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

We use them throughout the newsroom. We've barely scratched the surface on using the calendar, but we're devoted to Drive. I've had full-timers and stringers file stories using Drive. And it allows us to easily share documents multiple people work on (like stats and standings for local schools).

 

[KJIM]

Do you worry about security?

I was talking to the tech guys I work with (a federal agency) and was told that Google is one of the worst as far as your privacy goes. I can't remember the site the one guy recommended that compared the cloud storage places, but he said Google was bad and Dropbox was a bit safer.

I found this fairly recent article on Google Drive's end-user agreement:
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+drive+privacy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Google's Drive FAQs say that the company will not use any data you mark as private for marketing or promotional purposes, but its terms of service are much more freewheeling: Google can "use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works … communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute [user] content."

and

For example, if you were to write a novel and host it on Drive prior to publication, Google's terms of service theoretically permit the company to lift the novel's characters and use them in a marketing campaign. Such an action may not hold up in court, but it's in there.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

We talked about that issue KJIM. We don't use it for anything sensitive for that reason. Stuff like that remains on our in-house servers.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

We switched from GroupWise to Google. As an employee, the privacy thing is a big concern to me. One day when, my company email was open, I opened YouTube. Up came a bar near the top of the screen saying, "This account is managed by cbc.ca." It's a personal laptop, but my company's "cloud" took over the browser.

The next thing I noticed...google searches on my computer were showing up on my phone. That never happened before. So use it, but recognize your privacy is zero.

 

[Mauve_Avenger]

We used a Drive template system for filing stories a total of about two months this year. It was nice for sharing stories throughout the company's papers, but the Google system was so glitchy it didn't work well. Eventually IT had us stop.

 

[93Devil]

Google docs are amazing, but as Elliot said, the privacy thing, or everytjing seems to be on record, is a little concerning.

I really do not like to access my work gmail from my home computer for this reason.

Two things you can do to keep your ****, your **** and their, **** their ****.

1. Do your browsing in Mozilla Firefox. Even if you use google, it seems the two do not talk to each other.
2. There is an "incognito" tab on Google now, that does not record searches - or so they say.

But for groups and teams doing things, Google Docs are amazing.

 

[JayFarrar]

I use the **** out of Google calendar but hardly touch Google docs.

My paper's front end system is cloud-based, so if I need to put copy in remotely, I just use it.

 

[Editude]

Our email is now handled through Google, and a few of use Google's calendars. I use Drive to communicate documents with applicants. Security does remain an issue, and I use multiple browsers and don't access work email from any public computer.