Google Launches Google Apps Labs and Welcomes Third Party Developers

Lately, Google has rolled out new features for its experimental Google Labs functionality in Gmail at a rapid pace. Today, Google announced a similar product that will bring experimental features to enterprise and small business customers: Labs for Google Apps. These apps are built on top of the Google App Engine, which launched in April, and include Google Moderator, Google Code Reviews, and Google Short Links.

If you are using Google Apps for your Domain, you can head over to the Google Solutions Marketplace and start adding these features to your account now, though you will have to change some of your DNS settings before they can become functional.

Google Code Reviews

Google Code Reviews is, as the name implies, aimed at developers. It allows developers to share code for review and propose changes.

Google Moderator

Google Moderator is an application that Google first released for the App Engine just about a month ago. Moderator is basically a forum for group discussions and Q&A sessions, with the ability to vote questions and answers up and down.

Google Short Links

Short Links is a URL shortener like TinyURL or snurl, but works with your own domain name. This allows you to turn complicated and long URLs into short, more memorable ones.
More to Come

According to Google, these are just the first three in a long list of products that will make their debut in Labs for Google Apps. Google also intends to open this platform up to all App Engine developers, but it hasn’t provided a timetable for this yet.

(by Frederic Lardinois, source)