File synchronization and sharing platform Insync has been around for over a year now, and today, the eponymous startup has rolled out a totally revamped version of its “Dropbox for Google users”. Insync 2.0, so t speak, is more focused on Google Docs as ever, removed registration and sync limits, streamlined the user experience, and is now free to use.

The main target group here are GDocs users who want Dropbox-like functionality when it comes to handling files (the more Google accounts, the more useful Insync should become). In a nutshell, Insync allows you to automatically sync, update, manage, and share files stored on GDocs on your Mac or Windows desktop (in Finder or Explorer).

For example, nested or individual sharing of files is possible (Dropbox only supports sharing of folders), as is assigning read/write or read only permissions to others. All file formats, including MP3, exe, dmg, MS Office documents, etc. are supported.

Insync doesn’t require a sign-up anymore: just visit the site, sign in with your existing Google account, download and install the client, link the account with your PC or Mac, and you’ll find all files synced on your computer’s desktop. (According to the company, Insync’s now simpler web app is currently in the process of getting another “facelift”, too.)

Insync co-founder and CEO Terence Pua says a key bullet point is price: while his service now went free (existing users can ask for a refund or credit), Dropbox loses the price comparison with Google’s storage offering by 1:8. For example, US$100 a year gets you 50GB at Dropbox but a whopping 400GB at big G (overview). For its own platform, Insync removed syncing limits entirely.

Insnyc, which is based out of Singapore and Manila, just raised a US$800,000 angel round from Joi Ito (via Neoteny Labs), Reid Hoffman, Toivo Annus (co-founder at Skype), and Santosh Jayaram (ex-COO at Twitter).

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Workers of the world, get ready to meet your robot supervisors. A new service called Humanoid wants to turn you into a “robot-supervised army” that it will rent out for $5 an hour. It already has 20,000 workers lined up for today’s launch.

Humanoid comes out of a startup called Speakertext, which uses a mixture of automated techniques and crowdsourced labor to transcribe online videos (we use Speakertext for TCTV). Speakertext will continue as a product of Humanoid, which is shifting focus to helping companies with their software development. Google Ventures is putting in a few hundred thousand dollars in another seed round (the company raised $600,000 in February from Mitch Kapor and others).

The founders tried to build Speakertext on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but for every $1 it was spending on the crowdsourced marketplace, it was spending $2 to fix the errors. It tried everything, including hiring interns, temps, TaskRabitters and ODeskers. Finally, they wrote their own workforce management technology to oversee its army of transcribers, and that became the foundation of Humanoid.

Humanoid starts with getting workers to review each other’s work and then augmenting that with bots that assign each worker a reputation. It also looks at statistics such as accuracy of completed tasks and indicators of developer fatigue. The bots even throw in errors to test workers. If someone is not up to snuff, they route the task to someone else.

Some of these workers come from Mechanical turk, some come from other crowdsourced marketplaces. What Humanoid does is it puts an automated workforce management layer on top of these tasks and allows software developers to add human intelligence into their apps (supervised, of course).

Give it a try, and welcome our software robot overlords.

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Google+ SVP Vic Gundotra and Google Co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about their new social network and what exactly they’re up to these days.

Among other things, Gundotra touched on the success Google+ has seen since its launch, most notably that users have uploaded 3.4 billion photos over the last 90 days — a statistic which “blew his mind”. Because of this early success, much of which was unexpected, Gundotra said, Google has been focusing on scaling the social network to make sure that it works for all of its users.

As a result, Google+ has so far lacked integration with Google Apps, a feature many users have been clamoring to see. According to the Google SVP, the company “thought it would have more time” before it hit a scale and popularity in which these kinds of additions would become necessary.

With 40 million users, Google+ is already there. Gundotra said that Google Apps support on Google+ would be arriving “imminently”, which he later clarified by saying “within a few days”.

At the same time, developers have also been waiting for Google+ to make its APIs available for use, and many have wondered why the company hasn’t released them as of yet. The SVP said that the Google+ team has been taking a “cautious approach” to APIs and, though it might annoy some, they would not be rushing their APIs to the public’s hands.

“When we release an API we want developers to have high confidence that they can depend on Google”, he said.

Also of note: A la Twitter, Google+ will (in the next few months) be rolling out support for pseudonyms and other forms of identity, Gundotra said today. Google+ initially only allowed users to sign up using their real names, but it will be adding features in the near future that support other forms of identity, specifically pseudonyms and nicknames.

While Google+ had early on resisted the appeal for support for alternative identities, it seems to have changed course, understanding that some people do, in fact, have legitimate reasons to choose not to use their real name. In my case, it’s to avoid revealing my superpower. I’m sure many others feel the same way.

For more on Gundotra and Brin’s Q&A with Jon Batelle, check out Erick’s coverage here.

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Backupify, the startup that provides online data backup, archiving and export, is today releasing a new version of its Backupify Snapshot tool with additional features for Google Apps admins. The tool, for those unfamiliar, allows Google Apps administrators to extract and download the complete Google Apps account for a departing company employ and save the data locally.

Previously, Snapshot was in public beta – it’s now being commercially released to all.

Traditionally, when an employee left an organization, the I.T. department would backup their files and folders, disable their Exchange mailbox and export their mailbox .PST file. Now, as companies of all sizes are transitioning to the cloud, termination procedures on the I.T. side have also changed. Unfortunately, because there’s not a simple process for exporting and archiving a user’s Google Apps data, companies will often just keep the account open but unused. That, however, can lead to an additional expense, as Google charges by seat.

With Backupify Snapshot, the idea is to recreate the same sort of account termination procedures companies are used to, but for cloud-based services. The tool compresses a user’s Google Apps account data (Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contacts and Sites) into a Zip file that can then be downloaded to a local machine or server. The Google Apps account can then be safely deleted.

The killer feature in today’s release is the added support for multi-user and batch downloading – that will be a huge timesaver for I.T. during those times when there’s more than one employee account to export. (Layoffs, anyone?)

Snapshot also improved support for large organizations via better search, introduced a referral functionality that will dole out free downloads for those who refer their friends and added Google Checkout as a payment option. (Snapshot users get only 5 free downloads, then have to pay $10 per download).

Backupify Snapshot is available both as a standalone service and as a part of Backupify’s Google Apps Backup service. It has been used by over 500 organizations since its release last month.

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Here’s a new one on turning against your former wet-nurse. Huddle was once a Microsoft BizSpark One company. But it’s business collaboration platform now competes with Microsoft’s Sharepoint. Indeed, there are rumours that UK-based Huddle (which now has a large SF office) was once yanked off stage at Mix ‘O6 at the last minute because someone realised the potential controversy. No stranger to controversy, Huddle also recently managed to convince Google to change it’s Google+ feature called Huddle. Now Huddle is back to harass its alma mater.

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Austin, Texas-based startup Spanning launched a new version of its Google Apps backup service today, which now includes business-grade backup for Gmail. Previously, the company provided backup for other Google Apps products, including Google Calendar, Docs, and Contacts, but, says, Spanning Cloud Apps founder and CEO Charlie Wood, “Gmail backup has been, by far, the most requested capability from our existing customer base.”

But Google Apps is already in the cloud – why do you need to back it up?

According to the company, even a company of Google’s size can have issues leading to data deletions. And not all data deletions are Google’s fault – sometimes, the end users themselves are to blame. Then what do you do? User-deleted data isn’t Google’s problem, so it can’t (and won’t) help you recover.

Businesses, particularly the small-to-medium sized companies which currently comprise the majority of Spanning’s target market, still need to be assured that their mission-critical data is securely backed up, whether it’s in the cloud or not.

What’s interesting about Spanning’s backup product is that it doesn’t require businesses to maintain their own servers, nor does it utilize its own servers for data storage. Given that the company is still a startup, and could be prone to its own issues and failures, that latter item is a much-needed assurance.

Instead, Spanning stores data on Amazon’s Web Services, using a combination of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3 and Elastic Block Store (EBS), which provide 99.999999999% durability.

Spanning backs up data incrementally, and doesn’t overwrite the old backups with new ones. Restorations are made possible from a simple-to-use interface. And it respects user permissions so that I.T. can’t view the file’s contents, they can only restore files when deleted.

In addition, the Spanning Backup site, application, and Google Apps Marketplace listings are certified for privacy and security by TRUSTe, the leading online privacy solutions provider. It’s  also certified under the US-EU and US-Swiss SafeHarbor Frameworks.

Wary consumers can also use Spanning to backup their own Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Contacts, too, if so inclined. It’s only $3/month for an individual account vs. $2.50/per user/per month for businesses. But consumers are not Spanning’s main focus. It’s more interested in providing businesses (SMB up to Enterprise) with a cloud backup solution.

Spanning had previously raised $2 million in funding from the Foundry Group back in April. It competes with a very similar service from Backupify, but slightly undercuts them on pricing – $2.50/per user/per month vs. Backupify’s $3/per user/per month. It also hopes to capitalize on Backupify’s growing pains, we imagine.

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From the Google blog post mysteriously titled “Using data to protect people from malware”:

“Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results.”

Google’s Matt Cutts offers more details about the virus on his Twitter account, apparently it only affects Windows computers and hijacks Google results. “That’s how we learned about it,” Cutts says about the “results hacking” thing, without offering many more details. Google is recommending you follow the advice in its Help Center if you do receive the notification.

This is the first time major search engine turns its results pages into what is ostensibly a malware alarm. Of course this is in the company’s best interests; if proxies are intercepting communications they could also potentially access Google accounts, thus creating more headaches for Google.

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In just about a half hour, Google will announce their Q2 2011 results. After that, at 1:30 PM PT, they’ll do their usual Q&A. Thankfully this time, they’re going back to YouTube to stream the thing, instead of relying on Microsoft’s awful technology for such things. You’ll be able to follow along here, but we’ll also be listening and taking notes.

For now, enjoy the entire video of the 2011 stockholder’s meeting that Google held in early June. The meeting features CEO Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin, Chairman Eric Schmidt, and others talking about all things Google for 90 minutes. This video was also made available on the YouTube Google investors site, but it doesn’t look like too many people have watched it yet.

Enjoy.

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The latest builds of Chrome (version 14 in the Canary channel) feature a new, experimental profile switching and creation icon. This ability to tie a Google account to Chrome has been around for a little while, and it’s a vital part of Chrome OS, but given the new graphical layout of the feature, it’s clear that Google intends to make this much more useful and compelling.

In the upper right hand side of Chrome’s outer chrome (heh), you’ll see a beaker icon that Google likes to use for experimental features. Clicking on this allows you to see your Chrome Profile, customize it, switch to another one, or delete it. The customization is still rudimentary — you can set your sync options (which is again, old) or you can create a new profile. When you go to create a new profile, you’re taken to a page that allows you to set a profile name and pick a profile icon — it’s similar to Chrome OS. The text on the creator reads:

“A Chrome profile contains a set of bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords, and themes. You can create multiple profiles if you need to manage separate settings. For example, you can use one profile, and your friend can use another.”

That all sounds simple and great. But again, don’t overlook the underlying power here. Google has granted Chrome the ability to offer all Google users a fully logged-in experience as they browse the web. Right now, they’re doing the basics, but down the line, they could easily flip the switch on more powerful features. Perhaps Chrome will gain full Google+ integration (a toolbar across Google sites? Please. How about one across the entire web!)? Or how about a Google single sign-on? Or how about a deeply integrated ad network?

Again, Google will deny all of these intentions because I’m sort of making them sound nefarious. But the truth is that they’re just smart moves (though anti-trust regulators will undoubtedly disagree if Chrome becomes large enough). And Google would be foolish not to pursue them.

Facebook is Google’s biggest challenge on the web, and Chrome gives them something that Facebook does not have: a browser. Now, Facebook is undoubtedly working on one (I have no real info here beyond common sense — it would be insane if they weren’t working on one) and they’ve already been doing some partnerships in the space. With Connect, Facebook has been all about offering up a logged-in Facebook experience across the web. But Connect is tricky. Site owners need to implement it. What if a user could do simply in their own browser?

That’s Google’s golden opportunity with Chrome. And the baby steps are being taken.

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Cloud Sherpas not only helps companies migrate and transition over to Google Apps but also provides additional tools, called Sherpa Tools, to make the productivity suite more useful. For example, the Directory Manager provides administrators with an interface for creating, retrieving, updating and deleting in-depth profile information for end users, shared contacts and groups. With Cloud Sherpa, users can also import and export contact information in bulk and add instant messaging features.

SherpaTools for Google Apps has been installed by over 16,000 domains representing three million Google Apps users worldwide, making it one of the most installed applications in the Google Apps Marketplace.

The company has also upgraded SherpaTools with new features including new admin delegation, end-user provisioning, and privacy tools and will unveil these at Google’s developer conference Google IO, this week. One of the major new features added to SherpaTools is the concept of constituencies. Now help desk workers with partial admin responsibilities can now be restricted to helping users within their constituent bases only. For example, an admin who is responsible for supporting an organization’s Engineering department may not have access to users in the Finance department.

Additionally, organizations that buy their Google Apps licenses from Cloud Sherpas directly now have the ability to instantly purchase additional end-user licences via SherpaTools. And SherpaTools now supports the free version of Google Apps.

Sherpa Tools has raised $3 million to date.

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