Get administrative rights on your own SQLExpress instance

When installing Microsoft SQL Server Express edition, only the user that is installing the database server software is added to the sysadmin role.  Other administrators of the host or domain don't have sysadmin rights on the server.

Being an (other) administrator, you can obtain the sysadmin role by running a cmd-script as indicated on this post.  After successful execution of this script, the current administrator user is added to the sysadmin role.  So you can log in using e.g. the SQL Server Management Database to create a new database.

From Open Research to Open Flow

Posted by Jeff Walz, University Relations Team

Did you know Open Flow has its roots in academia? Back in May 2006 Vint Cerf was visiting Stanford to deliver an invited lecture. Following the talk he met with Stanford Professor Nick McKeown and learned about the Clean Slate Internet project. Nick was looking for support and Google’s involvement in what he described as a lab for “radical new ideas in networking”. Vint felt the program looked “intellectually healthy but might be a very long term matter to bear fruit”. Vint explained that for us to get involved we would want to have Google engineers excited and engaged.

Professor McKeown met with Google networking and infrastructure experts to present his ideas. Everybody knew that Software-Defined Networking (SDN) had great promise but the Open Flow effort seemed a bit ambitious for a professor and a couple of grad students. Googlers Dave Presotto and Stephen Stuart agreed to take a chance on it and sponsor a small research grant to fund another student and to get Google engaged. As Google and the industry got more involved, Open Flow began to gain traction. In June 2008 Google provided another grant to support more students and in late 2009 Google joined the initiatives consortium with other industry members.

Google engineers Stephen Stuart and Jim Wanderer worked closely with Stanford and lead Google’s Open Flow development and deployment. In 2011 the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) was formed to accelerate Software-Defined Networking standards and foster a robust market and ecosystem. Google’s own Urs Hölzle became ONF’s first President and Chairman of the Board.

Google involvement and support of this academic effort was a key factor to the speedy development and deployment of Open Flow and SDN - technology that made it from a university research project to running Google’s WAN in record time.

Google+ page stories: CoffeeCakeKC

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh in a series of posts about small businesses on Google+ and their tips and tricks for managing a great page. Visit our YouTube channel to see all the videos in this series and join the discussion on the Google+ Your Business page.

Meet CoffeeCakeKC, one part decadent food truck (serving cupcakes, muffins, biscotti, and coffee cake) and one part delicious coffee. Their Big Orange Truck makes daily stops through downtown Kansas City. Brian Jurgens, or “Stubbie,” is an extreme hobbyist who started CoffeeCakeKC out of his love for the true flavor of coffee. Watch as he and his wife Melanie use Google+ to bring their followers along for the ride:

Looking to grow your followers on Google? Here are a few steps to get you started:

• Like CoffeeCakeKC, add the Google+ badge to your site and connect it to your Google+ page. This badge lets people +1, see personal annotations, and follow your page directly from your site. Or, just install the Google+ icon. Whenever someone who visits your site clicks the icon, they will be taken to your Google+ page where they can follow your page and see your posts from then on.

Use Google+ badges on your website to direct customers to your Google+ page for the latest news.

• Use Google+ badges on your website to direct customers to your Google+ page for the latest news.
• People often turn to friends and family for help making decisions. The +1 button combines the power of these personal recommendations with the reach of Google, making it easy to start conversations and offer timely recommendations to your social circles across the web.
• Connect your +1’s. Help people see their friends’ recommendations, wherever they find you on the web by connecting +1's for your website with +1's on your Google+ page and ads. Once you’ve created your page, you need to put a snippet of code on your site, and advertisers just need to enable Social Extensions in AdWords.

Connect the +1s for your website to your Google+ page and ads. This will help spread recommendations by your followers to their friends.

• Connect the +1s for your website to your Google+ page and ads. This will help spread recommendations by your followers to their friends.
• Learn more. Find additional tips and tricks for promoting your page at the Google+ Your Business site.

How are you growing your page’s community? Join the discussion on the Google+ Your Business page and tag your posts #mybusinessstory.

Posted by Evelyn Lee, Google+ Pages Associate Product Marketing Manager

Bringing Business Photos to more users and business owners

Since April 2010, we’ve been testing and developing the Business Photos program, which gives users a virtual peek inside businesses through interactive 360-degree imagery. After hearing your positive feedback about how showing off panoramic views of your business interiors helps you attract potential customers, we’re excited to announce further expansion of this program. Starting today, in addition to the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France, this service is now available in Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Through the Business Photos program, if you’re a business owner in any of these locations around the world, getting started is easy. Just hire a Trusted Photographer in your area to take pictures of your establishment at a time convenient for you. Panoramas are created using the photos, and customers can easily find the resulting panoramic images on Google.com, on Google Maps, and on your Google Places listing. This self-service model, introduced several months ago, not only supports talented photographers in your local community, but also gives people who are thinking about visiting your location a sense of what they can expect when they walk through your doors. And if a local photographer isn’t yet available in your neighborhood, let us know so we can figure out where else to expand the program.

And whether you’re a professional photographer or an enthusiastic amateur, we’d love to have you on board! We are actively recruiting more Trusted Photographers to bring imagery of more local businesses online for millions across the globe to see. Visit our website for photographers to learn more and sign up.

View Larger Map

Click and drag to view the inside of Casa Artelexia in San Diego, California

And if you’re simply curious and want to explore businesses — from top-rated restaurants to exotic pet stores — check out this gallery of interior business photos on the Street View website.

Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps

Help Desk Hangouts: Getting to know Chromebooks

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.


In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we introduced you to Chromebooks — a fast, secure, netbook (did we mention fast?). During the hour-long Hangout, Google product specialists Adam Naor and Will Paulus walk us through the basics, and Chromebook user Eric Hunter shares his firsthand experience using it at his business. Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google Business YouTube channel. And, if you’re interested in learning more about Chromebooks, fill out this form to stay up to date on all the latest news and product announcements.




Check out the video description on the YouTube page for a minute-by-minute breakdown.


Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:


I'm a big Word/Office suite user. How do I make the switch to a Chromebook? Can a Chromebook work with these files? 
They can be viewed in Google Docs, or even converted to the Docs native format. Or, if you’d like to run Office on a Chromebook, you can do so through our Citrix Receiver App (and a Citrix server), or try on of the Chrome webstore Apps like InstallFree Nexus.


What's does Google’s support for Chromebooks look like? 
If you are a business user, you have access to 24/7 email and phone support. If you’re a consumer user, you can contact a Chromebook ninja M - F between 5:30am - 7pm PST. Here’s some additional information.


What happens with a Chromebook when internet access is limited, slow, or spotty?
The moments when you’re offline are increasingly rare. But with Chromebooks, we wanted to ensure that you're constantly connected with WiFi or 3G. Chrome also supports HTML5 offline functionality that allows applications or websites that support these features to run offline. Hundreds of apps in the Chrome Web Store today work offline like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, NY Times, Kindle, NPR, Angry Birds and more.


Where can I get a Chromebook?
If you represent a Business, School, or Non-profit organization, please fill out the form here, and a member of our team will get in contact shortly. If you are a consumer, you can obtain one here.


How does a Chromebook work with Google Drive?
Google Drive is going to be a core part of the Chromebook experience. We're building it to work seamlessly with your file manager and it will be coming very soon.


Would you recommend ChromeBooks as a software development platform?
Definitely as they have a terminal shell built in.


Be sure to join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday May 2, when we discuss AdWords. We’ll be collecting your AdWords questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.


Posted by Toby Stein, Google+ community manager

Joining forces to support computer science majors

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual SIGCSE (Special Interest Group, Computer Science Education) conference in Raleigh, NC. Google has been a platinum sponsor of SIGCSE for many years now, and the conference provides an opportunity for thousands of CS educators to come together, share ideas and work on significant challenges that have emerged over the last five years.

Five years ago, the Advanced Placement Computer Science course and exam almost died. Due to lack of student interest, the B part of the AP CS was discontinued and there was a risk that the A part would also be discontinued. At that time, the number of CS majors at the undergraduate level also hit an all time low. Specifically, the number of students taking the AP CS exam fell 15 % between 2001 and 2007, and the number of college freshmen intending to major in CS plummeted more than 70% during the same period. This was a paradox for CS educators. They knew (and know) that advancing U.S. students' understanding of the principles and practices of computing is critical to developing a globally competitive workforce for the 21st century.

Rather than be defeated, a commission of ten secondary and higher education faculty came together and used this as an opportunity to reinvigorate interest in CS. They re-invented the AP CS into a course that not only introduces students to programming, but also gives them an understanding of the fundamental concepts of computing, its breadth of application and its potential for transforming the world.

The NSF generously funded the development and piloting of this new CS Principles course two years ago. This academic year, the NSF has funded several high school pilots as well. The pilots have been so successful that the College Board has now committed to developing a new state-of-the-art exam for the course. This is a critical accomplishment. The AP CS is the only standardized computing course we have in high school. The high school curriculum is packed—it’s nearly impossible to get any new course from any domain into the curriculum, and the AP CS is our stake in the ground.

Concurrent with the AP CS development, the ACM has pushed forward on two fronts that are also making significant impact. The CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) now has 11,000 members with 2300 College Board-certified to teach the AP CS Part A (which is still being offered). Membership and interest is rising, and this community plays a key role in professional development, CS standards definition (another critical stake in the ground) and scaling of the new AP CS.

In addition, we have the Computing in the Core Coalition, which is a non-partisan advocacy group of associations, corporations, scientific societies and other nonprofits that is working to elevate CS to a core academic subject in K-12 education. The Coalition does this through advocacy with government agencies and Congress, and by raising general awareness through CSEdWeek.

The good news is we are starting to see positive indicators of change. CS majors are rebounding at the undergraduate level.

The latest Employment Projections for 2010 to 2020 (Bureau of Labor Statistics) show a 6.9% increase in employment from 2006-2010 in computer and mathematical occupations, and a projected 22.0% increase from 2010-2020. This is in comparison to a 14.3% increase, on average, for all other growing occupations.

Students, parents, teachers, administrators and government officials are starting to hear the message:

• There is an exponentially growing demand in computing job opportunities
• Computing is inherently creative, innovative and team-based
• Technology and computing are transforming the world

Of course, we still do not have nearly enough supply coming out of colleges and universities to meet the demand, but the situation has improved in the last two years.

We believe that computing and CS are critical to our future, and we support CS education through many programs including CS4HS, App Inventor (just re-launched from MIT), our Exploring Computational Thinking curriculum, and other outreach programs and partnerships. Computing is at the foundation of all things technology, and computer science is at the foundation of computing.

Google Apps keeps music companies humming

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Enterprise blog.)

Music is a huge part of our culture at Google, and I’m really excited that the music festival season is just getting started. If you were at Coachella (which we livestreamed on YouTube this year) or have plans to go to go to another festival, you're probably just as excited.

Musicians, record labels, and music companies are using technology to do some amazing things, like producing on-stage holograms or experimenting with new online distribution models. It’s common for artists to launch their careers on YouTube, broadcast a performance on Google+ Hangouts, or connect with their fans using social media. But beyond the tech-coolness we hear a lot about, the music community is also taking advantage of technology behind the scenes - or rather, in the cloud - to develop their businesses.

I’m proud to say that some of today’s musical entrepreneurs are using Google Apps for Business. Whether it’s having the freedom to run a new indie record label, the flexibility to manage up-and-coming music artists on tour, or the ability to collaborate across the globe, Google Apps helps these teams focus on what they love the most - the music. We want to share three stories about awesome music companies using Google Apps to grow and evolve:

Music Clout is a startup formed by a group of guys with a die-hard passion for music. The idea is simple: create an online community that connects independent artists with music industry contacts and opportunities. They launched their company with Google Apps to make it easier to work together internally and with their team of contractors. Since their web development team works from Turkey, the combination of chat in Gmail and Hangouts allows them to instantly discuss website programming and other technicalities, while saving the team from high phone bills.


GHouse, a Boston-based record label, works with musicians from various genres, including electronic, reggae, rock, and country. Beginning as a side project by a college music student, it’s evolved into a full-time business. Initially, the team relied on a remote server and legacy software that were always stalling or crashing on them. They switched to Google Apps so that they could easily work together anytime, anywhere online, and on any device with Internet connectivity. With Google Docs, the team can easily share music tour dates and track all of their profits from the shows.

Founded in 2007, Fly South Music Group is an artist management firm out of Orlando, FL with satellite offices in Nashville and Los Angeles. The company set up Google Apps because it wanted a common platform for company email, calendars and documents that could be shared between all their clients, families, labels, tour managers and promotion coordinators. Today, it’s become essential to their workflow from scheduling to budget management with access to information from anywhere. This accessibility provides a whole new layer of transparency that keeps everyone in sync, especially while traveling around the world.

Google Apps has given these companies the built-in collaboration they need to communicate better, work smarter, and stay focused on bringing new talent and fresh ideas to the music industry.

Posted by Barbara Yang, Google Apps Team