Google Apps - 4th Quarter 2008
No. Our quarterly newsletter is not changing to semi-annual. We are still quarterly. I just need to make sure I put a reminder in Outlook. Or perhaps, as Mike describes in his article below, I should be using Google Calendar.
It looks like 2009 will be a tough year. Even so, some companies will take this opportunity to improve efficiency and will prosper. In the meantime, here’s an article from Mike with some free ideas to get you started in the right direction.
Happy New Year! Please let us know if we can help make 2009 a good year.
Neal
Free Web Applications From Google
At the risk of sounding like a Google fan club, we’re going to direct you towards some nice applications that Google is offering for free. Some of them we use. Some of them we have friends and family that use. All of them are free and very powerful. This isn’t an exhaustive list of what Google is providing. It’s just some of the best. If you haven’t heard of at least one of these then you probably haven’t used the Internet in the last 10 years. 
Mail - Gmail
Truly Permanent Email Addresses
I recently encouraged my mother-in-law to switch to Gmail from a major phone company’s in-house email service. She’d been having trouble with missing and delayed emails and was fed up. The main reason she didn’t want to switch was the thought having to suffer through the difficult process of informing her contacts of her new email address. We took several steps to transition her email:
The names in the example are changed, but you should get the idea.
- we registered “cool-personal-domain.com” for her and chose “debbie@cool–personal–domain.com” for her permanent email address.
- we created a Gmail account and forwarded debbie@cool–personal–domain.com to that Gmail account. So she’ll actually be checking her email at Gmail even though her contacts will send email to debbie@cool–personal–domain.com.
- we setup her Gmail account to promote that her FROM email address is debbie@cool-personal-domain.com and not her actual Gmail account. NOBODY needs to or should ever know her actual Gmail account (this is very important).
- we forwarded her old email address to debbie@cool–personal–domain.com using the web control panel at her old email provider
- she started telling people to use debbie@cool–personal–domain.com, but people using the old one could still reach her
Now this new address is permanent. If she decides she doesn’t like Gmail at some point in the future, and wants to use some other service, we can just forward debbie@cool–personal–domain.com to that new location, and her email address won’t change for anyone who wants to email her.
Google’s web-based email service completely changed the world of online email services when it debuted back in 2004. Other major providers had web-based email services, but nearly every one that was worth using cost money or had ridiculously low mailbox size limits. Google promised and delivered huge with free mail service for anyone. The size limit today is over 7GB.
What makes Gmail valuable to me? I can:
- access my Gmail account from anywhere in the world
- assign labels (like using folders, but you can have multiple labels per message) to messages for easy filtering
- instantly search all of my mail
- access my Gmail from my Blackberry phone (it works on other smart phones too)
If you don’t like web-based email, you can access your Gmail through Microsoft Outlook or almost any other desktop email program.
You can use Gmail for free for your business as long as your are setting up individual Gmail accounts for the members of your company. Google also offers Gmail as a paid service if you would like Google to manage every aspect of your email (by pointing the MX record for your domain to them).
Calendar - Google Calendar
About four months ago I started using Google Calendar for my business and personal calendar. Previously I had used my Blackberry pretty much exclusively, though I did synchronize it with Outlook. I love Google Calendar so much now that it was the inspiration for writing this ClearPoint.
I’ll start by saying that I don’t think Google Calendar would be a good choice if you’re already using an enterprise calendaring system like Exchange. But if you manage your own calendar, and you want a way to share calendars among your colleagues, family, and friends, then you should consider trying Google Calendar.
Google Calendar gives you web-based access to your calendar anywhere in the world. It’s lightning fast for a web application and has plenty of keyboard shortcuts for those of you (like me) who use them. It has a Quick Add field where you can type in things like ‘Dinner with Joe 7pm tomorrow’ and it will just do the right thing.
You can create multiple calendars for yourself and share each one with other people at varying levels (view free/busy only, view events, edit events).
You can synchronize with other calendars, including Outlook and the Blackberry calendar (automatically).
I use 14 different calendars and share various ones with different people in all different ways. I’ve been incredibly impressed with this very well-done application. If you aren’t already set up with a great calendaring system, give it a try.
Mapping - Google Maps
I’m going to guess that almost everyone has used or seen Google Maps at some point. Here are some things you may or may not know about it:
- when you get driving directions, you can drag any part of the blue route line to add a stop or change the route
- you can click on ‘Satellite’ to retrieve high-resolution overhead photos of almost any location.
- you can click on ‘Traffic’ to view real-time traffic conditions in many major metropolitan areas
- many major metropolitan areas have ‘Street View’ - this is actual photographs taken from the roadways in all directions. Your turn-by-turn directions can actually include photographs of the intersections in many cases.
- you can get walking and mass transit directions in some areas
- the search function can find almost any business that has ever been mentioned anywhere on the web with its street address
Be sure to check out Google Mobile Maps for your iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and some other phones. We use it on our Blackberrys and it is truly fantastic: www.google.com/mobile/default/maps.html
Photos - Picasa
Picasa lets you organize, edit, search, view, save, and send your digital images in a very convenient and user-friendly manner. Google purchased the Picasa software in 2004 and began making it available for free. Since then, the product has changed a bit, and Google has integrated in their Picasa Web Albums.
Picasa Web Albums offers 1 Gigabyte of free online storage for your photos where you can back up and share your favorite images. You can purchase more space at competitive prices. I don’t personally use Picasa or Picasa Web Albums, because neither was available or viable when I started working with my digital photographs. If I were starting today, I’d take a serious look at Picasa. I know people who are using it today for all of their digital photographs and are quite happy with it.
Summary
Even in difficult economic times, the fact that software is free doesn’t mean it is worth using. However, in the case of many of the Google Applications that are provided for free, there is a strong potential for real value. Do you want proof? I just added a reminder for me to remind Neal about ClearPoint next quarter.
Filed by nb on December 30th, 2008 under ClearPoint
