Google Apps

Google goes over the top again - building it's empire.

Google Apps was released last year in August of 2006. I've started using it for the email client for a small business in Austin that needed an all in one solution for email and communication. Anytime you start a small business, budget plays a huge role in the success of the business. Anytime you can save money, it's vital to the business. That's what Google Apps provides...

Google Apps is a great resource for small companies that don't have their own IT resources at their disposal. It brings together communication services to unite your organization. The best part, it's easy to set up, nothing to install, no hardware needed and no maintenance required on your end -- also, did I tell you, it's free!

Here are just a few of the cool communication tools it offers:

1. Gmail - Offers 10 GB of storage for each account
2. Google Talk - You can send IM anytime, anywhere - file sharing and voicemail is included.
3. Google Calendar - You can organize your schedules, share events, meetings and calendars with others. Even publish events to the web for your users to view.

Here are some publishing tools it offers:

1. Google Docs - Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations - collaborate with other users in real time.
2. Start Page - A central place for users to view their inboxes and calendars, important content and search the web.
3. Google Page Creator - Create and publish web pages for your domain easily - you don't even need to know html.

Google Apps offers gmail to organizations with your own personalized email address - ie: irock@ialwaysrock.com. It has powerful virus, phishing, and spam filtering, POP capabilities, free forwarding and mobile access (easily install Gmail mobile app to your BlackBerry for access anytime) to provide you a complete mail solution.

Google Apps offers 99.9% guarantee uptime for all premier edition users. Bonus!

Also it's supported by all of the most widely used browsers, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape and others.

Expect it to evolve as all of Google's applications do...

Oh, I just downloaded Google SketchUp 6.0. Google SketchUp combines a compact yet robust tool-set with an intelligent guidance system that streamlines the 3D drawing process. I'm going to play with it a bit and blog my review of it on my next posting. I love 3D modeling and think this is going to be another one of my new passions. Stay tuned.