Google Apps and Small Businesses

What are you waiting for?

Using Google Apps with Salesforce.com...

This is cool, but I'm no longer a fan of Salesforce.com...

Maintaining “Inbox Zero” with Google Apps | Web Worker Daily

This is the article I wish I had written about how Google Apps, Remember the Milk and Firefox work together to make you more productive in email... "If I have more than 30 unread messages at any one time, I break into a cold sweat. So as a result, until recently I couldn’t imagine maintaining my maniacal level of control over my inboxes without a desktop email client’s notifications, rules & plug-ins." Click the title to read more...

Google Apps: Too cheap to ignore? | The Open Road

"I've had a few conversations with IT executives from Fortune 500 companies in the past several weeks, and I've been surprised by how often a new enterprise-software company kept getting mentioned. The company?

Google.

Google has the problem of putting finish on a lot of its products, leaving things in eternal beta, but the price point for Google Apps is forcing even the biggest of companies to seriously consider Google instead of a Microsoft Office 2007 upgrade. (Google Apps: It's not just small customers anymore.)

We may be getting to the point where Google's 'cloud' allows them to provision users so much cheaper than any given enterprise can that it will become the provider of choice."

A simple way to simplify email | Unclutterer

Wow! This guy's reading my mind...

"Like many other web professionals, I have migrated from desktop email to Gmail, the Google email service. Gmail has many great qualities, like integrated instant messaging, large storage allotment, and integration with Google Calendar and Google Documents. But for reasons that are totally unclear to me, Google has chosen not to provide an integrated task list solution (or ‘to-do’ lists), either in Google Calendar or Gmail."

A well done explanation of task management using Gmail. Click the title to read more...

Linux: 9000 PCs in Swiss schools will switch to Ubuntu only | Duvet-Dayz

"Beginning from next term, all computers at schools in the Swiss canton of Geneva will be switched to Ubuntu Linux only.

Geneva newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports today that from September 2008 all computers at schools that currently are dual-boot MS Windows and Linux will have MS Windows removed and become FOSS (Free Open Source Software) only." This is an approach that should be pursued in Wisconsin schools. The combination of Ubuntu, Google Apps and FOSS is unbeatable when it comes to reducing Information Technology costs...

Google lets users access Web-based documents offline | SiliconValley.com

"Google, bolstering competition with Microsoft, is letting users of its Internet-based word-processing program access their documents offline. A desktop version of Google Docs, now available to a few users, will be rolled out more broadly over the next few weeks, the Mountain View company said Tuesday in a blog posting. While offline access is offered only in English for now, the company is working on other languages. Google is upgrading its Web-based programs in an effort to take customers from Microsoft, which dominates the personal-computer software market. With offline access, Google Docs customers can use the Internet-based program and automatically save their work to a PC, so it's available on airplanes and other places where they can't connect to the Web." Click the title to read the article online...

Google Docs: Working offline

Google Brings Offline Access to Docs and Apps | PC World

"Google is rolling out a much-awaited feature for its hosted applications: the ability for people to use them even when they aren't connected to the Internet.

The first application to get this offline access will be the word processor, said Ken Norton, Google Docs product manager. 'The design goal is to create a seamless experience, with or without an Internet connection,' he said.

Over the next three weeks or so, Google will turn on the feature for all word processor users, giving them the ability to view and edit documents while offline. During the same time period, Google Docs' spreadsheet will gain offline ability for viewing, but not editing, documents." Click the title to read more...

Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine | Harvard Business Review

This is a must read article for fans of Google...

"Every piece of the business plays a part, every part is indispensable, every failure breeds success, and every success demands improvement."

Click the title to read more...

Google Apps For Education

"Google Apps is free for schools. It allows students and teachers to create documents
(Word, Excel, PowerPoint), share calendars, chat and more for free on-line. It is an excellent tool to provide elearning.

'Frantic troubleshooting by an overworked staff versus someone else fixing problems smoothly. A sliver of server space per person versus a five-gigabyte chunk. Half a million dollars versus free. That's what colleges are faced with as they decide whether to continue running their own e-mail services or outsource them to a professional service like Google Apps Education Edition' Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/11/2008" Click the title to read more...

Separate your email from your to-do's | Geek To Live

"Your boss needs the updated PowerPoint presentation file by Tuesday. Your spouse wants to know how many vacation days you've got left this year. Your co-worker needs your office pool picks. Everyone gets task requests via email all day long, and it's so easy to let these messages slip through the cracks. Whether your inbox is stuffed with two-year-old fwd'd kitten photos from Aunt Edna, or if you empty it every day and diligently file away actionable email to a 'TO-DO' folder - it's still not easy to track the messages you've actually got to DO something about using email." Click the title to read more...

Email Overload: Download a Free Copy of David Allen's Email Rules

"David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and inspiration for a lot of posts 'round these parts, gives away a free four-page PDF at his website that covers his basic principals for keeping email organized. Getting specific without going too in-depth, he explains the 'two minute rule,' why action-able emails should be kept separate from others, and why creating your own system—such as Gina's modified 'Trusted Trio'. Great reading for GTD neophytes, and a good brush-up for the rest of us." Click the title to read more...

Google Analyst Day 2007 - Part 1

Good overview of what Google is up to...

How Apple and Google Dominate | Harvard Business Online's Umair Haque

"Last week, I promised to discuss another source of advantage in decay. We're going to zoom out instead, in response to a flurry of announcements from Apple, Google, and would-be competitors – to have a richer discussion in the weeks going forward.

It's funny how flatfooted - how almost inept - everyone else in media, marketing, consumer electronics, mobile, a long and dangerously growing list of industries, seems compared to Apple and Google.

What gives? Why is that everyone that Google and Apple decide to take to the cleaners, well, gets taken to the cleaners?" Click the title to read more...

2,433 Unread Emails Is An Opportunity For An Entrepreneur | TechCrunch

"I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox. But even so, I currently have 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Plus another 721 in my Facebook inbox. and about thirty skype message windows open with unanswered messages. It goes without saying, of course, that my cell phone voicemail box is also full (I like the fact that new messages can’t be left there, so I have little incentive to clear it out).

How do I deal with email now? I scan the from and subject fields for high payoff messages. People I know who don’t waste my time, or who I have a genuine friendship with. Or descriptive subject lines that help me understand that I should allot a minute or more of my life to opening it and reading it."

Wow. Talk about a dysfunctional way of handling communications! Are you having problems like this? Here are a couple of ideas...

1. Use Gmail. No other ISP offers the tools to handle large volumes of email like Gmail...
2. Read 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen. If you're in a hurry, skip to #3...
   
3. Check out Inbox Zero...

If you can't implement it on your own, scroll down and give me a call -- I'll be happy to help you out...

Well, isn't this cool?

MetaCarta is a new news/Google Maps mashup that allows you to look for news by geographical area, i.e., 'geosearching'. Click the title to give it a spin...

Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth on Productivity and Linux | Lifehacker Australia

"Founder of Ubuntu Linux Mark Shuttleworth took time out of his busy schedule to talk with us about email, productivity, travel, web applications, Ubuntu, free software and much more. We asked Shuttleworth what you wanted to know and he gave us the full scoop." Click the title to read more...

One bookmark manager to rule them all...

A recurring theme on this blog is using one one online [platform independent] tool to use or store resources. Bookmarks are no exception, although in this case I actually use two - one for public, one for private [nothing racy here -- actually is the stuff that's too boring to share] bookmarks. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll see what is called a 'tag cloud' from del.icio.us [online at del.icio.us.com] -- it's a 'cloud' of bookmarks that I have tagged with descriptors so that I can share them with other people. Check it out -- del.icio.us is what you call a social bookmarking tool meaning that you can share the good stuff that you find and categorize it to either share it or be able to find it again. If you use firefox, there are a couple of addons that will allow you to replace the firefox bookmarks with del.icio.us. You can also use it to import your firefox bookmarks into del.icio.us as well. You can share your bookmarks as clouds on your blogs or through a newsfeed if you prefer...

The other tool I use is Google bookmarks which part of the Google toolbar. Google bookmarks doesn't have the rich sharing capabilities of del.icio.us so that's where I keep my boring stuff that's not really worth sharing. You can log on to Google bookmarks anywhere so your toolkit can be with you whenever and wherever you are. The Google bookmarks also integrate nicely with Google search and Google notebook...

Google Announces Tools for Non-Profits

"Learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money, and operate more efficiently." Click the title to read more...