CTR: Google Apps

Those who know me well can ascertain very quickly that I am a major Google fanboy. Yeah, guilty as charged, if Google builds it I will use it. This all started somewhere around the time I got my first Gmail invite and I have not turned back since. Yeah, I have several email addresses but you can rest assured they all end up in my Gmail inbox. So what is this Google Apps I am writing of? Basically it can be used for free up to 50 accounts and provide you email, calendar, chat, contacts, and individual wikis and sites using point and click (WYSIWYG) technology, all on your domain! If you think livn4him2day3456@yahoo.com (all apologies if this is an actual address) sounds better than bob@bestchurch.org; I am sorry for you, mostly because you are paying for a domain so why not use it for FREE.

Further Google Apps help you in the areas of cost, control, and reliability. Google's web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings. Administrators can deeply customize Google Apps to meet their technical, branding and other requirements. While there is no guarantee for the free account to be available 99.9% of the time, I have not had a single occasion when it wasn't.

I wish I could say it was entirely simple to set up but it would help to have your web guy change your DNS info on your domain for you. Don't know what DNS info is, that is why you should heve them do it. But the rest is super easy and that change only takes about 5 minutes. Heck for $5 I would set it up for you and donate the earnings to my favorite charity. Here are what some others are saying about Google Apps.

Takami
Restaurant and food services
Hospitality, North America
"Google Apps lets us centralize and consolidate information, simplifying our company's internal communication process and giving us better control over our business."
Alejandra Cifuentes – IT Manager

Skinnycorp.com
Online community, parent company of Threadless Technology, North America
"We are able to give our IT challenges to Google, who handles the hard stuff, while we handle our business. Just do it."
Harper Reed – CTO

I hope this was helpful and look forward to sharing my Calendar with you.