GOOGLE APPS & G-MAIL

(not exciting, but important)

Okay, there’s this edgy little start-up company… They go by the name of Google. I know it sounds funny, but they do some cool stuff. In fact, they have a really good e-mail program.

What? You already know this? Well, I’ll share my experiences anyway, just in case…

Here’s where I’m coming from… Outlook served me pretty well for a while. I mean, it was just the easiest thing to use for e-mail. The default. But there were some annoyances.

Old e-mails would get archived somewhere where I couldn’t seem to access them. I could not easily check all of my e-mail accounts (I have several) easily without having my computer with me. And the camel that broke the straw’s back? The ridiculous and depressing amount of SPAM that I had to delete.

I flirted with a G-mail account, just like I had with a Yahoo account. Never really used it for anything but storage though. But like $4 gas, the pain of deleting SPAM was enough for me to change my behavior.

I signed up for a Google Premier account for $50 a year. I now receive all my e-mails to one central G-mail account. I get maybe one SPAM message in my inbox a day. And best of all, I can access my e-mail from whatever computer I’m using — Mac or PC, mine or a friend’s.

Plus with Google Doc (like Microsoft Word), I can keep all my writings in an online, decentralized location for easy access and no fear of hard drive failure.

What makes this cool? The FREEDOM it allows me.

If you’ve got one e-mail address and nothing terribly important comes into your life via e-mail (like money!), you’re probably fine with Outlook or whatever if you can handle the SPAM.

But if you want to upgrade, and simplify your life, I recommend the Google Apps package.

Google Apps

Also, I am a big fan of Google Desktop. This program has saved my ass many, many times. Let me briefly elaborate… Google Desktop is a search engine for everything on your computer. Believe it or don’t, I am not the most organized guy with my computer files. Google Desktop allows me to find anything I misplace — documents, photos, e-mails, websites I’ve visited — instantly (none of that chug, chug, chugging with an Outlook search or an XP search).

Finally, Google Desktop makes a cache of your files. Why is this important? Everyone has had the experience of losing an important document just as you are a few keystrokes away from being done. Many, many times, Google Desktop has saved me from saying bad words at a loud volume by having a copy of my file.

Check it out.
Again, I know this isn’t the most exciting topic — but infrastructure is important and paying attention to it has the power to improve the quality of your life. Plus, I needed to post something…

🙂

d