Why Your Business Should Use Google Apps

Google Apps, free web apps provided by google have become very popular for personal use, but not as much so for business use.  Why?  Well, this is mainly because most people think that they have to have a GMail, or GoogleMail, account in order to use these services, but they are wrong.

You can actually sign up for a Google ID without a GMail account, the only thing is, you won’t be able to use GMail to check and respond to the email you have on your domain, unless your host supports POP3 access to the select few ports that GMail offers.  For people and businesses who use BlueHost and other hosts like it, which use port 26, and an obscure SSL port, the option to simply use GMail isn’t available.

This is where Google Apps comes in.  You can sign up for a free account for your domain, which gives you Google Docs, Google Mail, Google Talk, and Google Sites, all on your domain.  This means you’ll be easily able to use GMail with your own domain to check and respond to all of your email.  The additions of Docs,  and GTalk are all pluses, because they allow you to collaborate with other people, whom you will be able to add account on your domain for.  The best part of all of this, is Google Apps for your domain is free up to your first 50 users, and for most small businesses, this is not a problem, but for those businesses who do need more users $50 per year isn’t all that much at all.  Plus, you’ll be getting top notch support from Google with any problems you might have, as they give you a telephone number to call, instead of waiting for email support in the free version.  Another thing I noticed is that you can’t use GMail Themes in Google Apps, but I’m hoping for that to change soon, once they become more stable.

There’s isn’t really much to setting up Google Apps, either, so if you’ve set up your own hosting, and have bought a domain, and know how to set nameservers, you’ll be able to set them up fine, and you’ll be up and running in no time.  Google does provide pretty clear instructions, and I was able to set it up even though they didn’t have specific instructions for BlueHost, and I by no means consider myself an expert.  So, what are you waiting for?  You can be using Gmail to read and respond to emails on your own domain today!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

The 4 Google Experiments Review

Personally, Google is my best friend in Internet and I’m glad that they’re doing improvements and new things. Their latest project have been some experimental things regarding the search engine. The project is called Google Experimental Search and it has gained popularity since it was launched.

Google Experimental Search has been a topic of discussion between many webmasters. Threads about it are “flooding” forums. This test includes experimenting on 4 different Beta features:

SearchWiki with Sound

If you don’t know anything about SearchWiki take a look at this video:

It was launched on 11/20/2008 and now are added some very nice sound effects. When using one of the animations a sound comes up (like the sound effects of Windows of Mac). The sounds were recorded by Google’s co-founder: Sergey Brin

Alternate Views for Search Results

In this 2nd Experimental project you can change the way how to view at your search results. Google now has the feature  see results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. Official Description:

See results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, Google’s technology extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension.

Timeline and map views work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Info view shows all the data found for each result, to help you select the best choice.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This is an awesome idea by Google Inc. It’s very useful for busy people who waste some time by clicking and using the mouse a lot on Google search. Now with some Keyboard Shortcuts you can make actions by pressing letters in the keyboard:

Accessible View

After the keyboard shortcuts feature come another very useful one. With Accessible View you can navigate through search results very easily without using the mouse at all. “As you navigate, items are magnified for easier viewing” - is written on the official review.

For now, you need to use the Firefox 3 web browser with this experiment. This note will be updated as other browsers are added. Magnification already works with Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

To activate any of this Experiments go here: Google Experimental Search. Note, that you can use only 1 of them at a time.

If you find this post interesting or might want to add something take your time and comment here,
Thank you for your time,
Arlind H

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!