Cloud Apps #1 Google Apps

When it comes to cloud computing and software as a service (SAAS) technology Google is the internet equivalent of Marmite - you either love or you hate it! Some people worry about the invasion of privacy through targeted advertising, others ignore that for the advantages of a free fully integrated office productivity suite.

The 7gb of storage per account is something which has probably found it more friends than made it enemies. But read my review and judge for yourself.

Update: I'll be publishing a "Getting organised using Google" howto soon.

Google offers a package of applications including:

  • Gmail - webmail with full search and labeling facility;
  • Google Calendars - with the ability to have multiple calendars in one view and embed the result in any web page
  • Google Talk - a messaging service;
  • Google docs - online office suite;
  • Google sites - web page builder based around a variety of templates.

Lets have a look at them in detail...

Gmail: In any review of webmail you'll find Gmail, if not at the top then somewhere in the top 5 its packed full of useful features designed to make email life a little easier and while some of them may not be familiar to the new user, new users will find they quickly get pulled into the Google way of doing things. Gmail services currently provides more than 7 GB of free online storage.

The Gmail interface differs from other Webmail systems with its focus on search and its "conversation view" of emails; grouping several replies onto a single page. However problems with how the conversations were threaded and issues around deleting a conversation moved Google to make some changes going with an optional conversation (29 September 2010.) It's possible to pull in mail from other POP3 and IMAP accounts and with a little practice you can use your Gmail account to download and filter all your other accounts.

Gmail supports "labeling" of conversations rather than trying to file them in directories. While initially this might feel strange, once you get used it the idea is quite logical. The sheer size of the available storage means that you do not need to delete emails and sent mail is archived rather than deleted. A labeled conversation can be "archived" and because this is Google all conversations/emails can be searched by title or label or fragments of conversations - well you get the idea! Gmail is clever enough to read potential invitations/appointments and offer to add them to your Google calendar as well.

There are elements here which worry some folks. You see Google scans e-mails to add context-sensitive advertisements to them. Privacy advocates say is a breach of the users rights to security. (Google's TOC means it can change its privacy policy unilaterally and is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to make dossiers on individuals.) Most e-mail systems make use of server-side content scanning in order to check for spam so Google's actions are not quite as insidious as the nay-sayers would have us believe. But how you feel about this may well depend on who you are and what email you send. For Joe Average adverts are quickly ignored and any inconvenience outweighed by the useful of this and other features.

Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user can mark an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future. messages for all Gmail users. Users can tune the system to allow mail marked as spam to be handled in particular ways.

Gmail was ranked second in PC World's "100 Best Products of 2005", behind Mozilla Firefox. Gmail also won 'Honorable Mention' in the Bottom Line Design Awards 2005

Google Calendar: Google touts its calendar service as a way to simplify and organise your life. Like Gmail calendar events are stored online and can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection.

The calendar can also be viewed using an internet enabled mobile device such as a phone or netbook. The application can import Microsoft Outlook calendar files (.csv) and iCalendar files (.ics, the de facto open calendaring file format), although at this stage only when the fields are all in U.S. format. Multiple calendars can be added and shared, allowing various levels of permissions for the users enabling sharing of schedules between groups. General calendars available for importing into one's account include those containing national holidays of various countries. Users can also add iCalendar URLs that update regularly.

Because Google Calendar is a web-based application, it runs on virtually any operating system, provided that the OS has a browser which supports the required web technologies.

Browser compatibility includes Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8; Mozilla Firefox 2.0+; Opera 9.5; Google Chrome; and Safari 2.0.3. As in other cloud computing applications, changes to Google Calendar are immediately visible to all users. This allows new features to be added without user action, but also makes it possible for new bugs to be rolled out to the entire user population, without users being able to refuse the update.

Google Talk: is a freeware instant messaging and (VoIP) voice over internet protocol client application and uses an open protocol, XMPP, allowing users of other XMPP/Jabber clients to communicate with Google Talk users. VoIP in Google Talk uses an older version of what would later become the Jingle protocol.

The technology used within the Google server network, however, is not publicly known. Google Talk mobile clients are also available for the Palm Pre, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android-based devices and is preloaded on the Nokia N900 smartphone. In 2005 Google integrated Google Talk with Gmail using Ajax . Users can send instant messages to other Gmail users.

A year later they integrated voicemail and file sending capabilities to the Google Talk client. Voicemail up to 10 minutes long is sent to the recipient's inbox as an attached MP3 file.

In 2007, Google released the Google Talk Gadget, an Adobe Flash-based Talk module that can be added to iGoogle (formally the Google Personalized Homepage) or embedded in any web page, thus, allowing one to chat from any operating system as long as Adobe Flash Player is installed. With the integration into the browser, Talk offers some convenience advantages over say Jabber or MSN chat but some users may want to separate out the two functions.

Google docs: I used to be a user of Writely and back in the day, circa 1995 or thereabouts and would recommend it to just about anyone who would listen. I saw distinct advantages to being able author documents online. Writely was a little on the primitive side but proved itself a powerful little tool.

Writely was picked up as part of the Google empire and vanished only to reappear in part as Google Docs a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs added a presentation program to Writely incorporating technology designed by Tonic Systems.

Google Docs is Google's "software as a service" version of an office suite, replicating many of the functions of Microsoft office or Open/Libre Office. Documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations are created within the application itself, imported through the web interface, or sent via email. They can also be saved to the user's computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Microsoft Word) and once created are saved to the Google servers. Opened documents are automatically saved to prevent data loss, and a nice feature is that a revision history is automatically kept so even if you somehow manage to lose your document you can always call up the last revised copy. This belt and braces approach appeals to many users. Documents can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.

The service is officially supported on recent versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome (2010 -01-13) browsers running on Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, and many Linux operating systems. Google Docs can be accessed offline for editing using Google Gear There are some limitations however. The speed of the applications will be limited by the power of your machine and older computers will struggle with heavily formatted or image rich documents. If you are using mobile internet you could struggle. Individual documents may not exceed 1GB as of (13 January 2010) embedded images must not exceed 2MB each, and spreadsheets are limited to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, and 99 sheets. Despite this and unless you routinely need to author complicated pieces of work Google docs is a winner.

Google Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool offered by Google as part of the Google Apps Productivity suite. Sites started as JotSpot, the name and sole product of a software company that offered enterprise social software. It was targeted at small-sized and medium-sized businesses.

At time of writing Sites has the ability to create full copies of web sites. An email, subscription option, RSS feeds, announcements and a variety of default web templates.

  • Default page template:
  • Web page
  • Announcements
  • List
  • File Cabinet
  • Custom templates based on HTML/CSS

Conclusions: Google polarizes views and the detractors will talk at length about the danger of having your privacy invaded and how Google wants to rule the virtual world.

The empire is supported on advertising so whatever you do the chances are you will find the usual collection of adverts to the right of the page. I have found that I have come to live with and then ignore them.

If you are easily offended and happen to work in the PVC or uniform manufacturer industry you might want to think about going elsewhere but for the majority of people Google offers a fantastic collection of application for free. As always the choice is yours, try and see...

External Links Official website Sync Google Official mobile website Google Docs Tonic Systems Gmail Twitter

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