Kevin Steffer Outloud – web, business and opinions

Google Apps – whats in it?

I have test driven Google Apps on my own domain. My overall experience is that it is very powerful in sharing and collaboration. It is also without a domain hosted for Google Apps. But it somehow makes more sense in a logically way that information for the people you collaborate with are secured inside the domain when you share by default. And even typing in contacts to share with have some sort of intellisense, suggestion-like pop-ups. So when I start typing the first name of the person it displays me the full e-mail address of the person matching my typed letters.

One great benefit of domain-enabling Google Apps is Contacts sharing. So you can build up your contacts environment automatically.

A big concern has been is Google really thight about the information that I store in my Google Apps?
As all my information is indexed and made searchable with the Google engine they could over time learn alot about my contacts and the information that I create and share in Google Apps. But I have read the Privacy Policy and it doesn't really scare me, but as Google is one major information collector, well I still have me concerns, but I hope over time Google proves I don't have to be

GMail to Go. (http://gmail.com/app)
Well you can access your GMail on your smartphone, mobile web browser, which I think is very helpful. If you want a file available on my mobile I just mail it to my GMail account and access it from there, without having to store all files and keeping them in sync on my Smartphone.

The personalized Google startpage is also very neat. As it provides all domain users with a E-mail-, Calendar- and Docs-view in the first column, and the other 2 columns can be used as normal with your own gadgets and rss feeds. This is a great way to keep track of new stuff that is shared and sent to you.

You should really try it out yourself.

Visit: www.google.com/apps

-Kevin