Random Thunks

Those who know me will know I’ve not been the biggest fan of Google of late. I still think many of their business strategies may be on the dodgy side (read Capturing emails and passwords from unsecured WiFi access points amongst others).

However I will have to admit that in terms of providing a unified cloud for governing ones life (email, documents, tasks, calendar etc) then they do have more than an edge on their competitors. Granted Microsoft has their Office Live and Windows Live sites however it doesn’t do much for you on the email front unless you’re an educational establishment – and I needed a total a solution as I could get.

My spouse and I have both been long time Outlook users and I’ve been using Outlook 2010 for the last 2-3 months, however given the fact that we’re both wanting more ‘anywhere anytime’ access to our data and the fact we’re both getting into more social networking, it fell upon my shoulders to find a solution that would make both of us happy.

Where Microsoft has Live and Outlook then, Google has Thunderbird (or Evolution or any other application that does IMAP – including Outlook). And being a bit of a control freak (in other words I like to have a central ‘command’ console whenever possible) Google Apps Standard seemed to fit the bill for myself and ‘she who must be obeyed’.

Currently we use 1&1 for our email handling – I also use it to host all the images etc. in this blog, in addition to allowing other family members to use it for their web needs as well). Being paranoid buggers, neither myself, nor my better half like using single email addresses for everyone. So instead we generate email random addresses for each company we contact – that way when an address should somehow find its way onto a Spam list (as 4-5 have these last 2 years) we can simple blow that address away and we’re back to a spam free existence. So given our investment already in 1&1 I was loath to drop it – so I didn’t and instead incorporated it into my overall solution and ended up simply forwarded emails to the new address (which was especially nice since it allowed me to run both systems side by side for a while).

Utilizing 1&1’s domain DNS management features (it allowed me to easily modify the MX records and CNames as required) and free sub-domains I was able to set up a new sub-domain for all my mobile communications need and attach that to Google apps. This allowed me to set up friendly URL’s to each service (Mail, Calendar etc).

Then came configuring GMail accounts for us both making sure we kept as much of our existing Outlook functionality as possible (shared calendars and tasks using Sync2Pst) whilst gaining more functionality (unified view of the data, regardless of which OS, PC or mobile device we use). This necessitated using Thunderbird (I did try Evolution which ran OK on my Ubuntu box but failed miserably to work on the Windows port) using a handful of addons (Lightening, Google Calendar Provider for Lightening and the rather excellent although still in beta (for v3 anyway) gContactSync) to name but three. With this in hand I was able to achieve my first directive from the boss – no duplication of work – in other words should she delete an email using (the soon to arrive) Droid Incredible she wanted it gone everywhere. Equally if she updated a contact in Thunderbird, she’d expect to see the same update on her phone. The sharing of calendars was the easiest bit using Google’s direct calendar sharing facilities.

This still leaves us with some holes which we’ve either got a workaround for (tasks are Calendar entries) or no solution (sharing contacts between us) however I continue to look for answers as and when they should transpire.

Google apps also gives us access to several other shared applications what we can use a single sign on for which makes the deal even better including a HelpDesk app which allows her to get me to fix computer issues without nagging me every 5 minutes!

Now, this is not perfect I’ll admit, however given the alternatives (or lack thereof) it’s the best solution (especially given that we’re both about to get Droid’ed).

I’m also hoping that Google do begin to migrate Picasa soon to Google Apps since that would make handling our pictures easier and please Google, bring out an API for tasks!