Marketing meets technology

Last week I wrote about Google Apps and what a great tool it can be for small to mid-size companies.  Today I’ll give you a list of add-ons to help integrate your Google calendar and contacts with your computer and phone.

It’s really ridiculous that these utilities are even necessary, but the fact is that two of the most common applications of computers and cell phones, that is the humble calendar and address book, are the most difficult applications to share between different devices.  Every device and application has its own calendar and rarely do applications want to share.

Fortunately, Google provides a convenient way to connect from a variety of devices.  So using Google as the "hub" or main repository finally gives us some nice flexibility.

Microsoft Outlook

Let’s start with Windows and Microsoft Outlook because that’s what most people seem to use.  A program called OggSync works in the background to sync my Outlook 2007 calendar and contacts with Google.  The newest beta release (ver. 4.20) appears to be very stable.  It syncs multiple Google calendars, such as a company/group calendar and a private/personal calendar.  And it does a very intelligent job of syncing the different contact fields in Google and Outlook.

Thunderbird

If you already use the Firefox web browser and want to get away from Outlook you should try the excellent Thunderbird e-mail client.  Thunderbird doesn’t come with an integrated calendar, but it was designed to support extensions that are easy to install and manage.  One of these add-ons is called Lightning which will add an integrated calendar.  To make Lightning work with Google you also have to get another add-on called the Provider for Google Calendar .  This allows Lightning to sync automatically with Google Calendar.  The last add-on to consider is called Zindus .  Zindus is a new utility that syncs the Thunderbird address book with Google’s contacts.  It sounds complicated, but Thunderbird makes it easy to install these add-ons, and a benefit to Thunderbird is that it’s almost identical on both Windows and Apple Mac (and Linux) computers so if you switch computers you’ll feel right at home.

Windows Mobile phones

If you use a Windows Mobile phone there is an easy way to sync your phone contacts and calendar with Google.  The software we like best right now is called GooSync .  This is actually a combination of software and an online service.  You start by setting up an account (they offer both free and paid accounts) and specifying exactly what you want to sync and how often it should sync to Google.  Once you install the software on the phone you can forget about it.  Mine is set to sync automatically every hour, which saves battery life on my phone.  I pay for their Premium account, but you might not need that if you just want a simple calendar sync.

Apple Mac

Finally, if you use an Apple computer and want to sync your standard Mac iCal calendar with Google you can get a program called Spanning Sync which has been working flawlessly for us during the past few weeks.  Version 2.0 will be released any day now and will include native Address Book syncing.

It takes a few minutes to install and configure these programs, but it’s well worth the effort.

Managing e-mail, contacts and calendars are some of the most fundamental tasks in any business.  Yet even today it’s surprisingly difficult to set up an integrated system for a typical small business.  E-mail is probably the easiest, but there are competing standards for calendar information and contacts, and several different ways to handle security.  And if your company has a mix of Windows and Apple computers, and different phone models it’s very time consuming and training/support-intensive to get everyone working together.

Microsoft’s Exchange Server, combined with Microsoft Outlook is the most common way to integrate contacts, calendars and e-mail, but it’s a very expensive solution and requires a fair bit of technical skill to set up and maintain.  Very good, and less expensive, replacements for Exchange have appeared (the best is probably Zimbra , which was acquired by Yahoo! recently) but these still require hardware and technical support.

The new trend, which goes by such catchy names as "cloud computing" or "SaaS" offers a very appealing solution, particularly for small to mid-size companies.  Cloud computing, or Software as a Service (SaaS) refers to the concept of having programs out in the "cloud" of the Internet as opposed to having the software on your personal computer (or your company’s servers).  For example, your calendar would be stored in the cloud, on somebody else’s servers where you can reach it from any computer and easily share it with other people.  Turning over your calendar to "the cloud" might sound dangerous, but it’s no different from the way e-mail works, and everyone has come to accept those risks.

One of the companies offering such new services is Google with their Google Apps .  This set of online services is interesting because of who’s behind it, the breadth of features, and because it’s free.  There is no hardware or programming support required, and management of Google Apps is all done with a simple Web browser using the online administration site.  A "Premier Edition " of Google Apps is also available (for a fee) for those companies that need strict e-mail policies, archive control, and compliance.

You still might not want to set this up on your own, but it’s not particularly difficult - we have converted about a dozen of our clients to this system so far.  One nice feature of Google Apps is that you can use your private domain name for e-mail instead of the more common Google mail (gmail.com) or Hotmail-type addresses.  You can even have branded pages featuring your company name, logo and other artwork.

Here’s a short list of the key features:

E-mail

• Over 7 GB of storage per mailbox
• Built-in junk mail (spam) filters
• Use either the Web-based e-mail program, or desktop Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.
• Send/receive mail from Internet-ready phones

Calendar

• Multiple calendars
• Share calendars with a group or keep them private
• Publish specific calendars to any Web site - great for scheduling public events
• Schedule conference rooms, delivery trucks and other resources

Google is obviously invading Microsoft’s territory, and winning converts because they can afford to give away something that everyone needs.

In my next post I’ll describe how to use Google Apps on different computers and phones.