Shacking Up With Google
After careful consideration, I’ve decided to move my entire “work” life – my email, calendar, to-do list, and documents – into Google.
I’ve tip-toed around the commitment for awhile and decided to take the plunge last week. I’m still waiting on the Kenan-Flagler IT people to resolve a mail forwarding issue – otherwise I’m already settled in and getting comfortable…and wondering why I didn’t do this a long time ago.
Truth be told, inspiration for the move came from the good people at Shoeboxed. They run their entire office (mostly) through Google apps and seem to do pretty well. For the 4 weeks I was there on a regular basis this summer, I only used MS Office for a couple complicated spreadsheets – everything else went through Docs. Couldn’t believe how easy and productive it was…
For now, I foresee two problems with the changeover. One – the “to-do list” add-on I plugged into iGoogle is much weaker than iCal’s feature. (Wonder why Google Calendar doesn’t have a built-in to-do list feature? Am I missing something?) Two – I’ll need to work out the attachment issue. Invariably, I’ll have to share a document with a classmate or professor that doesn’t use Docs and/or will prefer to use MS Office. I’ll figure it out as I go…
So it is “so long” to the Thunderbird/iCal/MS Office combo I’ve used for the past few years – at least “mostly so long” to MS Office, I hope. The juggling act was a little clunky at times, but I grew to love it. I guess I’ll miss the flying bluebird icon that has so cheerfully and dutifully delivered my mail for the past couple years, but I sure as heck won’t miss opening and managing so many attachments locally.
Plus, I’ll retain the smug satisfaction of not using Outlook in a school addicted to Microsoft’s productivity soma.
Filed under: Technology, The Internets | 9 Comments
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I will be interested to know how this goes. I tried to sell my group early on last year on using google docs to collaborate, it worked for about 1 minute. I couldn’t believe only two of the five of us even had gmail accounts. Who doesn’t? How are you handling address book? Just figuring anybody who you don’t have an email from doesn’t need one anyways? Do you have a school only gmail address? and one more, are you forwarding all KFBS mail to gmail i guess? need to catch up as well…tom
Hey Eric -
Bronto just migrated to the corporate version of the Google Apps. We mainly did for the shared calendaring with gCal, which is hard to come by unless you run an Exchange server. Being a non-Windows shop, that wasn’t going to happen.
We use Google docs and spreadsheets here are there but haven’t standardized on it. I’m not sure that it is where we need it yet, although I’m happily waiting the day when it is. The $400 Microsoft Office Suites per employee are killer.
Hope KFBS is kicking off well.
Joe
Re: tasks in gmail. Try out http://www.rememberthemilk.com. It’s the best task manager I’ve ever used–simple if you want it to be, advanced if you want it to be, plugins to integrate with a lot of stuff. One of the plugins allows you to integrate it into google calendar (within your browser) and another allows you to see a task list in the right-hand side of your gmail window (again, within the browser). It supports all major GTD functions and you can write custom queries on your tasks, if you’re into that sort of thing. Oh, and there’s also a dashboard widget to display your tasks. I check that thing habitually by now.
Tom – I’ll keep you posted. I should have my mail issue resolved tomorrow.
Joe – Docs certainly has a ways to go. For example, I can’t imagine building any spreadsheet of consequence with the app. It works like a champ for text documents, though.
Tristan – Thanks for the tip. Already made the switch to the iGoogle RTM widget. Way better…
I’ve been using Google apps for a while and love it. It does everything I need and not being a tech geek, the sheer simplicity of it all works for me also.
Please keep us updated. I am a bit weary using Google :)
(been there, done that) While it is tempting to use Google Apps for all your needs – while Google Apps does a very admirable job of integration – you might consider the possibility that it’s not a good idea to “put all yer eggs in one basket.”
Certainly Google software is very superior. Gmail is hard to beat. If you run into any problems with any software item, though, you’ll be very extremely hard-pressed to find support. Almost certainly you’ll rely upon Google Groups (other users). Most likely (85% chance) someday you’ll run into a problem you cannot solve and that WILL NOT be resolved via Google Groups. Then, tough luck.
Just to clarify, I’m not uninstalling MS Office. Just trying to use Docs for as much as a can – especially for viewing/managing documents.
Re: support for Docs, I was shocked to learn that the support team is only ~25 people – at least it was when I was at the Googleplex in February.