Essential Technology to run my Business

Ever since I can remember, I have used Microsoft Office to keep a little bit of organization in my life, school, business, and work responsibilities. I even got an opportunity to interview with Microsoft, and I still remember two questions from the interview:

1. What is your favorite Microsoft product? - Outlook
2. Can you please recite the algorithm for Quick Sort? - Which is something you look up, not memorize!

We'll discuss only the first one, and leave the second one for you to read about on Wikipedia. I had used Outlook since 2005 has held all email, calendar, and major tasks in my life. Most people who know me well, know that if it's not on the Outlook calendar, it doesn't exist in my life.

The only problem with my Outlook setup is that I had to have my laptop with me at ALL times to be able to open use those features. Most of the time this isn't an issue, but driving with a laptop open to a shoot or checking email on a friend's phone was not an ideal option.

Usher in Google's services. I've used GMail and Google Docs for my work at The Tiger, group project collaboration, and critical file access over the last few years, but hadn't adopted it full-time. It just didn't seem as clean, sophisticated, and user-friendly as Office. After researching Google Apps Standard, I decided to take a chance and try it. I can't say how happy I am I made the switch. 

The reason I switched was because it allowed me to keep an online store of my business life that I can access 24/7 from anywhere in the world. 

Think about this for a second and consider the possibilities this has for your business.

Google Apps Standard includes the following and is FREE:

• 50 Users and the ability to use your own domain name - like www.ebrianschneider.com in my case
• Gmail
• 25 GB of storage
• Outlook and BlackBerry syncing
• My take on Gmail: It's easy to use and allows a level of organization with Labels (their word for folders) I could never achieve with Outlook. Plus it has tasks and contacts integrated in as well. Tasks is probably my favorite feature as it gives me a notepad with my random thoughts, new ideas, research, stuff to do, etc, and I can open it anywhere instead of carrying around a paper pad; which is so last decade.
• Google Calendar
• Syncs well with Outlook through separate program
• Integrates nicely with Gmail
• Not as polished as Outlook graphically, but get's the job done.
• Can send you SMS and email reminders for appointments
• MS Exchange like features - availability of others in the domain, share calendars, etc
• My take on Calendar: While not as easy to make an appointment at first, because you can't use the keyboard like Outlook can, it is easily overcome by using it the first day. Can also easily search for popular calendars of sports teams-good for finding potential clients, holidays, etc. The SMS reminder is amazing as well. While it doesn't have as many options to customizing viewing and default calendar options, it really does a great job
• Google Docs
• MS Office compatibility
• Online store house for documents - any type of files from .doc to .exe
• Real-time collaborating on documents
• Not the prettiest formating
• My take on Docs: You still have to have basic MS Office for Word, and Powerpoint because the interface and formating is not always the prettiest when it comes out of Google Docs.  But it beats Office Live with the ease to collaborate on a document and organize them in an easy fashion. Spreadsheet can even look up NCAA tournament data through function calls! On a more serious note, it's great to be able to pull up my contract to send when on the road, or to just back-up important files. 
• Google Sites
• Intranet or Internet site for your company
• Easy collaboration for teams and projects
• My take on Sites: Since I have my own site, www.ebrianschneider.com and this blog, I haven't yet found a use for the Sites features. Maybe once the operation grows from 2 people it will become useful as an Intranet dashboard type site.
• Missing Features:
• No RSS reader in Gmail - the only thing that held me back from switching for awhile. But, I use my email address, brian@ebrianschneider.com, as a Google account so I can use other services:
• Reader - RSS reader and viewer, my information resource from my favorite blogs.
• Voice - I'll talk more about this later
• Blogger - How I provide you with this wonderful information.
• Analytics - Tracking the usage of my portfolio, blog, and social media
• Local Business Center - Google's equivalent of Yellow Pages.
• Maps - Personal organization of places for myself, especially helpful here in a new city
• Other Random Notes:
• The apps seem to lag a bit behind the full-blown Google services. For example there's no Buzz.
• You can customize it to have your logo and branding to a certain extent.

Google Voice:

• A local number you pick out for free and rings ALL of your phones
• Free SMS
• Block calls
• Record calls
• Conference calls
• Screen all callers
• Voicemail
• Transcribed and sent as SMS and/or email
• Custom greetings
• Ability to share voicemails
• Consolidation from all numbers into one place
• My take on Voice: It's really a great service, but has a few kinks. My greetings aren't setup yet, but the ability to have a local Baltimore number ring my cell phone and Emily's phone at the same time is just amazing. Allows me to be "local" without having to pay for a phone line. The downfall is you have to pay $10 to change the number, so make it a good one. It would be even better if Voice integrated directly in with Gmail like Buzz does currently. 

Google Reader:

• Your basic RSS reader. Similar interface to Gmail.
• My take on Reader: Nothing really special other than it makes recommendations based on other users. I subscribe to a lot of blogs and I am always marking interesting, inspirational, or reference posts for later reading or to find easily. It does an alright job at replacing the RSS reader in Outlook, would be better if it integrated with Gmail.

Overall Impression of Google Services:
While it was surprisingly tricky to setup the apps at first, the level of customization is great, they work well, are easy to use, ability to find add-ons in the Marketplace, and even create your own if you are ambitious. Their apps already rival the ability of MS Office/Exchange, but no hassle, less costs, and easier to secure.

My Situation
Emily is my business manager and when not dealing with school work she helps me with PR, business organization, graphic design and finances. She's still in Clemson so we needed a way to share documents and calendar space to be able to keep up with each other. Google Apps has basically become our virtual office with messaging, calendars, white boards, and filing cabinets, accessible from any device with Internet access.
Google Apps and other services are the technological backbone. It's a Google world now and we are just living in it.