It’s always tough trusting a third party for your crucial business communications. The comforting thing with Google Apps is that they use widely adopted standards and protocols for these systems. The advantage of using a non-proprietary system is that it makes it easy to get your email and calendars into almost any computer application or smart phone.

For example, my business uses Google Apps for all of it’s email, calendars, and instant messaging. Here is how Google Apps works for me and how it can work for you.

Email:

I have a couple of email addresses for my business. Some emails come to me and others go to my assistant (my awesome wife). I can check my email via the web interface (which allows me to access it on any internet connected computer), my MacBook Pro, and my iPhone. They all stay synced up thanks to IMAP. I can create a folder on my Mac and it will show up on my iPhone this allows me to move messages to those folders when I’m on the go or away from a computer. If I delete a message on my phone, then it’s deleted on my computer.

Another great feature is that Google has some of the best junk/spam filters around. So if one of your employees has put their company email address on too many “win a free iPod” sites then this will be a life saver. Google also uses industry-leading security so your confidential information is safe.

Calendars:

Much like email, I have calendars set up that stayed synced thanks to Google Calendar and it’s use of CalDAV. Once again I have access on the web, my computer, and my phone. The thing that can make calendars really useful are the alarms and notifications. We use our calendars to remind us of anything from appointments to phone calls. If I’m sitting in front of my computer I’ll get a pop up message with the reminder. If I’m on my phone I receive another notification with or without a sounded alarm. It’s really interesting when my assistant and I are both on our computers and have our iPhones out (notifications will go off on all four of our devices at once). There is no way we are going to miss a reminder!

An ideal situation is that I’m out on an appointment and my assistant books me a new appointment for later in the day. She sets a notification to go off 2 hours before the new appointment. So even if I don’t look at my calendar I get the notification alarm or vibration on my phone. Next time I look at my phone I will see the new appointment and see useful information like location and notes.

Another great use of Google calendar is it’s ability that each user can have their own personal calendar, it can set up group calendars with multiple administrators, and it can create public calendars that you can put on your website. If you ever need to post events and dates on your site, there is no better way then having a dynamic web calendar that people can interact with and even add to their own Google calendar so they don’t miss an event.

Instant Messaging:

I use Google Talk to communicate with my assistant. Either from iPhone to iPhone, or computer to iPhone and vice versa. Google Talk uses Jabber technology that many instant messaging applications like iChat on the Mac, Pidgin on the PC, and IM+ on our iPhones use.

If you ever received an email from a co-worker that says “Hey, what do you want to do for lunch?” then you may want to move those kinds of employee to employee communications to instant messages. Your email inbox will thank you!

You can do more than just text chatting. Depending on your computer and application setup, you can do multi-way voice chats, video chats, file sharing, and even screen sharing. This can help your office become more efficient if they use these tools appropriately.

This tool has actually helped expand my business outside the borders of Oklahoma. I have a customer on the other side of the country that I do personal Mac training with. We use iChat’s Mac to Mac screen sharing feature to see and control his desktop while talking through our microphones just like we were on a phone call.

Documents:

Google Docs are helpful if I’m away from my computer and I need to jump on a public computer to create a document. I can use Google Docs web based word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation tool and then send it to a customer. It’s not nearly as powerful as Microsoft Office but it is compatible.

So now your thinking “Okay Chris, this sounds great but how much is this going to cost me and my business?” Well, if you have less than 50 users you’re in luck. Like everything else Google it’s free. This free service is called the Standard Edition. For businesses who will need more than 50 users they have their Premier Edition which runs $50 per user per year. This also gives a few more features like 25GB of email storage per user, versus 7GB. You also get 24/7 phone support and more. Google Apps is as little as 1/3 the cost of solutions like Microsoft Exchange 2007.

You can learn more about Google Premier Apps benefits at: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html

Getting all of this setup can be a little daunting. It requires some settings to be changed with your domain registrar. Google gives you instructions on what to do but if your not comfortable then contact your domain registrar. Most can get it all setup with a simple phone call.

The above article I wrote for the new business section of the October 2009 issue of Stillwater Living magazine. Thank you to Sarah Little for letting me republish the article here. Learn more about the magazine and publisher, Peacock Pro here. Be sure to pick up your copy, it’s only $2 at magazine stands around Stillwater.

Email

Mobile Me provides you one email address @me.com (you can have up to 5 alias address that point to your main address)

Features: IMAP for syncronized email and folders across devices. The email also has PUSH abilities when used with a PUSH enabled device like the iPhone. Web access is available though me.com.

Pros & Cons: email through Mobile Me is that is very easy to setup with any Apple device. Apple’s Mail app and the mail app on the iPhone/iPod Touch. All you need is your user name and password. No settings to mess with. Simple. On the flip side the PUSH doesn’t seem to work as advertised. So results will vary.

The Email Alternative

Gmail from Google. 

Features: IMAP & POP for using with any email client. Great web interface. Over 7 GB of storage. Integration with other Google apps. Good server side spam filter. FREE. Setup as many accounts as you want.

Pros & Cons: I have never heard of someone running out of space with Gmail. The storage is always growing, although at a slower pace than a few years ago. 7 GB is a lot. The spam filtering in Gmail is really good. It also prevents unnecessary junk mail from going to your mail client. Apple Mail apps for mac and iPhone have the settings for Gmail built in. The only con is if you don’t like the idea of Google’s targeted advertising. Which only matters when you are using the web interface.

Gmail is an easy alternative to Mobile Me. No brainer here. All of my business email is handled Google Apps which allows me to have yourappletrainer.com email.

Calendars

Mobile Me works with the calendars you created in iCal.

Features: Syncing calendars made on iCal with other Macs and iPhones. Publishing your calendars online. Great web interface on me.com. PUSH updates.

Pros & Cons: A simple check mark in Mobile Me’s settings let you sync your calendars with any Mac and iPhone you own. Create as many calendars you want and share them all. The keyword is ALL. You can not choose which calendars get synced. The PUSH updates in my experience has worked really good. Another downside is that you can not use a PC calendar app like Mozilla’a Sunbird to view and edit your calendars. A PC user would be stuck with the web interface which is very good but not a local app.

Google Calendar

Features: Web based calendars. CalDAV for use with calendars apps and iPhone. Sharing calendars with other Google users. HTML embedding of a public calendar on your website. Works with PC apps like Sunbird.

Pros & Cons: It is integrated with the rest of the Google apps. CalDAV allows you to edit and manager your calendars right in iCal and on your iPhone. It even syncs the colors that you set online. Sharing calendars is really powerful. You can set permissions for each person you share with. You can allow someone to only read the calendar or full editing access. Also the options you have embedding your calendar on your own website is very powerful. Setting up Google to work with iCal and the iPhone isn’t super easy. Especially for more than one calendar. An average user would be lost.

I’ll just say that like Gmail I have switched all of my calendars to Google. Especially since the new iPhone 3.0 software  supports CalDAV. Now my wife and I can share calendars on our iPhone and post events to a public Google calendar.

Contacts and Bookmarks

Mobile Me let’s you sync your contacts and bookmarks wirelessly.

Pros & Cons: Simple and easy to setup. Works great with iPhones, Macs, and PCs. This is super useful for me and my wife who share the same address book. We each have of groups so we don’t have to scroll through each others contacts. But at the same time it’s nice because I know if she adds a new or updates a contact it will be on my iPhone within seconds. Bookmarks sync as well but I do wish it would sync the browser history too.

Contacts alternative:

Microsoft Exchange. If your with a company that has an Exchange server your set. Mail, Contacts, and Calendars will sync with your iPhone. When Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 is release your Mac will also be able to sync with an Exchange server.

For the majority of us who do not have Exchange there is another option via Google.

Google Sync actually uses Microsoft Exchange technology to sync contacts and calendars. It does not sync email.

Pros & Cons: It’s a another free service to Google users. It also works with those using Google Apps. It is also a PUSH system. So it updates quickly. However it is not the easiest process to setup. Setting up Sync on your iPhone requires going to the mobile site to turn on and off which calendars you want to see on your iPhone. Not a limitation to Google Sync but your iPhone can only be setup with one Exchange account.

File Storage

A standard Mobile Me account gives you 20 GB of total online storage. This storage is shared between email, iWeb sites, photo galleries, and general storage.

Features: Built in support on your Mac. iPhone and PC app available to manage files on your iDisk. Solid integration with Mac and 3rd party apps. Large file sharing. Size is upgradable for an additional cost.

Pros & Cons: If you have multiple Macs and PCs then this a great way to have a central file server that is available anywhere you have an internet connection. You can even turn on iDisk syncing so that every file that is on your iDisk is kept locally for when you are offline. Once again on the flip side I’ve had good and bad experiences with the syncing feature. Sometimes they just wouldn’t sync and it was hard to tell what files are definitely synced up with the online iDisk.

The File Storage Alternative

DropBox

Features: Synchronization between multiple Macs and PCs. Share folders with other Drop Box users. Free 2GB of storage. Sharing large files with anyone. Upgradable to 50 & 100 GB for a fee. Built in photo gallery.

Pros & Cons: It’s simple. Just like the iDisk you access it in your Finder and you can drag and drop files. Create folders and organize things just like your used to in the Finder. Dropbox also has a nice menu bar icon letting you know when it is syncing in the background. It saves local copies for offline access. The only con I have found is that the default is that your files are set to do a move instead of a copy like the iDisk. Example: I went to my iTunes folder to share some music with my wife’s PC. I drag & dropped a folder into the DropBox folder and I didn’t know I had just moved those files out of my iTunes library. I learned I need to hold down the option key so it does a copy instead. Your Mac treats it like a standard folder and not a mounted drive.

DropBox works great and for pure file storage it is a better deal. $99 a year will get you 50 GB. $199 gets your 100 GB which is almost enough to do a complete backup of your system.

Publishing Web, Photos, & Video

There are many solutions for publishing websites, sharing photos, and posting videos. Here we are looking at solutions that integrate with the applications on your Mac. Warning: this is a long one!

Mobile Me’s integration with iLife and other Mac apps is hard to beat.

Features: Publish websites with iWeb. Create Photo and Video galleries with iPhoto, iMovie, and Aperture. Post photos and videos from your iPhone. Web interface to completely manage your galleries. Password protect individual galleries and videos.

Pros & Cons: It doesn’t get much easier than this for Mac users. I think the web galleries are just beautiful. Makes it easy for people to navigate all your photos and videos. Also the option to let people download a high quality version is nice. There is even an RSS subscription. This is awesome for other iPhoto users. For example my mother-in-law has a MacBook Pro. I simply go to our photo gallery, select the group, select subscribe in iPhoto and her iPhoto launches and asks to confirm my subscription. All the photos download to her iPhoto and as we add photos to that gallery they will automatically download to her iPhoto the next time she launches the app.

For those using Aperture you get the Mobile Me galleries too with the added ability to post an optimized and master version. This is great for needing to share with those who may want a copy of the unedited version.

There is not one single service that matches Mobile Me when it comes to integration and sharing. So we are going to look at a few options that could be used together.

Photo Alternatives:

When it comes to sharing photos Flickr is one of the most popular and best sites out there. Especially if you want to share your photos with a community.

Features: Free & Pro accounts. Built in support in iPhoto 09. Private or public options. Great web integration. Community focused with pools, comments, and more. Many apps designed to browse, upload, and share photos in Flickr. You can also upload short videos in HD.

Pros & Cons: iPhoto 09′s Flickr integration is decent. I like that is shows your Flickr sets in the sidebar along with all your other albums. Unfortunately it doesn’t give more powerful tools like tagging. Aperture 2 so far doesn’t have the native Flickr support like iPhoto yet. However there is a 3rd party solution for both of these. Ubermind makes an Flickr up loader for both iPhoto and Aperture. They provide all the tools that one would need to get photos to Flickr. They run $20 for iPhoto & $25 for Aperture.

Another option is the open source Gallery. My web host DreamHost has Gallery as a One-Click install on my web server. This is an online photo organizer that runs on your server. I haven’t used it yet so I’m not going to proclaim any expertise on it. But I do think it can be very compelling solution for those who have a lot of storage space on their web server. My deal with DreamHost gave me “unlimited” storage space. Right now we have about 5 GB of photos on Mobile Me. Also since we use Aperture as our preferred photo app Ubermind also provides a FREE Aperture to Gallery plugin.

Pros & Cons: From what I can see it’s awesome because it’s free and your in complete control. On the other hand it’s a lot more work. Like any other open source software solution if it breaks you fix it. There are forums and groups of people that will be glad to help you out. So if you like to “roll your own” this is the way to go.

Our final option is Google’s Picasa. Thanks to Ubermind once again when can get a plugin for Aperture & iPhoto to send photos to Google’s Picasa service. I believe you get 1 GB of free storage. Just another option provided by Google. So if you like everything Google then this maybe for you.

Video Alternatives:

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. YouTube is the only built in alternative in iMovie 09 to publishing your videos other than Mobile Me.

Features: Free. Public and private videos. Optional High Quality & HD. Easy sharing and embedding. Direct support in iMovie 09 & Keynote 09.

Pros & Cons: YouTube isn’t going any where soon with Google being daddy now. The quality keeps getting better and better. On the downside your limited to 10 minute long clips. You also have to deal with ads.

There are many other video social sites on the web today. Popular ones like Vimeo and Flickr may not have direct support on your Mac (yes you can upload via the web interfaces but we are going to integration) there is a new video sharing Mac app on the scene called Clipstart.

Clipstart is a very smart little app. First, it finds all of the video on your Mac, lets you tag and organize your videos, then let’s you trim them and upload them to YouTube, Vimeo, or Flickr. The app is $29. What I like is that if I have a video I’m edited in iMovie Clipstart will find it and let me upload it. It also allows direct import from my iPhone 3GS, this is much better than uploading the videos to iPhoto. As you can see in it’s icon it also also great for those with Flip cameras.

Web Publishing Alternatives:

In the past if you wanted to use iWeb for building easy websites you had two choices. Mobile Me and site folder export. Again Mobile Me makes this easy. One click publishing. The export into a folder option only worked for those used to sending those new files via a separate FTP app. Now in iLife 09, iWeb now has built in support for FTP. This is a big deal for those who like iWeb and it severs the exclusive need for Mobile Me. Any web host you choose is now supported in iWeb. I’ve really enjoyed Dreamhost as my web host.

Back to my Mac & Find My iPhone

If the stars align right with your home network then Mobile Me let’s you turn on Back to my Mac. The idea is that if you travel with say a MacBook and have another Mac at home then Back to my Mac would allow you to connect to that Mac just like you were on the same local network. Browse files and even share the screen and control your home Mac remotely. Pretty cool. This is basically a fancy and “easy” to setup VNC and VPN setup. There are many solutions to do both of this without Mobile Me. Chicken of the VNC is one that comes to mind. But once again for the non tech savvy user it doesn’t get any easier “if” like I said the your network doesn’t get in the way. If your running an Apple Airport router it is setup to allow the right NAT connections.

As for Find My iPhone, this is one feature of a Mobile Me subscription that I don’t think anyone else will be able to reproduce. Find My iPhone let’s you log in to me.com and track on a Google map where the phone is located. You can also PUSH a message with sound to the phone. And finally you can remotely wipe the iPhone of all your data. So if you happen to lose your precious iPhone you don’t have to worry about someone getting any of your personal data. For some this exclusive feature is alone worth the $99 a year.

The Verdict

For any Mac user, Mobile Me does a whole lot and makes it effortless and painless. It is possible to have almost every feature of Mobile Me for close to free. The alternatives are possible but require a lot more work. So if your the tech geek who likes things the hard way then some of these alternatives are for you. For me Mobile Me is worth the $99 a year for what I use it for. Contacts, calendars, bookmarks, photo galleries, and Find My iPhone. I’m using Gmail for all my email and calendars that are public. I also use Drop Box for shared folders with friends. As you’ll notice Google is providing many free alternatives that are good and getting better.

So what are your thoughts on Mobile Me? Is it worth it to you? Or do you have some other compelling options to Mobile Me that you use?