Google Apps

For almost a year now, I have been following news on the Google’s “apps” for hosting etc. This is a service they provide for personal to organizations that want email, calendar, document storage/sharing, and web page stuff. It also provides a fully customizable version of their igoogle start page.

For years now, we have been hosting our own email and calendar apps. I was unhappy with most of the solutions that I found for hosting etc. Either they were out of my budget (the ones that were too expensive but had all the functionality I wanted) or they were just not quite what I needed.

Along comes Google apps… just what I was looking for, something that I don’t need to manage too much once I set it up. Also, it’s extremely cost effective.

They have 3 flavors (well 4 if you include the partner version). They have free, premier ($50/per user), and education (for schools) versions available.

Anyways, I have just begun to convert most of the sites I host (personal and otherwise) over to their system. My primary domain that we use heavily at home (zatsu.com) has been converted over. Also, thejoe.com and others.

I have been using it for a couple of weeks now and am quite happy with it. It catches 97% of all the spam I get. Hell, I stopped using thejoe [at] thejoe [dot] com because of the volumes of spam I was receiving. With the Google system, it has made it quite usable again.

I highly recommend it. If you want to check it out go to:

You will need to have the ability to modify your DNS settings to enable it properly.