Why I Love Google

Google's announcement of their free hosted apps is great. Not for the apps as much as the email. SearTech has been a part of the Google Email for Domains beta since around this time last year, and it's hard to think of using anything else now. For the previous 6 years before Google, I had hosted my own email, as well as email for people who needed websites in previous years. This was a nightmare. Although my web and database servers have had more or less 99% uptime (knock on blog), I was always having some sort of problems with email. And the various PHP web mail suites have nothing on GMail. The fact that Google is now giving all this away for free... well it will probably kill a few more small hosting businesses, but it's exciting for the rest of us.

Google needs to up their game though

The Web 2.0 Calendar game has gotten quiet since the sale of Kiko. I would love to just use Google's Calendar, it does pretty much everything I need. But here's the thing. Set an alarm or two in Google Calendar. Now, just open Gmail every day, but not the calendar. You'll never get the reminder! I have to go actually into the Calendar to get the reminder (at least it was this way the last time I messed with it). Open Google Docs And Spreadsheets, and it opens another window. Open a spreadsheet and ANOTHER window opens! To use the Google Office suite I have to have almost double the number of windows of MS Office. Google really needs to make it into a Suite, and not just add links to discontinuous programs in the email.