To some folks, Microsoft Outlook Notes and Tasks are an important part of their Outlook environment, and depend on them almost as heavily as email, calendar, and contacts.
Google Apps syncs email, calendar, and contacts, but does not sync notes and tasks. This is an issue if you have Outlook on multiple computers, as running Google Sync for Outlook everywhere is a vital and convenient way to keep all Outlook installations up to date across all computers, except for notes and tasks that is!
Notes and tasks do remain available in Outlook on the computer where you’ve migrated to Google Sync for Outlook, only because the migration import process brings them across to your Outlook’s local profile into your local .PST file on your computer. However notes and tasks do not sync to your Google Apps account in the Google “cloud”. So there is no way to see Outlook notes and tasks when you sign in to your Google Apps account from a web browser.
Right about now you are looking at the great Tasks app in your Gmail environment and asking why can’t we sync from/to Outlook Tasks? No can do at this time.
So now we’ve established if you use Outlook with Google Apps Sync on two or more computers (say, a desktop at work and a laptop at home), notes and tasks you create on one computer won’t be available in Outlook when you open your Google Apps profile on the other computer. What to do?
Easy. Use the Bunch of Cowboys Funambol Sync Service for Outlook. Simply install a lightweight Outlook add-in configured to connect to Bunch of Cowboys Sync Services for Outlook Notes and Tasks. You’ll have the same Notes and Tasks everywhere, just like Google Apps email, calendars, and contacts.
Download and install the Funambol Outlook client, and contact us to take advantage of free access to the Bunch of Cowboys Funambol Outlook Notes and Tasks Sync Server. Your Notes and Tasks will no longer be Google Sync for Outlook’s poor cousins!
The building blocks continue to fall into place. Google Apps is and has been pimped out with Blackberry Enterprise Server for some time, where those with Blackberry handsets can use built-in BlackBerry applications to access their Google Apps email, calendar, and contacts.
Only now do I enthusiastically say Blackberry handsets with Google Apps is a winner. I wanted to eat my own dogfood first before expressing my view. My iPhone has now been replaced by a Blackberry Bold 9000, and I’m happily having a crackberry party on the Google Apps Connector for Blackberry Enterprise Server platform.
I’d forgotten what a seamless, efficient, yes addictive experience the Blackberry handset is. Basically it still owns in this space. iPhones with all their comprehensive mobility dominance still can’t touch Blackberry mobile messaging.
For business users it is an absolute revelation to have an easy to use mobile device with great keyboard, and super quick access to relevant messaging functionality, i.e. compose, type, and send! Hands up anyone who are demoralized everytime they consider the effort of typing and sending an email on their mobile. Me too.
Research in Motion I believe are still the only handset manufacturers who know how to eliminate the steely resolve level motivation needed for using mobile phones to send email.
Try a Blackbery, because as a Google Apps user - you can. I’d be surprised if you don’t experience the same emotions as I have over the last month!
Google Apps Premier Edition’s Google Sync gets a friendlier GAL (Global Address List). Previously GAL functionality required administrators to configure a registry key, and generate/deploy XML files to every computer running Google Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Not the simplest exercise to go through just to have a Global Address List, which really should be “in the box” like any corporate e-mail competitor.
The new Google Sync 1.18 update puts the GAL “in the box” where it belongs. The updated GAL contains, users, groups, and contacts uploaded through the shared contacts API. It will also include name, email address, and telephone number (apparently support for additional data is in development). The GAL, updates automatically, and is searchable.
You can’t kiss those registry keys goodbye just yet if you upgrade.
You will need to remove the registry key previously set, or set a new registry key. See here for details on the Google Apps Updates Blog.
Business messaging (e-mail, calendaring, contacts, tasks) is the short-listed core service for all businesses. E-mail goes down and the hallways reverberate, or these days more likely the open-plan office echoes with CEO level down asking what the …
Money and resources are thrown at keeping e-mail delivery humming along. Budgetary planning for messaging has adjusted, bean-counter pupils barely dilate when IT managers talk messaging costs.
Can you pick the moment when IT messsaging infrastructure and service delivery became a core competency and focus for your business? Are you aware your business, regardless of whatever it is you are actually meant to be doing, is now officially in the e-mail service provider business?
You’ve mastered the technically difficult and resource-shifting skills in messaging. You are savvy with mailboxes, mobile e-mail, archiving, server utilization, DAS/SAN/NAS storage, virus filtering, and spam filtering.
Why? What was it your business does again?
Not entirely fair of me to position increasingly superfluous messaging infrastructure in this light, when just a few years ago email hosting providers did’nt have the business features and integration compared to internally hosted Exchange and Lotus Notes servers. Nor did you have the bandwidth, or quite sensibly the urge to lead the way.
Still, the main point is to seriously evaluate SaaS solutions for messaging. Certainly business features and capabilities are now competitive with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.
Why run your sideline messaging service provider business any longer than absolutely neccessary?
Just saw on SBS a documentary from the UK titled “How to live to 101 without really trying”. The documentary introduced three locations - Okinawa, Loma Linda CA, and Sardinia, where people live longer than anywhere else on earth. In fact doctors have dedicated their lives to uncovering the secrets of their remarkable longevity.
Fascinating stuff even in the absence of any secret special sauce. Nope, no elixar with secret ingredients guarded by the locals.
Genetics are a biggie. Okinawans look to have an interesting twist on a certain gene. Other families we met during the documentary are notable for generation after generation of cheap public transport pass carriers who refused to shuffle off this mortal coil until well after quitting time. All the usual suspects play a part. Diet - eat both better and less, lots of sprinting up and down goat tracks, and offspring payback (ok made that last one up).
Also on the short list in all examples of delayed exit scenarios was stress management. While not as exciting a reveal as say genetic advantages from alien/Nephilim cozying up back in the day, it really connected with me.
Okinawans have a saying that translated to “don’t worry, it will work out”. The Loma Linda CA are Christians with a similar faith based attitude, and the Sardinians … not sure really, but they certainly looked relaxed with all those Italian reds.
It has always been a thing with me that professionally managed I.T. services dramatically reduces business owner and staff stress. Customer stress removal is an important indicator of success for me.
Once again, not that we need reminding - stress is a big deal, and stress management strategies are incredibly important.
Take your I.T. service & support business and add a whopping great dose of highly evolved best practices - all aligned around the single idea - lets fix everything wrong with yesterday’s model of reactionary break/fix I.T. services.
Named Bunch of Cowboys to bounce of the highly conservative systematic nature of I.T. Managed Services methodologies. That is a good thing by the way. I know it is an obvious clarification. You want your I.T. service provider to be diligent, responsive, reliable, highly skilled and experienced, lots of certifications, forward looking strategic planner, cutting edge but carefully conservative, with great integrity and killer service ethic. Its ok to be dull if you cover off these criteria and everyone is happy.
Only we are human and dull does’nt cut it if you’ve got to be these attributes everyday! So please welcome the new BIGDY business - Bunch of Cowboys I.T. Managed Services.
http://www.bunchofcowboys.com
I’m starting to see our cloud based utility computing future more as a fluid amorphous business rules-based moving target.
I’m thinking about the implications of ubiquitous fast bandwidth and virtualization working in concert to enable all of our personal and business information to be perpetually on the move.
If bandwidth becomes both widespread and super (sophisticated technical term for “very”) fast then there is no cloud! Just pervasive computing. The coverage area for access to and management of your information extends inside and outside your home and your business. The location of your information slips between internal (relative to you) and external nodes based on whatever criteria makes sense to you. Backup, your location, utilization thresholds, paranoia, whatever.
How do you think the large scale utility providers will manage utilization peaks and troughs for their web-based services? I’m imagining Vmware VMotion type technology on a grand scale. The dynamic migration of virtual machines to utility nodes able to supply SLA dictated CPU, IO, bandwidth, and memory for the expected performance.
There goes the original understanding of cloud computing, where your stuff sat somewhere in the cloud.
Not a lot of sitting going on I’d say. Your data is on the move.
