Category: google

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Business google

email Gmail Google+

Following on from my previous comments re emailing to Google+ connections not working it now is. I’ve just sent someone an email. I already had their email address but presumably not in that Gmail Contacts list. So Gmail offered to send the email to the person’s Google+ account. Just made it quicker for me.

I’m starting to use contact details from multiple social platforms now. Earlier this afternoon sent someone an email to an address they had in their LinkedIn profile.

What’s not to like?

Ciao

bebe

Categories
Business engineering google social networking

Google Apps update – trefor.net is now working

trefSince Monday I’ve been trying to set up a Google Apps for Business account for trefor.net. I kept getting rejected with a message saying that “the domain trefor.net was already in use”.

I was using it via my personal gmail account – picking up trefor.net emails pulled from my Timico POP3 mailbox. Deleted any reference to trefor.net in my personal mailbox then when Google continued to reject my efforts to register a new apps account I discovered you have to wait 24 hours for “things to filter through the system”.

Over 24 hours later it still didn’t work and I made a comment to this effect on Twitter. Twitter is a truly powerful networking tool.  @AndyCDoyle offered to help and this lunchtime, having started to raise a ticket with Google, he found that there was already a Google Apps account for trefor.net. Funnily enough it was one I registered meself years ago. I’d totally forgotten about it.

A password reset came through to the recovery email address, my own personal gmail account,  and hey presto I was up and running. Ish. It does take time to learn how to navigate your way around and I can see why a business might want to contract the setup out to an IT consultant.

One thing that flummoxed me was that in all the help guides it says you have to verify that the domain is yours. None of the relevant fields appeared on my screen so either I had already done it (certainly don’t recall that which I’m beginning to find out perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise) or when I signed up for Google Apps you didn’t need to do that step. I suspect the former is true.

Setting up email was easy. I just had to modify the Timico hosted zone files so that the MX records pointed at 5 google servers. Once that was done it worked straight away. Simples. I can now add aliases to my heart’s content and because the account was set up before Google started charging it’s all free. Result!

It would appear that I can have up to ten users in the free account which is going to do me for the forseeable future. Not figured out how much storage I get yet but I have over 100GB in my other account thanks to me buying a Chromebook so that should be fine for a couple of years.

I’ve already set up some aliases including one for use in tradeshow registrations that is automatically filtered and archived 😉

Important to make a bit of progress every day and this is progress.

PS As you may have noticed at the top of this post I’m experimenting with new profile pics. Have managed to change my personal gmail pic but struggling with  one for the new trefor.net account. Keeps telling me the jpg photo is an invalid file. Google Apps is great for many things but it ain’t perfect and seems to have plenty of bugs that need kluges to work around. Not figured out a kluge for the profile pic yet.

PPS big thanks to Andy Coyle. Was surprised to hear he has a broad Mancunian accent. Shouldn’t have been because he lives in Manchester but that’s Twitter for you. Andy there will be a beer waiting for you when I come up for UKNOF27. Also you might want to think about using his services especially if you are in the Manchester area. His website is here.

Ciao all.

Categories
Business google

New business bank accounts for startups and problem with Google Apps for Business domain

Went to open a business bank account yesterday. It’s not opened yet. There are hoops to jump through, despite the fact that I have been with the same bank since I was a kid.

In fact the business bank manager was able to do nothing apart from record the details of the new business. Approval has to be gained by some examining committee or other. He couldn’t even look online to see what trefor.net was all about. There is no internet access at the bank. Quite a good thing really when you think about it.

It’s all about money laundering. I had the same issues in having to prove who I was at the accountant and the lawyers. In fact the lawyer, Helen, told me they had to reauthenticate my identity every three years. I guess a lot could change in three years. I might have a sex change. It isn’t without precedent in this industry.

My main concern in seeing the bank manager was the charges. As a start up it’s free for 18 months which is good. However preparing already for the future I had taken a quick skeet online to see what it would cost eighteen months hence. The numbers weren’t particularly attractive. Looking a bit closer whilst in at the bank I found that online banking was pretty much free. I don’t plan on doing much non online banking. It reaffirms that everything needs to be online and automated.

When starting Timico one of the first things we did was to take on an accountant, also coincidentally called Helen (highly efficient and top operator 😉 ). Pretty much everything is going to be outsourced at trefor.net so I’m intitially doing it all myeslf. I imagine the only skills we will really need will be editorial and web development (see ad – if you know anyone we are hiring).

Anyway the banking ball is rolling. Next up VAT  number.

The other bit of “progress” yesterday was to get an advert up on the Lincoln University graduate jobs board. I like the idea of creating local jobs. A developer could in theory work from anywhere. Anywhere with a decent internet connection and as long as it was within reasonable reach of Greenwich Mean Time. I want the developer to be in the same room as me. Ideas grow when you can bounce them off people.

trefor.net is actually going to be a partnership. More about Matt, the other partner, later. Sometime over the Christmas break Matt and I met in a pub for lunch and to work on the spec for the forthcoming website refresh. We sat next to each other working on the same document on our own laptops. We chatted about the content we could see in front of us and each made changes to the doc in real time based on our discussion.

Now this is also doable remotely using hangouts and video conferencing but on that occasion it suited us to “do lunch”. Google Apps is looking like an invaluable set of tools for us and trefor.net will be using a Google Apps for Business account.

In theory this is straightforward to set up. However in practice it hasn’t been so. This is because I already had  the trefor.net domain associated with my personal gmail account. After an initial flurry of investigation following a message that told me “this domain is already in use” I figured out a plan.

Stop mail forwarding from Timico’s mail servers & access mail via webmail interface, delete all references to trefor.net on my gmail account, set up domain in new Google Apps For Business Account and repoint Timico mail servers at that mailbox. Turns out Timico wasn’t forwarding the mail but Gmail was pulling it from the POP3 mailbox.

What’s more having done all this Google still wouldn’t let me set up the new account with that domain. Now I find I have to wait 24 hours. So tonight’s job will again be setting up the google Apps for Business account. In principle we could get away without a business account but I want the ability to manage multiple aliases from one gmail account.

One of the things that’s put me off email after nearly ten years at Timico is the amount of “legitimate” spam that comes through. With the new business I will be using a specific alias for all online registrations which I can then filter into a separate folder away from harms way and my line of sight.  I know that some people use different specific email aliases for different registrations so that they can see who is selling the contact database. I’d be interested in hearing any results of doing this. Naming and shaming.

Got to go. VAT number to sort out. Ciao.

Categories
Business Cloud google

Google Docs is down – long live Google Docs?

google docs is downGoogle Docs is down. This is not good news for people who rely solely on the cloud for their services. I wonder what the likes of the Telegraph.co.uk do in these circumstances. They have deadlines to meet. Presumably their actual newspaper publishing is independent of Google  Docs. Be interested in understanding people’s strategy for coping.

Btw those opeing lines sound very dramatic – Google Docs is down – almost like “the king is dead” but different. I heard about it at approx 14.20 today. Lets see how long the outage is. I doubt I’ll be looking when it comes back up but if anyone notices could they please let me know.

Ta

atb, Tref

Categories
Apps End User google mobile apps

plot lost with sat nav plotted route?

Timico logo on fleeceI’ve been driving around the country a fair bit recently although by and large it is still easier to catch the train. I’ve even been using the Google Navigation on my Galaxy S3 so I must be visiting places I’ve never been before.

The funny thing is I’ve found that when I’m in the car I have started talking to the sat nav person. When he says “turn left now” I say ok got that thanks!!! I even do it when I’m not on my own in the car!!! Am I losing the plot or is this normal behaviour? My friends need to tell me though I’m not sure there is a cure.

When I’m out and about I also usually wear a Timico polo shirt or fleece. I’ve found that staff at the coffee counter think I’m driving a truck. I quite like this. The romantic notion of the freedom of the road.

When I were a lad I hitchhiked from Greece to London. One lorry gave me a lift the whole way. I was very lucky. He even got me signed on the ferry as a co driver. The guy behind the desk was very suspicious & didn’t believe him. I had a goatee beard, a collarless shirt and wore a leather hat. I still got onboard and even had a free driver’s meal. Happy days.

That’s all folks.

Categories
Cloud End User google

Dropbox or Google+

I’ve noticed I keep being given free space extensions in Dropbox. I’ve just realised all my photos are being uploaded there. That means I’m uploading to both Google+ and Dropbox, using wifi only.

I don’t mind this as long as Dropbox keeps extending the space. I’m not aware they provide unlimited storage aka G+ but hey. I did find a real use for Dropbox recently when my S3 battery stopped charging. The USB port was only intermittently visible & I couldn’t move files across the the laptop.  I shifted some “important” stuff into Dropbox before the battery finally went and I now still have those files. I also used Google Drive.

It probably doesn’t make sense to use both but for the moment it’s easy enough to do and I haven’t hit any problems.

That’s all…

Categories
Apps End User google

email “like” buttons

I have just decided that someone needs to invent the email “like” button. When someone sends you an email saying, for example, “that was a great blog post Tref” it is a real waste of everyone’s time and effort to reply saying “thanks very much”.

Really what we need is a means of communicating back a thumbs up or a like without the original sender having to open the email just to read the word “thanks”.

Simple.

Categories
Business Cloud google

Parsing Google Internet Economy Report

web front end for plumbersYesterday’s Google sponsored report on the internet economy naturally received huge media coverage. In 2009 the UK Internet economy was worth £100Bn (7.2% GDP), was growing at 10% a year and directly employed 250,000 people.

All good stuff for us that work in this economy especially the fact that the UK is now the largest per capita e-commerce market. You can read the report itself for more detail. The biggest message for me is that unless businesses have embraced this economy they will not remain competitive.

For example the engineers in the Timico office, workaholics as they are, regularly order take away meals online. If there are two pizza businesses in town it is the one with the ecommerce website that will get most of this business (unless of course they have spent all their money on the website and none on product development).

Continue reading “Parsing Google Internet Economy Report”
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Apps End User google spam

Gmail Priority Inbox – why wouldn’t you use it?

My email experience is a divided one. I use Microsoft Outlook for work stuff and I use gmail for play. Actually that isn’t entirely true as trefor.net uses gmail but that is a kind of hybrid work/play site.

New in at Google is the Gmail Priority Inbox which prioritises your mails for you. Google’s anti spam service is probably the best in the business and I never get spam on trefor.net (in all fairness the service used by Timico is also pretty good but I never get spam using gmail).

This is because Google has such a fantastic antispam engine and because it carries so many mails on a daily basis that it learns very quickly what is and isn’t a spam mail.

This same learning process is applied to the new Priority mailbox service. When I signed up for the service Google ran a test on existing emails in my inbox and to my amazement it was spot on. It deprioritised mails from Facebook, for example, and marked blog comments awaiting moderation as important.

As I use it I know it will also get better.

Google ad over.

Categories
Business Cloud google

Some Clouds are Better than Others

I’ve been thinking about clouds. It’s a very trendy thing to do at the moment. It’s something you notice about trade shows. A trade show will evolve its name in line with what the organisers think will bring in the punters.

For example in the UK “VoIP for Business” became “VoIP for Business incorporating Unified Communications” which then became “Unified Communications”. I fully expect Unified Communications to morph into “Unified Communications with cloudy bits”. It will probably be the same underlying list of exhibitors.

Anyway the popularity of the cloud buzzword is of course because the world is moving into the cloud. The cloud is still for most an ethereal place that is difficult to get the grey matter around. It appears on the advertising copy of so many vendors how do you decide how to take advantage of it. This is the case whether you are an end user, a business or a potential provider of cloud services.

Consumers will use a few branded services such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. Business however needs something different, even it is just a better service level. So at the moment I think the business world is manoeuvring to understand how the bits of the fluffy jigsaw fit together.

They will end up dealing with specialist cloud integrators. This will provide the differentiation and some clouds will definitely stand out as being better than others.

As it stands you need to be able to keep your feet on the ground and head just above the clouds so that you can look around and see where these better clouds are starting to form 🙂