Synchronizing Google Apps with Your Desktop

Wed, 01/16/2008 - 10:17am — Chris Shipley

How might Google Apps benefit your nonprofit?

It's free.

"Wait!" you protest. "That's it? It's free? That's all you have to say about it?" The simple answer is yes. Here's why:

Unlimited email accounts.
Absolutely fantastic anti-spam technology.
Available anywhere you can get access to the Internet and a Web browser.
Easy calendar-sharing with others at your organization.

One of the potential downsides to Google Apps is that if you can't get access to the Internet, you can't read or write email or look at your calendar. However, there are ways around this. Google Apps offers both POP3 and IMAP interfaces with its email, allowing you to download local copies of email to your computer. IMAP even goes a little further, synchronizing with the Google Apps server and marking what you've read on your desktop so that when you do use the Web, you don't have to guess what you've already replied to or not.

Google Calendar uses a published standard for synchronizing with your desktop called iCal. That's a standard that Microsoft Outlook still hasn't adopted (which is very frustrating to me), but here's a link to some open-source software that will allow you to manage that with a plugin (as of yet I have not personally tested this software).

Using IMAP (or POP3) and this calendar plugin, you may be able to still use Outlook, still synchronize with a mobile device (like a phone or PDA), and have great Web-accessible features.

If you don't need any of that, then the Web interface will work just fine for you and most of your Web-enabled phones, too (you may want to look into an unlimited data plan if you decide to use this).

There are other services available with Google Apps, like the documents and spreadsheets feature, which you may or may not find useful. Check them out and give them a go!

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