Google has had it’s critics. Many people point at privacy concerns and say that you should stay away from any Google services. I am not one that believes that at all. I really believe everyone should sign up for a Gmail account. Before I go further, I need to mention a disclaimer that I do have investment’s in Google.

Why should everyone have a Gmail account? Webmail is th best way to go. The cloud is the future. The future is now.

I have used Gmail for many years. It stores all my email, contacts and calendar. I use it on a daily basis. I forward all my domain email accounts to Gmail and then I use Gmail to manage that email.

Why do I believe everyone should use a Gmail account. The following are many reasons why:

1. Gmail is free so their is not extra cost.

2. Calendar’s can be shared with other Gmail users. I share my calendar with Kelli so she know what my after work schedule is. We use the shared calendars to help manage our lives togeather.

3. Smart Phone Integration is one of Gmail’s strong suites. With most smart phones all you need to do is to enter your gmail address and password and it automatically loads in your email, contacts and address book. That makes your setup really easy.

4. Gmail’s spam filters are some of the best. The spam filters get better as you use Gmail more.

5. Gmail is based in the cloud. This means you can access your email from any computer which has Internet access.

6. Gmail has free pop/imap and Smtp access. I often read and reply to my Gmail using Thunderbird. It make’s my life easier at times.

These are my six reasons why a Gmail account is a must. Why do you think everyone should use Gmail?

Google made a big announcement today. The announced Google Buzz. In case you missed the announcement, see the Google video below:

This week I took what a lot of people would figure I would never do. On my primary pc at home I made a complete move away from any Microsoft applications. As of now I am not running one Microsoft application. The move I made to Google last week made this an even easier decision to make. I have now made the move to Ubuntu a version of desktop Linux for my main machine at home.

Several Factors which contributed to this move were as follows:

1. Cost
2. Computer Security.
3. Learning more and being open minded.
4. Can I do what I do on my pc without Microsoft?
5. What I Currently run on my pc.

Let’s take a look at each of the above factors and explain why they contributed to my move.

1.0 Cost

Cost is a real easy one to discuss. Ubuntu is free. Windows 7 will run about $199.00 for home premium. This does not even get into the software costs. I no longer am using Microsoft Office 2007 at home which means I do not need a license. I am using all open source applications which means they are free:) This is not really a big departure from what I using before since I use mostly use open source applications.

2.0 Computer Security

Linux is less prone to viruses and spyware. The reality is their are less people writing them for Linux. I also am no longer running Outlook/IE which means I am not prone to Active X based exploits.

3.0 Learning More and Being Open Minded

I have been in the technology business for 22 years. One of the reasons why is to learn more. I am constantly learning and exploring my options. This is what I like most about what I do. My brain is always turning and I have a constant thirst for information and knowledge. In order to learn you need to extend your knowledge without certain basis. I really believe I am open minded.

I am not really interested in the Linux vs Mac vs PC fight and wares. What I am interested in is having the right tool at the time to get the job at hand done.

4.0 Can I do what I do on my pc without Microsoft?

The answer to this question is YES I can. Last week I moved my email back to a Gmail back end and this took my dependency away from Microsoft since I no longer need Microsoft Exchange. On the operating system side both Ubuntu and Windows are graphical so not a big change for me. It is all point and click.

In terms of word processing for me Open Office is as good as Microsoft Office so I will not miss the extra features features in MS Office.

5.0 What I currently Run

I was running mostly open source applications in the Windows environment. Most of these applications also have Linux versions so this has not been an issue. Even Google Chrome which is my web browser of choice has a Linux version available for it.

In summary these are the reasons I have gone to Ubuntu. In the next couple of weeks I will also be setting up a Ubuntu home server as well. Their is a learning curve when I moved to Ubuntu. Even for someone like myself who has a large IT background. That all said I still believe it was the best choice for me.

In the last week I made two big moves in my personal computing universe. The moves all concern Google. One will shock readers of my blog and the other one probably will not.

For the last year I have used a Microsoft Exchange Server on my web hosting provider as my email back end. This past week I moved my email back end from an exchange server to a Google Gmail back end. The big question is why would I do this? Their are several reasons I moved my email. They include cost, cloud integration, security and consolidation.

Cost is the easiest one to talk about. I was paying 1and1 $7.00 a month x 2 for two hosted exchange accounts for Kelli and I. That translates into a $14.00 per month, $168 per year. This does not count the conversion from US to Canadian Dollars since I live in Toronto. Gmail is free:)

Cloud Integration makes the perfect sense. I have been moving a lot of things I do to Internet/Cloud based applications over the last while. The Cloud is the future do to portability. I can access my data anywhere via my Iphone, my home pc, my IPhone, my friends pc you name it. I live such a busy lifestyle that portability and data accessibility are is major issues for me. Having my data in the Cloud works well and email is no exception.

Security is a good one. A lot of people will argue that Microsoft Exchange is more secure than Gmail. I should first off indicate that security does not just include login in security but also security from viruses and worms. Microsoft Exchange is prone to Active X based viruses. By not using Exchange/IE I am not at the same risk for email viruses. It should also be noted that Gmail has better junk mail filters than Microsoft Exchange. As a result you are not prone to as much junk mail as you got before.

Consolidation is an easy one to talk about. Google is one of of the King’s on the internet. I already use Google Docs, YouTube, Picasa on line, Google Search, Google Reader and soon to be Google Wave. All these services are integrated and use the same Google Id which makes my life real easy. Since the services are Integrated they work very well together as well.

I had mentioned their as a second thing I did last week. I have now made the latest release of Google Chrome my number 1 Internet browser. All the flash problems have been fixed so it makes life much easier. Google Chrome is now faster for the web services I use. Firefox seems to run slower. Chrome’s seamless integration with Google services make it a even more attractive browser to use.

In the last week the move to Google Gmail and Google Chrome has made my Internet experience a much faster experience.

In cloud computing their is one real dominate company in the market. That dominate company is Google. Google started out as a search company but today they are the masters of the cloud and offer many great cloud applications. They are in social media,email and even word processing.

A lot of this technology Google has not developed. What they have done is purchase companies which have developed great technology and re-branded it as their own.

Google has many great offerings as follows:

1. Gmail
Gmail is Google’s killer application. This is their email client which can be accessed from anywhere. The
nice thing about gmail is it support’s many different platforms. Gmail is available on a traditional pc as well
as Windows Mobile, The IPhone, The Blackberry and the Android.

What helps with Gmail is that you can sync your data from the cloud with your mobile device and your
pc using a large variety of free software which Google provides.

This is all available for free for the basc email which is the most that people need. Gmail also allows you
to use free pop3/smtp and imap. All for no charge.

2. Google Docs

Google now has a word processor and a spreadsheet available for free all online. If you are on a netbook
this is a great way to access basic features. Google docs now accesses Office 2007 files with full
compatibility.

3. Picasa Online

Picasa is Google’s online photo storage on the cloud. I use it for storing all my photo’s on the Internet. In my opinion it is the best Photo storage application on the web. Picasa interfaces with desktop client’s as well as mobile phone client’s.

4. Google Voice

A number of years ago Google bought a voice application called Grand Central. The nice thing with Google Voice is it stores your voice mail messages in the cloud. It allows people to contact you using one phone number and it is fully portable. Unfortunately all the features are not available yet in Canada.

5. Blogger

Blogger is Google’s blog platform. I used it before I moved to a wordpress site. It is easy to use and very popular.

6. You Tube

You Tube is Google’s cloud based video sharing/storage application. I personally find YouTube easy to use and easy to search. Google is very popular especially with the younger crowd. My son watches more You Tube then tv these days. He is 17 and at that age. I can even watch You Tube on my IPhone.

7. Google Wave

It is interesting to see how this pans out. Google Wave will be Google’s biggest social media application. Where Google Wave pans out is to be seen since it is still in Beta.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. Google is king in the cloud application game. In the next year Google will eventually expand it’s cloud application base to even possibly include Twitter.

A really good source of information for finding about Google in the cloud is the Google’s Blog

I have changed my back end for my email away from Gmail back to my web hosting provider. It has a little to do with gmail and some third party software I was using but a lot to do with how Rogers does things. Yes dealing with the large company is what fun again in my life – not.

Today I received a text message saying I was over my data package limit for Rogers(I knew I was close to the limit) but not only that I was paying a $50.00 overage this month. Geez I use my data plan mostly for email(some calendar syncing) and the odd web browsing. What makes this all interessting is that I was supposed to have unlimited email to certain domains on my Rogers mobile account for $15.00 per month. One of these domains was gmail. This was one of the big reasons I forwarded all my email to gmail. The other is to share my calendar with Kelli so she knows what my schedule is because it is all over the place.

Rogers informs me I have the $15.00 a month plan and the unlimited email to certain domains was a promo(if I had knowen that I would have gone to another data package orginally) ab=nd now I was limited to 2mb of data storage which is not much per month.

At the same time I have had the fustrating expereince of trying to keep my contact list in sync. The third party utility I use called Syncmycal does a great job of syncing the google calendar’s across platforms but sometimes has issues with the contacts. As a matter of fact most third party google applications have issues with the contact sync. Google does not offer a contact sync for Windows Mobile directly. Just for the Blackberry. So I know have a sort of messed up address book.

So with an issue from Rogers and an issue with Google(free is free) I pondered my next move.

I turned to my web hosting provider. They offer an open source version of MS exchange. MS exchange is the Microsoft product which most people use as a back end for their email services. To add to it nicely they also offer technology which allows me to push my outlook contacts/tasks/calendar and keep it in sync with what I have on my hostings provider’s server. This sync’s my contact list rather nicely.

The only issue I am having is I am having a little problem with their mobile connect software but I am waiting with an email back from my technical support rep. It will get sorted oout in the morning – no thanks to Rogers.

In the end I switched to the $25.00 data plan with Rogers which gave me 500MB of Data a month more then I will ever need.

Well yesterday it seems Gmail had a bit of an outage.According to the Gmail blog their were issues for several hours. According to the Gmail blog, the issue are now resolved.

Gmail Blog Story on Gmail Issues.