Eli the Computer Guy

Archive for the ‘Google Apps’ Category

GDocBackup is a great little utility that allows you to download all of the documents out of Google Docs.  It is the only one I know of that allows you to download all of your documents.  It is free and seems very stable although it’s still a beta.

If you want to backup your documents out of Google Docs you should take a look at it at http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup

As of this morning Eli the Computer Guy had made the transition to a non-Microsoft office.  I believe that Google Apps provides all of the services necessary for the average user at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft Office and without the nightmare in technical support problems.

We are currently alpha testing Google Apps and will provide a full review after we have been using it a few weeks in a production environment.

I believe that this will be one of the first steps in relegating Microsoft to being a small component of our software solutions and not the dominant player that it now is.

If you are interested in using Google Apps for your business you can check it out at http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/editions.html .

We will be offering migration consulting and services once we verify that everything works properly.

First Update:

To upload your current Outlook mail to Gmail use the Gmail Uploader Utility at  http://mail.google.com/mail/help/email_uploader.html .  This migrates all of your mail up to Gmail.

To Sync your Calendar and Contacts with a Microsoft Smart Phone follow these instructions: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138636&topic=14299 .

Second Update

Everything is working pretty well.  The Gmail Uploader Utility worked like a champ on all my guys computers.  We had absolutely no problems.

The Calendar and Contact Sync was a bit awkward to setup, but one it was up and running it works well.  My advice is to turn on the sync feature within Google a day before you try to setup your smart phone.  We had some problems because we thought we were messing up the smart phone configuration, and it was simply Google was taking its sweet time after I turned on the sync feature within the Domain Control Panel.

The first really frustrating down side is that you cannot wild card search within your email. (i.e. type in "bob" if you are trying to find emails from "billybobob".)  Not even the age old * does anything.

I was very happy that one of my guys showed me the way to publish Google Docs directly to my blog.  It’s a pretty simple process.

What you do is:

1. Click the "Share" button in the upper right hand corner of your Google Docs screen with the document you want to publish open
2. Select "Publish as a Web Page"
3. Select "Post to Blog"