Moving to GMail on your iPhone

After moving from a hosted Exchange service to GMail, you need to set up your email client on the iPhone so that it will receive the push notices.

To do this, you need to add a new Exchange service on the device. There’s a nice step by step of this at http://support.google.com/a/users/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

Alternatively, you can use the standard GMail settings, on the iPhone, but my favorite approach is to actually use the GMail app from Google in the App Store. The reason I like that app over the standard iOS mail app is that it is much more of a true mobile client that takes advantage of the platform.

First get the App from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gmail-email-from-google/id422689480?mt=8

 

You can do this either from your iPhone/iPad directly, or using the iTunes store on your Mac/PC.

Once you have the app installed, you need to set up your GMail accounts. Either tap “open” from the App Store page about GMail, or find the GMail icon and launch it.

On launch the app will prompt you to log into your account. For a Google Apps account, this will be the email your administrator assigned you like rob@mydomain.com, and the password that you’ve set up previously by going to http://gmail.com.

Launching the App the first time takes you to the login page, where you can type in your email address and password. Note that this is the same whether you are logging in to a GMail account or a Google Apps account, to Google they are just different users as far as mail goes.

Once you log in, you will be shown the inbox for that account, and be able to read your email pretty easily. To navigate the folders (like sent, draft, etc), you tap on the little icon in the upper left corner that looks like a box with stacked bars.

This will cause the folders and settings pane to slide out from the left and reveal your email structure so that you can choose. Clicking on a particular folder will display that list in the same fashion as you saw with the inbox.

Additionally from this screen, you can add other email accounts by tapping on the profile area at the top of the pane, which slides the list of accounts down and changes the direction of the panel indicator at the top of the pane.

If you’ve already done this, you will see the list of accounts, and each one will be badged with the number of unread messages. Adding a new account is as simple as tapping the large plus icon and logging in. Tapping on a profile picture will switch you to that account once you are logged in.

The little gear icon in the upper right of this corner brings up settings for you email where you can set a few things (such as vacation responder, signature, etc).

Once you log into the new account, you will again see the loading page, this time with the image from the new account’s name and profile image

The next time that you go to the account selection page, you’ll see a list of accounts with the icon for each badged with the number of unread messages showing so that you can easily see what needs your attention at the moment.

Google apps on the iPhone are a mixed bag, with some being native, and others not, so it’s also a good idea to set up the Apple “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” for synchronization of those things (which can use the Exchange push in the same way as an actual Exchange server).

The best way to do this is to follow the instructions at http://support.google.com/a/users/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

First go to your settings (normally you can find this by clicking the home button on and looking for the gear icon that says “Settings”.

If you’ve previously added accounts, the “Add Account …” will appear below the existing account settings list (in my case I actually have to scroll in order to get to this button.

Tap on the add account button and you’ll be presented with the choice of types of account that you want to use. You can use GMail here, but I prefer to use Exchange simply because it pushes the information to the phone asynchronously

Once you tap on the Exchange button, you’ll get a new page that prompts you for the authentication information. This uses Microsoft’s autodiscover method to figure out how the account should be configured.

Type in the user name and password for your account here, and give it a description. Typically I use the name of the company that has the domain that I’m adding (for example PMI-SFBAC for my pmi-sfbac.org address).

Then click the “Next” button which should bring up the Domain screen. The only thing you need to make sure of is that the server ends up being m.google.com, and that you still have the right username and password. To continue,  tap “Next”.

The final step is to choose what you want to be pushed to your phone. Generally the important ones are the contacts and calendars, since those are business related.

It really doesn’t hurt to have Mail turned on as well, since that keeps your inbox in the iOS Mail app up to date, but if you’re worried about your data plan, just set up the contacts and calendars, since that is the part that the GMail app won’t really be as helpful with.

 

 

 

 

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Premium Plaxo for Comcast users …

I recently switched from DSL (which I’d had since it first was invented) to Comcast Cable for my Internet connection (and TV and phone). By doing so I saved about a hundred bucks a month over AT&T and DirecTV. Of course as soon as I switched, AT&T started calling me with a bundle that was roughly the same price, but that’s a different story.

One of the things that happened a while back was that Plaxo was bought by Comcast. I have always been a premium Plaxo user, feeling that I wanted to support them since I find the product so incredibly useful. What I learned was that if you are a Comcast subscriber, you are automatically a Plaxo premium user.

Now, being a premium subscriber used to only mean you got VIP support and access to a couple of tools (like the address and calendar deduplication tool). But now Plaxo has announced that the Outlook synch is a premium member only tool. While I worry that this decreases the value of the service (since there will be fewer reasons for people to sign up, therefore fewer members, and decreasing the number of automatic updates I get), what is interesting is that every Comcast subscriber gets access to these premium services.

To activate this, first you have to make sure that you are signed up for Plaxo through your Comcast email account. First, log in to your Comcast email by going to http://www.comcast.net and clicking on the Email link in the “My Comcast” portlet:

If you’re logged in already it will go straight to your email, otherwise you’ll get the login screen, where you need to log in:

Log in with your Comcast email address. This will be something like your last name and street address unless you’ve changed it. Once you have logged in, you’ll be at the Comcast email screen, which uses the Zimbra email client. From the tabs, you’ll want to choose the address book:

The first time you go to the address book, you’ll be asked to build your address book:

If you click on the “build your address book”, you’ll go to an initial Plaxo setup screen. Since they already have some of your information (name and email), they don’t have to ask you for anything but where you want to populate your address book from:

So now it gets interesting. If you click on Plaxo, you can link an existing Plaxo account to your Comcast email. If you were already a Plaxo user, this will get your current address book and calendar.

If you’re not already a Plaxo subscriber, you can choose one of the other options to build your address book by logging you in and pulling the address book from there:

Note that the GMail synch only works for accounts ending in “gmail.com“,  and not GMail accounts that are using Google Apps. I suspect that Yahoo accounts would also be restricted to “yahoo.com“, but I don’t know that for sure.

There’s a shortcut to signup to Plaxo immediately by simply going to http://www.plaxo.com/ftue/activateComcast, clicking the Activate button will get you set up:

This one does require you to fill in your name and basic information (or link to your existing Plaxo account by following the link at the bottom right). Either way, once you have the account linked, you are signed up and active as a premium member. Now not only can you set up synch points, but you can also install the Outlook synch tool on any computer you use.

Along the way the steps will ask you to update your address book, and if you want to invite your friends. I always skip that step, since I send my friends enough email already.

At the end, you can validate that you’re a premium member by clicking on “Settings” at the top right of the screen, and then choosing “Premium” from the list at the left:

This shows my account has premium status.

If you use Outlook, there’s a few more steps to get fully set up with the Outlook synch tool. There are multiple ways to get there, but ultimately you want to download the sync tool from http://www.plaxo.com/people/tools?src=tools

Note that you have access to all of these tools, some of which are very cool (like being able to roll back your address book). If you aren’t a Plaxo premium subscriber, you can download and install the tool, but you won’t be able to use it, since the synch verifies the account status when you run it for the first time.

Plaxo has a nice walkthrough of the install process here: http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/outlook?src=pulse_tools_outlook〈=en, so I won’t duplicate that. One thing that I did learn the last time I did this for somebody is that you have to install it with an account that has admin priviledges. The install won’t fail, but you just won’t get the Plaxo tool bar in Outlook.

Once the install completes, and you start Outlook up, it will walk you through a wizard that will sync your Outlook and Plaxo address books. From then on, you should see the Plaxo tool bar at the top of your Outlook screen:

There are lots of other neat things about Plaxo, not the least of which is that you can synch between multiple machines. There’s a version of Plaxo for the Mac, and it seems to do a fair job of interacting with the built-in Mac synch tools (including MobileMe).

I’d definitely recommend you take advantage of this “free” service if you are a Comcast internet subscriber.

Hey you get offa my cloud …

I’ve been using some of the more interesting “cloud” applications recently: Google Apps, Live Mesh and a few others.

I’m really impressed with the capablities and use of these free web applications. It’s a really interesting marketing tool as well: give away the low end product to build user acceptance, and then add a bit more to give value to the enterprise.

My first foray into the personal cloud was Google docs. This product has to be the coolest idea ever: create your documents on a web site, and let them be shared and simultaneously editable. The concept is awesome, and works really well for some documents (most notably spreadsheets). I can share a spreadsheet with any number of people, and they can all edit it at the same time.

Sort of like Netmeeting on steroids, I open my spreadsheet and there’s a little notification that somebody else is editing or viewing it. As they make changes, I see them in real time, and they see any changes I am making. Now the interface is not quite as friendly as Excel, but for most of the spreadsheet light users like myself, it’s more than adequate.

This is supposed to work for documents as well, but I’ve had less success with them (changes seem to get overwritten if more than one person updates at a time).

The other beauty of this is it effectively gives you a network storage for all of your documents, solving the problem of how to keep them safe and secure. I no longer have to worry (as much) about backing up my hard drive, since I know Google is taking care of the hardware. If a drive crashes there, they are ready with a failover, and I never even know that it was lost.

After using docs for a while, I also started playing with the other apps and found them all well thought out and useful. One of the main reasons that I had a Windows VM on my Mac was to support Outlook because of it’s tight Exchange integration, and ability to handle my calendar well. I combined Outlook with Plaxo to keep my various calendars and contacts in synch, and was very happy with this.

The bad thing about Outlook however is the way it stores its’ data: the dreaded PST file. They’re notoriously tempermental, extremely space wasteful, and difficult to back up. So I started trying other methods for dealing with email, including the built in mail client for Mac, and Entourage. None of these were as easy or as complete as Outlook.

Then I tried GMail‘s client. I’d had an account for years, but had never really tried the mail client. But as I thought things through, the benefits were clear: I get a huge amount of storage for my email, and I don’t have to worry about losing any history ever. I’ve lost years of email in a single PST or drive crash before.

At first I wasn’t convinced. The UI seemed cluttered, and I wasn’t a big fan of the way the conversations were threaded (in Outlook I used to categorize, and had lots of options for sorting folders just so). With GMail, everything is in a big pile, and you filter by tags. After a few weeks, another benefit became obvious: the fact that I could search for anything in my mail.

In Outlook, there was always a find feature, that if you could get it to work, took a very long time. Worse, it wasn’t possible to search across different mail accounts unless you added some search add-on. I had been using Google Desktop for this for some time, which worked well as long as the index had seen the message I was looking for (it only indexes message as they are opened, so when they get archived the search may find them, but you can’t get to them because it’s pointing to the wrong place).

With GMail, everything is indexed, no matter where it is. And interestingly, this also includes your instant messages, so if I remember I talked to Warren about something, I can search for it and GMail will find it in both my email and chat conversations with him. And when I look at a message, it shows me the whole thread of the conversation, with the bits that match the search expanded, making it easy to put the whole thing in context.

So now I’ve got free document storage, free email with more storage than I’ve ever used (a PST with 10 years of email had to be split because it was over a gigabyte in size, yet contained less than a hundred megabytes of data). I don’t have to manage my email any more than to tag it in ways that are useful to me (and I can tag it for multiple things, and there is still only one copy of the message to worry about, unlike with folders where you had to have two copies if you wanted to categorize things that way).

So how does Google monetize this? Well, it turns out they have an enterprise version that they sell for $50 per year per user. Compare that with the cost of hosting Exchange, and a file server, and you have a no brainer for most small enterprises. And even for the standard version, they let you use it for free for up to 50 users, so a SMB can get started for even less than the $50 per user.

Considering the Microsoft equivalent functionality would require the full Office suite, and Exchange server, and some collaboration server, you’d be looking at an outlay of a few hundred dollars per user. The clear win here is that you’ve now got a suite that works for the home user, and can also be used effectively by business users. Google wins on the marketing front, leveraging the lessons of open source to gain customer base and entry into the enterprise market.

Next: Live Mesh …