PhillipDade.com

I have now been using Google Apps Standard Edition for about 6 months having previously used the stand alone applications through a standard Google Account. I have to say I am very please with the service I have received.  Gmail provides a superb method of sorting, filtering and labelling emails, Google Calendar is excellent and Google Docs & Spreadsheets are great for producing simple documents without the complexity within Microsoft Office.

The only tool that is missing from this collaborative suite is task management capabilities. However, Remember The Milk have resolved this with their superb Task Management Application. I currently use three of their applications to manage my personal and work tasks - Remember The Milk for Gmail, Remember The Milk for Google Calendar and MilkSync for Windows Mobile. The first two of the three applications are available with a free registration, MilkSync requires a Pro Account.

RTM for Gmail integrates excellently with Gmail, allowing you to manage tasks from your inbox, the application lets you relate tasks to contacts, managed priority, tags and labels among other things. You can also create tasks by ’starring emails’ and by adding labels. RTM for Google Calendar enables you to have the same management capabilities and task access from your Calendar.

Having recently acquired a HP iPAQ 514 Voice Messenger running the Windows Mobile 6 Operating System. I wanted to investigate ways of having mobile access to my Contacts, Calendar, Mail and Tasks - similar to that offered by Microsoft Exchange for a fraction of the cost. Having found the Milksync Application, this provided excellent integration and easy installation with scheduled sync available.

In order to Sync my Google Calendar to my new mobile device I had to look at other third party software as Google Mobile Calendar Sync currently supports only the Blackberry OS. Whilst Googling for such software, I came across OggSync. Oggsync have recently released a public beta version (4.07) of their Calendar Sync tool with added Contact sync functionality for Windows Mobile. Both Calendar and Contacts support two-way synchronisation. Again, there is limited functionality with the free account - you can only sync one Calendar with set intervals and you cannot sync contacts. However, I highly recommend, as I have, purchasing a subscription to this. I have found it to be a faultless application that just works and works well.

Having resolved my task management, calendar and contact sync issues my last item to address is mobile access to my emails. This is simple, Gmail offers IMAP email access, keeping all my read emails up to date.

The annual cost of this set up is $55 USD for one years access ($25 USD for the Remember the Milk Pro Account and $29.95 USD for the OggSync Subscription), just short of £30 GBP for two excellent bits of third party software and a superb collaborative package provided by Google. Compare this to approximately £100 GBP per annum for a hosted Microsoft Exchange Email account, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing are the front runners.