Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

Today Google announced a new version Google Apps named Google Apps Premier Edition. Although I subscribe to the regular version currently I may switch to the Premier Edition since I now run a business.

My experience with Google Apps has been extremely positive. I love being able to separate my personal life from my business life while still using the Google’s great tools. While GMail is my favorite feature the other features are nothing to sneer at.

From a business perspective Google Apps just makes sense, especially if you run a small business. For email you used to register a domain, buy hosting, setup a mail server and bought/downloaded an email client. This was such a hassle, at least I always thought so. I want to spend my time performing tasks that make me money, not System Admin tasks that don’t. And that was for email, but what about other office tasks such as documents and spreadsheets?

For other office tasks, Google Docs is a nice solution although I don’t feel that it is truly ready for the enterprise yet. Don’t get me wrong, Google Docs is great for simple documents and spreadsheets but it does have its problems, all of which have been noted numerous times around the Internet. But when it comes to document sharing, Google does a great job! I’ve used it for a project (Shasradio) I’ve been working on and I plan on using for my consulting business.

Overall Google Apps is another great product from Google. I just have one piece of advice - remember to backup all of your information! Although Google promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee I don’t see any mention of a data guarantee.

Google Apps Premier Edition costs $50/year/user and provides a host of features, including an API. This has not been a paid advertisement, I just want to spread the Google Love.

With the release of the Neo1973 from NIC and the iPhone from Apple I start to wonder - why are there no interesting CDMA phones? Where I live CDMA providers such as Sprint and Verizon reign while GSM service is completely unreliable. So why no love for CDMA?

As for the iPhone I think the choice of GSM overe CDMA was purely a business move since Verzion rejected it. But what about the others?

I am not an EE expert but I think that creating a CDMA version of a phone would not be such a hard task. Are there licensing costs for CDMA that make GSM the cheaper solution? Does GSM have more market penetration? I don’t know, I should probably do the research.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Comments are open, so please let me know!

“This concept is an iPod dock that is actually part of a car stereo. The tape deck was modified to hold an ipod and dock it at the same time while letting your beats hit the stereo.”

In my opinion, this thoroughly rocks. I think the creator needs to write an article for MAKE magazine!

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Tonight is snowy in Sioux Falls and I’m a little bored. So I decided to write about some of my favorite podcasts.

• Geek Brief. A gadget oriented show by Cali Lewis and her husband Neil. Cali has a great personality and she’s great looking. Gadgets and a sweet, beautiful girl - what more could you want from a podcast? (Video).
• Mobuzz. A technology oriented show hosted by Karina Stenquist. She is another beautiful host, and she’s extremely intelligent. Her on-air banter is fantastic! (Video).
• This Week in Tech (TWIT). Another technology related show. The original cast is made up of the bastard children of TechTV, most notably Leo Laporte. Another regular on the show is John C. Dvorak. (Audio).
• FitPod. This an exercise related podcast that contains great music for getting you pumped up and keeping you going strong throughout your workout. Make sure you download “Fit&Run.” (Audio).

If you have a favorite podcast, email it to me at: zechariahs+podcast@gmail.com.

Read it and weep

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