What is it?

Buzz sits very squarely in the social networking camp, allowing you to follow people, be followed by people, and post information that you think others may be interested in. In appearance it is like a mix between Twitter and email, although it allows posting of pictures and videos like Facebook. To paraphrase Tony Blair…it is the ‘third way’!

If you use Google Mail then the threaded comment interface will be familiar and comforting. If not then you may take a minute or two to get used to it, but it’s pretty accessible. You can link some external services to Buzz, including Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google Reader. Once linked, public-facing updates on those sites will also appear in your Buzz feed.

Currently, you need a Google Mail account to use Buzz. In time, those using the Google Apps suite will be included too, and there is a strong suspicion that Google may disentangle Buzz from Google Mail entirely and offer it as a separate service.

Should I use it?

If you are currently using Facebook and/or Twitter to try and generate awareness of your business and what it does, then the answer is a qualified ‘Yes’. There have been well-documented privacy issues with Buzz that have undoubtedly affected the initial enthusiasm and take-up of Buzz, but the general consensus is that Buzz is, for now, a bone fide rival to Facebook and Twitter and thus is worthy of consideration. I feel that Google have probably taken a deliberate step to release Buzz to Gmail users first. They tend to be Google-friendly and willing to put up with a few quirks if they feel that the rewards are good enough. Google Apps users are more business-focused, and so will be less tolerant of problems.  Once those groups are happy, I’m sure Google will feel more confident that the release to the general public has a good chance of succeeding.

OK, so how should I use it?

Good question! In fact, it looks like there are two ways in which you need to consider using Buzz. Firstly, you should think about using it like Twitter. Stuff you would normally Tweet, you should also Buzz (or link Buzz to Twitter so it happens automatically). If you Tweet about new blog posts (manually or automatically) then Buzz about them too. If you have a company Flickr feed or Picasa account, hook that up to Buzz so that new pictures get Buzzed too. Of course, you should have a ‘Follow me on Buzz’ link on your website too. In short, assume there is a community on Buzz that may be interested in what you have to offer.

The really interesting and different aspect to Buzz, though,  is in mobile awareness. Google has been very active in the mobile market space recently, between Android and the Nexus One handset. Unsurprisingly, Buzz works very well on Android handsets, and on the iPhone. When accessing Buzz this way, it automatically geotags your Buzzes, and allows you to see nearby Buzz users and Buzz posts. The theory being that localised and very temporary virtual communities spring up for Buzz users to participate in. Of course, if you are a retain business with any reliance on passing trade, then there is no reason why you can’t form one of those virtual communities to attract custom.

Localised virtual communities? What are they?

OK, let’s look at a possible scenario. Assume you run a pub in the middle of a small town. There are public footpaths through the town, but another pub gets much of the walking community’s custom by virtue of its physical location. Buzz may just be the tool to help you change that. You set up a Buzz feed, and make sure that your Buzzes are geotagged. Every so often, particularly before lunch and mid/late afternoon you post a Buzz publicising a special offer for member’s of any walking group (free half of bitter with any meal over £6, for instance).

Now all you need is for one member of a walking group approaching town to be an active Buzz user. When he/she checks Buzz on their mobile, nearby Buzzes will appear, including yours. Being a thrifty lot, the walkers will no doubt be attracted to your pub and you will gain customers that you would not have done otherwise. All this for the minute or two it takes you to create a Buzz.

The issue with that list, though, is that there isn’t necessarily a single browser representing each player. Go have a quick look at an excellent resource for web developers, BrowserShots. On here you will find a wider listing (although by no means totally comprehensive) of the available browsers, down to the different versions of each one on different OS’s. Putting in a website URL, you can choose in which browsers you want your site rendered. Taking Firefox on windows as an example, you could display your site in 0.9, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.5 and 3.6. Wow!

You might think that there is potential for a hell of a lot of work, making sure your site works as intended across the multitude of browsers out there. In fact, it’s not so bad. One thing that most of these browsers have in common is that they follow the prevailing standards (in HTML, CSS, etc) at the time they were released. Of course, the standards evolve over time, adding new functionality to support such goodies as Ajax, etc. This is one reason why you get major revisions of browsers rather than a gradual evolution. Therefore, if you create a site that utilised standards-compliant code, then you can be pretty sure that it will render properly, at least in the later versions of the major browsers.

In the past, though, there has been one exception to the standards-compatible path, and you may not be surprised to learn that it’s Microsoft’s baby, Internet Explorer. Microsoft has a history of, shall we say, promoting new standards, and in version 6 of Internet Explorer, released in 2001, there is much that treads a different path to its contemporaries. Delve deep into the code of any half-decent website and you are likely to find whole sections devoted to addressing IE6-specific rendering issues. For web developers, it’s an outright pain in the posterior!

But why bother, I hear you cry? Surely IE6 has been superseded by IE7 and now IE8? Well, actually, not as much as you might think. It’s a bit of a long story, but in essence it boils down to the fact that many large organisations, commercial and otherwise, have not upgraded their PC’s from XP to Vista. I know, it sounds a bit far-fetched, but hear me out.

Large organisations like to have standard ‘builds’ of the operating system and a set of supported applications for their PCs. They are then secured so that end users cannot easily add, change or remove applications. By doing this they achieve a couple of advantages. Firstly, if the PC breaks they just replace it with another PC with a standard ‘build’, and the user is back up and running in minutes rather than days. Secondly, they can test the standard application set to death to make sure that all the needed services work properly. Therefore if, for instance, the company uses Salesforce.com, they can verify that it works properly in their chosen browser. Making a change to that standard build involves a fairly intense and expensive exercise of test, approve, build-update, documentation-update and roll-out.

Of course, when XP was released the pre-installed browser was IE6. Companies, in general, were happy to migrate from their previous OS to XP (with IE6) and go through the extensive testing process to ensure everything worked. There was an incentive, then, for websites to be IE6-compatible or risk disenfranchising a huge section of their potential audience. If Vista (with IE7) had been a compelling choice for large installations, then another round of testing would have occurred and, no doubt, IE6 would have faded out. But the general opinion in the corporate world was that Vista wasn’t good enough to warrant the expense. So even now, despite the greater success of Windows 7 and the proliferation of alternative browsers, IE6 is still used by about 20% of people.

That’s why I was particularly interested in an email I recently received from Google about the support for IE6 in Google Apps. Google have announced that, from March, anyone accessing Google Apps using IE6 will be politely informed that their 9 year old browser is out of date and they should consider installing a newer one. They obviously feel that the risk of disenfranchising some of the 20%, and perhaps causing some of the larger companies still using XP/IE6 to finally go through the build update process, is now worthwhile. The benefit to Google is that a lot of IE6-specific development work will no longer be required, and perhaps some functionality that could not be made to work in IE6 can finally be introduced, although the latter is pure speculation on my part.

I for one am looking forward to a brave new world that doesn’t include IE6. Here’s hoping lots of other companies follow Google’s lead on this.

There are obvious benefits to owning a mobile broadband device that is capable of getting online at broadband speeds wherever you are in the UK. The good news is that many more devices are coming complete with 3G network connectivity built in and there are even ways of augmenting non-3G devices with additional gadgets that can turn them into mobile broadband hubs. First let us look at the various mobile broadband devices on the market and then at how they can enhance your life thanks to the functions they offer.

Most people who have a mobile broadband contract for data alone will get online using a laptop in combination with a mobile broadband USB dongle. Since most laptops do not have 3G connectivity built in, the addition of a USB dongle containing a modem and 3G connectivity is necessary and many mobile broadband providers include USB dongles free as part of a pay monthly fixed term contract deal. Having said that, there are now laptops on the market that have 3G connectivity built in, so there is no need for a USB dongle if you want to get online whilst you are on the move. USB dongles may look similar, but their capabilities can differ. For example, some may come with built-in microSD memory card slots for portable storage, whilst others may be compatible with HSDPA networking for 7.2Mbps download speeds or more.

Most modern mobile phones also come with 3G connections for internet access. However, you will need to make sure that your network provider has a decent mobile internet data tariff on offer, otherwise you will be paying over the odds for every single megabyte of information that you download. Popular smartphones like the iPhone and the HTC Hero have large touch screens and 3G connections that make them ideal for internet browsing whilst on the go. Smartphones like those in the BlackBerry range also allow you to synchronise your contacts, calendar and documents from your home or work PC, making them accessible from your mobile. With mobile broadband on board you can also use your phone to check your email and download attachments to view when you are away from the office.

Mobile broadband devices are allowing for a far more flexible environment for working and socialising. With mobile broadband on board your laptop or smartphone, you can access your emails, download large files and add new software applications without having to wait around. Most mobile broadband deals are well equipped if this is the kind of functionality you are looking for, but because there is so much choice, it is worth using price comparison to weigh your options before you commit.

It remains to be seen having the Google name behind it will cause the Nexus One to take off in the same way the iPhone did. My best guess is that it will increase the acceptance of Android in the marketplace, and may well become the leading Android handset. I also think that this is Google’s goal. Without the Nexus One, the future of Android cannot be absolutely guaranteed. With Google prominent on the shelves, the future seems secure.

What is DNS?

If you followed the link above to the Wikipedia article on DNS then your head is probably swimming now. The simplest way I can describe DNS is that it’s a bit like addresses and postcodes (ZIP code in the US). There is a slight difference, in that every house in the UK or US does not have it’s own postcode or zip code, but the basic principle of converting a long-winded but human-readable address into a shorter, more computer-friendly code still applies.

In fact, every device on the internet can be located by mean of an IP (Internet Protocol) address, normally in the form nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn (e.g. 74.125.45.100 – which is one of Google’s IP addresses). Whilst converting an IP address such as the one just mentioned into a more human-friendly form (in this case “google.com”) is very useful for web-browsing, it is actually used for all sort of other internet tasks, one example being FTP. The service that does the translation is DNS.

There is an awful lot more to DNS, but the rest is pretty irrelevant for this article, and probably of less interest to Google too.

The meaty stuff

So now that you have an idea what DNS is, let’s explore why Google is offering a free DNS service. To start with, who provides DNS services at the moment? Well, there is a hierarchy within DNS, with some pretty meaty servers at the centre that act as the definitive view of the DNS world. The core servers manage a part of the internet world, so typically there is a core for the “.com” Top Level Domain (TLD), a core for the “.org” TLD, and so on. From this core, the definitive DNS tables are propagated out to what are essentially more regional DNS servers. This propagation continues until you reach the level at which you, as an internet user, queries DNS to convert domain names to IP addresses. For domestic users, the DNS servers will normally be run by an Internet Service Provider. Larger companies may decide to have their own DNS servers.

Until fairly recently, this was the way DNS worked for all. Then along came OpenDNS, which offers a full-featured DNS service for free. In fact, it adds to the basic DNS service by allowing you to filter queries so that undesirable results (e.g. porn, gambling) are blocked. This is quite a compelling offer, enough to prompt significant users to switch from their ISP’s DNS to OpenDNS. As yet, I can’t see Google’s service, despite having their name behind it, getting very many people to change. However, the forthcoming ChromeOS might end up with the Google DNS servers enabled by default. Stranger things have happened.

Google’s service doesn’t appear to compete with OpenDNS on features, at least not for now. Given that the only potential benefit to users would be to marginally increase the speed of DNS resolution, it seems a strange thing for Google to do. But just think about the data that Google receives. Instead of getting information on search queries, Google potentially will be able to see where any browser activity is directed. That’s pretty big, so big I’m going to repeat it. In bold! Google will be able to see every website that you visit, whether via search (through Google or any other competitor) or going direct!

Now Google have promised they will not keep that data any longer than is needed to offer a great DNS service. And I’m inclined to believe them as I’m sure the last thing they want is to be perceived as a new Big Brother, something Microsoft never really avoided. However, they will undoubtedly aggregate that information so they can understand where, for instance, Bing is giving more accurate search results, or which sites people bookmark rather than search for.

Will this improve the Google service, almost certainly. Do I have a warm, fuzzy feeling about it? Well, suffice to say that I will be sticking with OpenDNS for the time being. I’m a big Google fan, but this may be one step too far.

Here at Four Lakes we recognise that a website is a means to an end. For virtually all businesses, the ultimate goal is to have enough customers to meet income targets, and a website is a mechanism for attracting new customer and retaining existing ones. Even for the likes of Amazon, the core business is taking orders and fulfilling those orders, and the website is just a means to achieve that goal, albeit a very clever one in many respects.

When we talk to potential customers about websites, we are careful not to sell features that will not add value to the website. Indeed, we have gathered the feature that we consider essential to all businesses into a core package, which in addition to static web pages also includes such present day essentials as search engine submission, sitemap generation, ‘friendly’ URLs, and other goodies.

Beyond the web(site)

To gain maximum exposure for your website, it needs to be publicised in as many ways as you can manage. You can certainly spend lots of money on such things as Adwords (paid advertisements on Google search). But there are many other, free, ways in which you can promote your website and your business too. Whole books have been written on Search Engine Optimisation (getting your website near the top of the search engine rankings for appropriate keywords), which is one very important consideration. One key aspect of SEO is to have links from sites with high Google rankings back to yours, which can be easier said than done. But for the right type of business, there is a means by which you can be associated with one of the highest-ranking websites on the planet – Facebook!

Fan pages

A relatively recent new feature on Facebook is the Fan Page. This is similar to the old Facebook groups, although is designed from the ground up to promote businesses and causes, unlike groups which were subverted to the cause. Fan pages are a great way for most businesses to gain a small patch of Facebook all to themselves, and given the number of people who use Facebook these days, it also opens up a whole new communication channel.

The basic principle is to link your website to your Facebook fan page, and vice-versa. If your website has a blog, then you should also consider cross-posting new blog entries to Facebook too. If, as an individual, you have a lot of friends on Facebook, then you could consider politely asking them to become ‘fans’ of your Facebook fan page, just to give it a kick-start if nothing else. Over time, your customers and potential customers should be made aware of your fan page as a means of keeping up to date with your business.

It’s got to be said that fan pages work best for business to consumer interactions, particularly where you’re looking for repeat custom. We have used this technique very effectively with one of our customers, Mimosa Wine and Tapas Bar in Carlow, Ireland. On their home page is a very prominent link to their Facebook fan page, and of course there is a link on the fan page back to the web site. As the number of fans on the Facebook page grows, there is a corresponding growth in traffic on their website. All of which serves to generate more and more interest in the business. A simple update announcing the return of a popular tapas dish can generate a number of comments on both sites, for instance. More significant events, such as a gig by a local musician, can be very effectively and cheaply advertised via the website and fan page, reducing advertising costs.

Of course, if you want to effectively link your website and fan page together, you need to have a website that is capable of achieving this. Four Lakes specialises in such integrated sites, and can help your business gain extra exposure through this and other online marketing techniques. Contact us now if you want to know more.

The PC Pro article above will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect when Chrome netbooks hits the market. I think it’s interesting that it’s not yet being positioned as a primary or only computer in a household, rather it is aimed as being a portal into your computing environment, not storing very much locally but accessing your pictures, documents, emails, calendar, etc. via the web.

It’s easy to see why this is the case, as virtually nobody, even in this relatively well-connected, first-world country, stores all their information in ‘the cloud’. But this will change. For a start, more and more people are using smartphones (or their slightly less intelligent brothers, let’s call them quitebrightphones) to keep up with their social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and so on. Of course, unless you enjoy giving a large chunk of your paypacket to one of the mobile operators, you will enter into a data contract. And once you’ve done that, it’s a small step to using your phone to keep tabs on your email, or even view an important document that you forgot to print out and bring to a meeting.

Of course there is some concern over data security, but if you go to your typical home user and ask what would happen to all their precious digital photos if their house caught fire, they are likely to shrug and say that one day they’ll burn them all to DVD and give them to a relative for safe-keeping. Assuming, of course, that they want said relative to be able to see every single picture they’ve taken.

Using cloud storage suddenly becomes a very attractive when you look at it that way, certainly enough to allay the typical home user’s fears. That’s even without the value-add that using cloud-based services can offer. Continuing with the picture example, once all your photos are online, sharing them with friends and family becomes a cinch. Tweaking photos can be quick and easy. If Grandparents want a physical print of the grandkids, they can choose the photos online and press a button to have them proferssionally printed and delivered. All good stuff.

So it seems likely that cloud computing will arrive, and no-one is better placed than Google to benefit from that. If you embrace the cloud completely, Google will soon offer a pretty comprehensive suite of, by and large, free applications and services:

• Google ChromeOS on your netbook
• Google Apps hosting your email, calendar, and office documents
• Google Chrome browser (built in to ChromeOS) for web application access
• Picasa Web Albums for your pictures
• Google Search (of course)
• Google Video (aka YouTube)
• Blogger
• Google Android on your mobile
• etc

It will be interesting to see if Google does manage to completely take over our online life, or if other companies will manage to provide some competition. The likes of Microsoft and Yahoo are too big to just roll over and let this happen, and will no doubt try to convince us of their alternative visions of the future. Personally, though, I’m more comfortable with Google than any of the alternatives right now.

First impressions

Is it worth the hassle? So far, a few days into Hero ownership I can only say YES…absolutely! Leaving the love-or-hate aesthetics aside, the HTC Sense UI that runs on top of the Android operating system is a joy to use. The configuration and customisation options are almost literally endless, I’ve certainly only scratched the surface so far. The browser has been excellent at rendering the small number of web pages I’ve looked at so far, and the range of applications available on the Android Marketplace is fast catching up with those on the iPhone equivalent.

Speaking of the iPhone, I seriously believe Android has the potential to do some serious damage to Apple’s baby. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is a wonderful gadget, and led the way in the development of cross-over phone/PC devices. But the nature of Apple is to retain a high degree of control, meaning that ultimately there is only so much an application can do. The furore over the on/off approval of the Google Voice app also demonstrated the level of control Apple wish to keep.

In contrast, Android is a completely open source operating system, in the same way that, for instance, Ubuntu is open source. Developers can take the Android OS and change it at a very fundamental level to make it do whatever they want. Already we are seeing not just phones running Android, but media tablets too. You can be sure that there will be some very innovative uses of Android in the coming months and years.

Email experience

I will blog more in future of other aspects of Hero ownership, but the main reason for wanting one was so that I could try out it’s mobile email and calendaring functionality. I’ve got to say that I am pretty impressed. I wouldn’t like to write a long email on the Hero, but for checking and making quick responses it’s a very capable device.

Like most people I have more than one email account. In fact, professionally I have 3 identities (it’s gets confusing at times) and I also have a personal email account. All these identities bar one use Google Apps to manage email, and the one that doesn’t will be moved over some time soon. Before I got the Hero my concern was that I would not be able to easily access all these accounts, or that the native Google support (more later) would baulk at Google Apps. I couldn’t find anything online that definitely said this was not the case, so I fired up the Hero for the first time with a little trepidation.

I needn’t have worried. The inital setup process takes you through the setup of a single Google account for sync purposes. The syncing includes email, calendar and address book, and so far appears to have worked extremely smoothly. I did have to choose one of my three Google Apps accounts as the ‘primary’ account, but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as it forces you to have a central contacts list (calendars can be organised differently as we will see). Was Google Apps a problem? Not in the slightest. Whether you have a gmail.com or googlemail.com address, or use Google Apps to manage your domain and host your email, the Hero will cope.

Once your central Google account is set up, you also have the option to add multiple POP3 or IMAP accounts. So all my other alter-egos were entered as IMAP accounts. There’s no calendar or contact sync, but for me that wasn’t a problem. Once set up, the device will check for new emails on a regular basis and inform you in a pretty discrete manner when any arrive.

Typing

Being a touchscreeen device, and given that I don’t have the daintiest of fingers, I was expecting typing to be a problem. However, it’s actually pretty good. For a start the touchscreen is very nice indeed, very sensitive so the merest brush against it’s surface is enough to register a keystroke. The key you have pressed is immediately shown in a pop-up window directly above the key itself so that you don’t have to take you eyes away from the keyboard to check the email body. And finally, a haptic-like response (actually a small vibrate) is used to confirm that a key has been pressed too. Typing in portrait is possible with care, but switch to landscape and you can generate a decent speed.

Calendars

I mentioned calendars earlier, saying that only one Google account can be sync’d. It is actually possible to view and manage multiple Google calendars still, and it’s all down to how you have your main Google APps calendar setup. If you give manage access to the other Google calendars and then add them to your main calendar, they will automatically appear on your Hero. I was impressed. This is a slightly involved process which I will describe in the blog soon.

Summary

There is so much more to discuss about the Hero, but that will keep for another day. In closing, if you have a Google account and want a mobile email device, you should go for an Android phone. If you don’t have a Google account, an Android phone will still be a good way to check your emails, but you lose out on the calendars and contacts. It might still be the best option for you, but you’ll need to do your homework. Of course, if you’d like to migrate your existing account to Google Apps then you know where to come

One last point to consider, Android phones are pretty scarce on the ground at the moment, but they will start coming think and fast in 2010. Some will be the ultimate road warrior devices, with a price tag to match. Others will be aimed at social users and will be available for little or nothing on a mobile contract. The iPhone will need to become cheaper to obtain if it is to survive, as it no longer can claim to be head and shoulders above the competition on functionality and ease of use. So even if you buy an iPhone next year, you should get a much better deal thanks to Android.

Google and IMAP

Here at Four Lakes we love Google Apps. For homeworkers, small businesses and self-confessed geeks (yup, that’s me) is a great way to organise your work and personal activities online. Our Standard and Advanced Email Products use Google Apps For Your Domain (GFYD) to offer enterprise-grade collaboration services at a very affordable rate. Quite frankly, we’re amazed more people don’t know about it and use it.

It hasn’t always been the case that a Google Apps solution was so compelling. Indeed, until Google added IMAP support it was easy for people who need access to email on the move to look elsewhere. If you’re not aware, IMAP is the protocol that allows your email client to access mail on a server without having to download it. It’s a bit newer than POP3, and in our humble opinion, is a far more sensible option. Why? Simply because you are not storing the only copy of your email on a PC or laptop which, if it crashes, could mean that all your email history is lost.

Most email providers, whether it’s Google or your favourite web hosting company, will offer IMAP access to email. Or advice, even if you decide against a Google Apps solution, is to use it. The hosting company will almost certainly have better resiliency and backup procedures that you could ever hope to implement. So you can rest assured that the vital email history that you need when dealing with an important customer is safe.

Thunderbird

We are also big fans of the Mozilla Thunderbird email client here. With our preference for Open Source software (this blog post is being typed in Mozilla Firefox on a laptop running Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope), Thunderbird is an amazingly good email client. Using the Lightening and Provider for Google Calendar plugins allow access to Google Apps calendars too. Who needs Outlook!

One potential issue with IMAP, though, is when you start using mail filters to automatically file emails in folders. A typical reason might be that you have subscribed to an email newsletter, and rather than have it clogging up your inbox, you’d like to file it away somewhere that you can come to later when you’re not so busy. Indeed, if you have access to your email on a smartphone, say, this could stop you being interrupted unnecessarily by a new mail notification.

The obvious place to create such a filter is in your email client of choice (Thunderbird, Outlook or whatever). But that’s where problems can arise, as your email client needs to be up and running for the filter to work. If you’re out of the office, then the email will be delivered to your inbox and sit there until you run the client with the filter. Not the end of the world, but a bit annoying for sure.

If you use Google Apps already, or Google Mail,  you’ll be aware that there is a pretty powerful filter available to you. Great! You can set up your filter rules on the server so that the filing happens even before your email client runs. Marvellous idea, and it works. Your newsletters are filed away ready for you to read them later.

But (there’s always a ‘but’, eh!), all the messages that you have filed away no longer show up in Thunderbird as unread email! This may also be the case in Outlook, perhaps someone using Outlook can report?). It seems that, as standard, Thunderbird only informs you if new mail arrives in your inbox. Of course, by the time it’s checked the server your filters have moved your newsletters into a different folder, so no notification.

But the Mozilla guys are quite clever and obviously anticipated this. If you hover your mouse over any folder, right-click, and choose ‘Properties’, you should see the following dialog box.

You’ll notice, no doubt, that there is a tick box to tell Thunderbird to check this folder for new messages. So instead of just checking the inbox, Thunderbird will now also check this folder too. Then when your client polls the server for new messages, this folder will also be checked and you will be notified. Problem solved!

Road warriors

For corporations, or people who were really serious about accessing their email on the move, were the Blackberry users. Of course, the options in this group have expanded beyond Blackberrys to include Windows Mobile, Palm and other OS’s, but Blackberrys were the trail-blazers and are arguably still the standard setters.

Membership of this group requires that you have an email account on a corporate-grade mail system. Most road warriors will have MS Exchange mail servers, although Lotus Domino and others have presence here too. If your company isn’t big enough to warrant it’s own mail server, then leasing an account on a mail provider’s server is a popular option. The other significant cost has been for mobile data, which until the last couple of years has been quite high (at least in the UK). Overall it’s a relatively small monthly outlay for a business to justify, but the person on the street is more reluctant to double or triple their mobile bill for the sake of email.

Lets just have a peek brigade

Our second group are those who quite like being able to check their emails if they need to, but only on an occasional basis and only if it’s free or very low cost. Typically the man/woman on the street who likes showing off to their mates. They may use a browser interface, but more likely will use IMAP or even POP and a mobile email client. The occasional use will most likely drift into no use because it might cost some money or be a bit awkward to use. Sometimes it will actually prove beneficial and they will cross the Rubicon into the road warrior camp.

There is another way

Over the last couple of years in the UK there have been a couple of developments that have allowed a third group to form. For a start, increasing demand for mobile data, and the huge uptake in USB dongles expecially, has caused mobile data costs to come down to consumer-attractive levels. Second, handsets have improved so that Blackberrys and other business-oriented phones are not the only ones with usable email clients. Slide-out qwerty keyboards, and iPhone-style full screen displays (with ’soft’ keyboards that are actually usable) have made inroads into the consumer market.

To digress slightly, my personal view is that mobiles took some time to get to a point where they were small enough, and then went a bit further! Now people have realised that a really small phone is really easy to lose! Now that manufacturers don’t lose out if their mobile is not smaller than the opposition, some real usability work can be applied. Of course, the iPhone is the ultimate embodiment of this.

Back to our third way. Lower data costs and consumer-friendly phones with good email clients means that now, anyone can get at their email (and update Facebook, and Tweet, and, and, and) whenever and wherever they want. Maybe not in as secure a fashion that would satisfy a corporate IT department, but plenty good enough for the typical SME.

Connected SME

So what’s the Four Lakes take on this? Well, our SME-oriented email solution, Four Lakes Advanced Mail, is based on Google Apps. This essentially means that Google Mail servers handle all mail for your domain. This automatically give you POP, IMAP and web access to your mail. Now imagine a mobile device with a great email client using IMAP to look at your email. Couple that with a generous mobile data allowance (many UK providers will give 500MB a month for £5, which is plenty for reasonable use) and there is no reason why you can’t use your iPhone or Nokia or whatever to keep tabs on your emails.

But (you know there’d be a ‘but’ right?), even more recently a newcomer to the market has improved metters even more. Google’s new Android MobileOS has given those enlightened Google Apps (or GMail) users an opportunity to experience more than mere IMAP email. Instead they can synch email, conacts and calendar over the air.

How well does it work? I’m not sure yet, as there are unanswered questions (online at least) over the mix of Google Apps, GMail and Google Accounts that I have. But, committed as I am to bringing you all the answers, I will shortly place an order for an Android phone (probably the HTC Hero) and will blog my experiences. Watch this space!