To help clearly define and put the focus of it’s customization effort Google renamed the ‘Personalized Home’ page to iGoogle. Along with that came some new features which were along the lines of the rest of the Web 2.0 world: personalization with the portal feel while being able to aggregate all Google features like web, images, mail, calendar, maps, news and more. The concept of taking full advantage of localization, syndication, collaboration and bringing more web to the user by having gadgets really took off and has proven to be the fastest growing company product for 2006.

One thing that really stands out about the platform is that it has almost no learning curve and it allows the user to define the boundaries within which it will be used. A user is easily able to use the service without even signing up with an account (using cookies) but if you want to take personalization to the next level you can sign up and use it on multiple computers, customize it even more and bring social networking in the picture. Adding the ability to collaborate (discuss stocks or share documents for examle) and get updates about your friends’ photo album or new widgets that they have added is like taking all the applications you use, putting them on the web and running a cross layer of social networking to form something bigger than the sum of its parts.

The widgets concept is great and while it still has some rough edges it definitely provides a great start for organizing a dashboard with customizable layout and content spread on optionally multiple tabs. The rich library of existing widgets will satisfy almost any taste and even for the pickiest users there is an opportunity to create their own widgets by using the Widget Maker feature which provides a nice widget API (more on that in my next post). While talking about customization I can’t help mentioning the themes which offer the extra touch of personality. Unless you are one of these boring people like me you might want to pick one of the many themes which nicely change the default white frame and add the extra touch of personality without taking away from the content. As a new addition Google has even gone a step further including the so called Artist Themes which represent the artwork of world class artist.

In conclusion iGoogle introduces a new way of looking at web + search and re-defines customization with features like location-based personalized search. This direction will be very important for Search 2.0 as it reaches more and more mobile devices. On the other hand a lot is left to be desired in improving the functionality of widgets: creating anything different than the boring RSS or a poorly styled functionally handicapped widget.

While DVD was great while it lasted and marked one of the greatest successes in the history of consumer electronics it was clear that its days were numbered. The standard definition that DVD had to offer was not enough to satisfy the likes of Hollywood. With technology racing at an unimaginable rate and HD video and audio reaching living rooms around the world the world for the next generation high definition format was started. That is a round 2 for Sony and the long forgotten Betamax Vs. Video Home System (or VHS as we all know it) for standard domination. The last time around Sony’s Betamax lost the battle despite being technologically superior. Better quality had recording time as a trade-off. The majority of consumers did not want to commit to a standard and movies were offered for both. Unlike this time the battle continued much longer and finally VHS’s dominant market share, higher recording capacity, and lower media costs forces Sony to pull out. Well, apparently the folks at Sony have learned a few lessons. Although Blue Ray still has a higher cost and the early momentum that HD DVD generated this time we have a much more competitive product. Starting with much higher capacity [50Gb for a dual layer compared to 30Gb for Toshiba's HD DVD] Blue Ray seems technologically superior. This time Sony took a different approach and overcame the somewhat established HD DVD lead by spending most time and applying pressure to the movie studios themselves. The tight competition forced studios to offer movies in one format or the other but not both. Same was valid for manufacturer support where Blue Ray had better success. All the success could also be partially credited to region coded support and better digital right management and copy protection. At the end it came down to Warner Brothers followed by Wal Mart who joined Sony and agreed to offer movies exclusively in Blue Ray. While those two add just one more to the count they represent 80% and 32% respectively of the market share in their industry which makes the decisions huge. Toshiba knew that was a big sway on Blue Ray’s direction – it was more than they could handle. Disappointing signs from investors forced the giant to discontinue the efforts to revive the initial momentum and under such pressures Toshiba made a press release announcing the end of the Blue Ray Vs. HD DVD war. Although Sony was ready for a long battle it can now claim the victory.

The score is not 1:1 and the question “Is <insert movie> coming to Blu-ray?” in section 4.3 of the Blue Ray FAQ much easier to answer. Lesson learned for Sony – what goes around comes around.

After a couple of days researching what exactly Google Apps has to offer and countless hours of searching for feedback from people with first hand experience on the matter I decided to bite the bullet and pull the plug on my good ‘ol mail server. My main motivation was the fact that i can try it for free and even continue using it for free as long as my domain met certain criteria. On top of that Google provided me with scheduling and collaboration tools using a one-size-fits-all approch. At that point I had heard enough and was ready to get my hands dirty with Google Apps or at least as dirty as a keyboard, mouse and 2 hours of my free time will allow. But before I continue sharing my adventure I wanted to share some of the pros and cons of using Google Apps.

Pros:

Most apparently you get a nice, production grade Gmail email service with a 99.9% uptime promise, backups, security, spam filters, web inteface people are familiar with.

Cost. The cost of the implementation and the ROI is very low (50$ per user per account per user – that excludes aliases and lists) for the Premier edition and FREE for the Standard version. Compared to other combinations requiring some combination of software + hardware + support you get the most bang for your buck.

Ease of use. Needless to say nowadays it’s hard to find a person not familiar with Google’s Gmail and their slick and easy to use web interface. This makes the transition for any institution a breeze and the time spent in user training limited.

Ease of administration …administration? What’s that? No, but honestly adding users is a breeze as well as user aliases and list administration. Of course there is always more to be expected especially when it comes to granularity and the concept of groups but it is my belief that there is already somebody in cube scetching and coding that implementation.

Premium Edition FREE. If you satisfy certain requirements you can use Google Apps Premier absolutely free. Those include registered non-profits and educational institutions.

Built-in Security – Google uses secure connections and data redundancy. Through the use of protocols such as SSL and TLS you can make sure your data is protected. In certain situations this extra security can pose a problem with existing applications which make use of SMTP but don’t provide secure connection but there are possible workaronds.

Physical security – your data is stored on a server in a data center with top of the line protection from any natural events from floods and fire to earthquakes.

Calendar functionality by itself is a great feature which again most people use and are familiar with the interface from their personal accounts. The integration under the same umbrella comes handy and the Premier edition includes goodies like room and resource scheduling.

Great collaboration tools like document sharing, simultaneous editing, web publishing and chat. It’s hard to express in words the time savings and convenience when you see a combination of these tools in action – whether you have 20 people editing the same document or just want to send a message to somebody you have everything you need.

A free replacement for an Office suite. Although Google Docs was not created as a perfect replacement of applications like Microsoft Office in mind it provides most of the features most users are likely to use. Except the fact that Google really missed the memo on a presentation replacement application their solution focuses on collaboration, central data storage, and 24/7 availability.

More of the bonus features include: API, Single Sign-On solution, super easy email migration, support for email gateway

Cons:

Control. Well, of course by committing you have less control in the decision making process but you can try and then always switch to another solution

You get what you pay for. If you don’t have the Premier edition free support is to no avail. That means that you will have to spend time researching when problems arise and most likely end up paying when there is nothing you can do about the problems

Maturity. Be mindful that Google Apps is a project in progress and is not very mature. That means that it is incomplete and lacks certain functionality which you might expect.

Support …or the lack thereof is one important thing to mention. See, even if you use the premium edition and pay all the fees you can only get so much. Getting to talk to a real person is off limits and all the automated phone service refers you is help and forum URLs. Your only chance to get some personal attention is to use the ticketing system submit form and prey that your issue gets looked at pretty soon. Make sure you bookmark this page https://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=bugs&ctx=bugflow_register08 as it will be your only point of contact with the Gods of Email.

Executables. Watch out for executable files – Google will not let them in even if you try to trick it by archiving it. Although sending executables through email is not a good practice as well as coaching your users to open executable extensions this can be a little annoying.

CSS. Not that this is exactly a very big deal for most people and they might as well never notice it but Gmail’s web interface will strip headers and almost all CSS from an email sent as HTML. For udnerstandable reasons they don’t want layout hiccups but some users can find that a bit inconvenient.

Privacy is a major concern for any organization especially when it has to do with sensitive company data and intellectual property.

Regulatory compliance. Before I continue any further let me just say that if your organization requires regulatory compliance of any sort which is often the case with certain branches of government, healthcare, and the financial industry you can automatically forget about it – Google Apps does not comply with the storage, transfer, filtering, privacy and disaster recovery requirements for those sectors.

Ads. When using the web interface you might have to see a couple of advertisements. Unfortunately the free edition does not have the option to turn them off but after all there is no such thing as free lunch.

SMTP limit. If you really read the fineprint you will know …or you will find out later that Google’s SMTP service has a restriction to send only up to 500 emails per day for a particular account. While this is enough for the average Joe in your office it might pose a risk if you are using any automated email services and notification in your organization. Again the workaround is using a separate SMTP server as an email proxy.