Google Apps

On Tuesday, Tobias and I attended an online seminar on Google Apps for non-profit organisations run by the NTEN (Non-Profit Technology Network) Google Apps described as "a free web based office suite" consists of GMail, Google Talk, Google Docs (Wordprocessor and spreadsheet), Google Calender, Google Web Pages. Since all of the above applications are also available as free open source (Thunderbird, Open Office etc) why should non-profits or anyone for that matter choose to use Google Apps, which requires a relatively decent internet connection as well as one that is fairly cheap if you are going to get the best out of the functions?

The downside is that for the moment you need to be online to use Google Apps (They are planning to bring in a stand alone version which will integrate fully with the online version). If you do have a good internet connection then the advantage of using Google Apps is it's networking features:

****All the applications are integrated with each other
****Storage is online (we are told security is a priority but this is a decision everyone will have to make for themselves. However we at Kabissa are already in the process of transferring to Google Apps.
****Users can share documents, calenders, notes, groups, presentations and emails remotely - location and time are no longer constraints. You can access your Apps from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
**** Google Apps includes a simple but effective web page creator
**** You can add a range of gadgets for your Apps such as news, weather, games, clocks, calculator - the list is endless - too endless as you could spend days just going through each category.

****Google Apps for your Domain (GAppsFYD) allows you to integrate your Google Apps with your Domain and manage all of the above.

Returning to the issue of security it is possible to back up your Google Apps individually although according to Life Hacker this is not as simple as one would hope - but it is possible and he explains how here.

Links:
Google Docs: 5 things you should know.

More on Google Apps later

Tags:

Google Apps
Web 2.0
Africa + Civil Society