UPDATE: Thank you nekoniku for pointing out what a math wizard I am. You are right, it would only be $2,000 for 40 people per year. This means that it would take about 12 and a half years to equal the cost of the Microsoft solution. That makes it much more attractive if you are just starting your business.

Google has been cobbling together a bunch of apps that it was referring to as Google Apps for your Domain. These apps included:

• Email (Gmail)
• Calendar (Google Calendar)
• IM (Google Talk)
• Page Creator (Google Pages)
• Start Page (Google Personalized Homepage)

Now they’ve bundled Google Docs and Spreadsheets with some enterprise level features and charged for it. For $50 per year per users, you can have 99.9% guaranteed uptime, increased email storage (2GB to 10GB), shared resource calendaring, API access to integrate with your current network, 24/7 assistance, and 3rd party applications (data sheet).

With shared calendaring and Gmail, a small to medium size business could forgo the cost of Microsoft Exchange. This browser based environment would mean freedom from operating system constraints and could conceivable allow more users on Ubuntu (Linux). For a small business this could mean tremendous cost saving. Eliminate MS Office from the mix and save even more money.

And with the recent announcement of Firefox 3 supporting offline modes, you could use many of these applications while disconnected from the Internet.

I love Gmail. I hate Outlook Email. Google Calendar is cool. Outlook Calendaring not so cool.

However, Twelve Horses has about 40 people who would need to be on this premier edition. That would be $2,000 a month or an annual cost of $24,000. That is significant. That would be $2,000 per year for the whole company.

According to Microsoft, Exchange Server for 50 accounts is $3,999. Lets say you put that on a beefy server costing $10,000. Now add in $279 for each instance of MS Office (upgrade price, full version is $449) for a total of $11,160 ($17,960 for full). Your looking at $25,159 (I used upgrade pricing since we all have full versions of Office). While that is a grand more than Google’s offering, it’s also one time as opposed to annually. Additionally, you get PowerPoint (and some other more janky software) with Office. You are tied to Windows or OS X, so you could compare the OS costs to Ubuntu, but that drags it farther out then I want to go.

My point, Google Apps Premier Edition rocks. It just costs too much for business with more than a few users.

Technorati Tags: Enterrprise, Exchange, Gmail, Google, Google Apps, Microsoft, OS X

Do you have a business idea that you’re sure will make tons of money? Are you struggling to figure out how to get your foot in the door to pitch it? You can always do what Aaron did. Aaron wanted to get in front of Google to pitch his idea. He started by creating a very simple website and uploading some videos to Google Video. His idea was simple:

1. Fly to Mountain View
2. Sit in Google’s lobby until someone listened to his idea
3. Pitch
4. Fly home

Underlying all this was the real plan: go viral. Because of the uniqueness of the whole concept and the way he went about it, he was sure Google would hear him. Unfortunately, they didn’t. At least, not at first. But he persevered. Once he arrived, he kept updating the site and producing videos. Word started to spread and then he made Digg.

He has had his meeting with Google, met Robert Scoble and Dave Winer, and has promises from Google for a follow up meeting. He continues to stay in Mountain View and has been there for the last 7 days. Good luck, Aaron.

[Via Robert Scoble's Blog]

Technorati Tags: Dave Winer, Google, Marketing, Robert Scoble, Viral

Robert and I decided at the beginning of this year that we would risk our Technorati ranking and Google juice to switch from http://twelvehorses.typepad.com to a hosted WordPress solution at the domain name http://blog.twelvehorses.com. Since we are switching domain names, there is no clean way to retain our search rankings. However, we are confident that we can recoup them rather fast and we feel the benefits of WordPress out weight the risks of changing. Granted, all this could have been avoided had we just mapped a personal domain to typepad.com to begin with…doh! Anyway, here are our reasons for switching to WordPress in no particular order:

• Plugins - Plugins allow you to extend the functionality of the WordPress blogging software. An example of a plugin is the Google Sitemaps plugin. This plugin will create an XML file that the search engines (at least Google, Yahoo and MSN) can read. The files lists the pages in your site and how often they are updated. In this way, the search engines know what pages to add to their index. The plugin automatically recreates this XML file after each posts as well as pings Google to let them know of the update. Typepad.com has widgets, which are like plugins, but far fewer and they aren’t as easy to manipulate.
• Stability - I’m not willing to say that Typepad.com was highly unstable, but they have had a few issues over the few weeks. A hosted solution allows us to control the hosting environment. If we have stability issues, we can only blame ourselves.
• Expertise - We have implemented over a dozen blogs for businesses in the last few months, and they have all been on WordPress. We’ve learned some very cool tips, tricks, and knowledge and wanted to take advantage of that on our own blog.
• Flexibility - WordPress is much more flexible than Typepad.com. It can have multiple static pages - pages not in the chronological order of the blog - as well as do things like display a different look and feel for a post based off the category it’s in.

At the end of the day, we just feel more in control with the blog sitting on our servers. This perception gives us a more active role in the blogging process instead of treating it like a 3rd party site that needs to be maintained. I hope we don’t inconvenience too many other bloggers asking them to update their links, but this will be the only time.

Despite this blog utilizing TypePad, Robert and I are huge fans of the blogging software Wordpress.  We both use it for our personal blogs and recommend it to our clients.  Being the techy I am, I have wondered how to better utilize it to make for the best web experience, both for the content creator as well as the web site visitor.

Today, I read a blog post by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of the Wordpress software.  He links to a new site for Ford Motors that utilizes the Wordpress software.  The site is awesome.  It’s well designed and easy to navigate.  It makes use of Flash, RSS, tags, and all the built in bells and whistles that come with Wordpress.  Having first had experience with Wordpress, I know it was quick to implement and almost all the development time was probably spent on the design and messaging.

Lately, we’ve rolled out a few sites that use Wordpress as the content management system.  I hope to roll out more in the near future.  Matt, thanks for the software.

After listening to the 43 Folders podcast (episode from 10/29/06), where Merlin Mann interviews David Allen about using the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology on email, I decided to give it a try.  For those who haven’t experienced GTD, its a system of dealing and organizing inputs like email, memos, phone calls, stickies, etc. 

The idea seemed quite simple. When you read an email, determine if its actionable or not.  If its not, it falls into one of two categories:  A) its junk mail and needs to be deleted or  B) Its an FYI (for your information) and then needs to be filed.  If the email is actionable, you need to determine the next action and either do it right then or add it to your todo list, calendar or what ever tool you use to manage your day.  And then here’s the important part…once you add it to your todo list, make sure you file that email away like you did for the non-actionable emails.  At the end of each day, you should have zero emails in your inbox.  A lofty goal but I think it can be done.

Since I use Outlook, it has a view for displaying your inbox by date.  It shows your emails broken out by day for the current week then skips to last week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, last month and finally the bottom of the barrel, older.  Since I had significant email in all these categories in my inbox, I knew it was too lofty to try and get these all down to zero. I focused just on the Today category.  Every time I checked and read email, I made the decision as to what was to be done next with the email and filed it accordingly.  Mr. Allen’s main point is that the process of making the decision is where most people get hung up.  Its a learned and practiced skill and you need to constantly hone.

I have been moderately successful.  A few of the days have had one or two un-filed emails.  One of the biggest challenges I found was remember to file emails after I replied to them.  Since the flow was read -> reply -> read next, I wasn’t taking the time to move that email out of my inbox.  Also, I think sub-consciously I was waiting for the reply to my reply before filing.  In this way, the original email would remind me to follow up if I didn’t receive the reply I was expecting.  To over come this, I realized I needed to mark a follow up item in my todo list if I was expecting a reply.  This liberated me to file the original email away.

I have been doing this very simple process for almost two weeks now.  It has made me more dependant on my todo list and less dependant on my inbox.  I’m more organized and I feel overall, I’m getting more things done.

tags: Getting Things Done, GTD, 43 Folders, Merlin Mann, David Allen, Email, Inbox

When I found this image, I had to order a poster size version for the office.  I love the way the diagram uses the full text sentences to illustrate the icons and drive the viewer’s eyes to the next step in the flow.  I’ve put together hundreds of Visio diagrams, but now I have a new bar to strive for.

Also, the actual concepts illustrated are as relevant to the work we produce at Twelve Horses as they would be to any other company.

tags: Diagram, User Experience, Flow Chart

Over a year ago, Google released a mobile version of Gmail accessed through your phone’s web browser.  It was nice compared to other mobile applications and pretty easy to use.  Today, they have released a downloadable Java applet for your phone that is suppose to make the experience even better.  Instead of using your phones internal web browser, you actually install the Gmail application directly to your phone.  When you want to check you email account, simply fire up the application.

Downloading was simple.  Open your mobile web browser and point it to http://www.gmail.com/app.  Installation was painless and, with one click, the application started right up (granted I have a Windows Smartphone so your experience may differ).  The first screen prompts you for your username and password.  This can be a little tricky depending on your password and whether your phone has a keyboard or not (triple tapping a mixed case alpha-numeric password is not fun).

This is where things slowed down.  I was presented with the main screen and a loading icon in the upper right of the screen.  My mail never loaded.  I exited the application and re-opened it.  This time I received the message, "Connecting to service, please wait…"  I gave up after ten minutes of not connecting.  I’ll let you know if I ever connect.

tags: Gmail, Google, Mobile

UPDATE: I did get it to work today.  As Robert points out in his comment, the text is almost too small to read on my phone (which has a pretty good resolution).  I found that you could go into the settings and turn the Small Text option off.  Now I am rocking and rolling.  The experience is much better than that of WAP version.

GigaVox Media, a company started by Doug Kaye of IT Conversations and long time podcaster, has released a free software application called the Levelator. This application will take a look at the entire wav file from your podcast and smooth out the sounds making them all close to the same level. This helps prevent those annoying dips in audio when the speaker either leans away from the Mic or decides to whisper (I am mostly speaking of myself). According to the website:

It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all
three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use.

I briefly tested it on Episode #2 of Horse Power in which we interviewed David Archer. Since we were so new to the game, we had our audio tuned for the worst possible recording experience. The Levelator did a very good job of making the audio sound better - although you could tell where it really had to amplify bits and pieces. I think now that we are better and recording, it will just add a bit more polish to our podcasts.

To have a great idea and have a knack to get others excited about it is a huge motivator for me.  I think all of us feel that this can showcase how smart or clever we are and when you share it and they agree, it’s instant validation.  It’s an ego trip.

However, the ability to take this great idea and implement it - make it come to life - is what separates the 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg’s from the rest of us who don’t have $1.5 billion websites.  Without Implementors, we never would have had the Model-T, Disneyland and penicillin.

Right now you’re thinking, yeah duh.  Of course we need implementors to get things done.  The reason I’m spending the time to write this is to say, don’t get the big idea guys confused with the implementors.  Many big idea guys have the motivation to either get their idea implemented or implement it themselves but many many more never take it to that next step.

So the next time you have a big idea, think to yourself, "Self, how am I going to get this implemented?"  Waiting for someone to walk up to you and say, "Hey, do you have any big ideas I can implement?" just isn’t going to happen.

Recently, I was faced with an issue regarding resizing an image to a larger size. I wanted to enlarge this image to be the same size as our booth display for an upcoming conference.  However, the only size we had available was 3×5 inches at 300dpi. Any thing poster size or larger was going to have some pixel problems.

A couple of our designers had just attended an Adobe Photoshop seminar and came back with this cool trick to enlarge an image without losing quality.

In Adobe Photoshop, go to Image, and then Image Size. If your image is not 300 dpi, go ahead and switch it without resampling. Then, with resampling on, begin bumping up the size in 10% increments. You will want to run an Unsharp Mask at every 30% or 1/3 of the process to get to the final desired image size.

Keep in mind that as you increase the size, it is compounding. So, when you repeat after the first time, 30% does not necessarily equal 3 times.

This process allowed me to take a 3×5 inch image to a 4×6 feet. I got the print back today, and the quality is amazing. I could have even gone larger with it.