Your business card has your logo on it. Right? Let’s hope. It’s got your address, phone number, website address (it better!)? E-mail address? Check. Wait a minute, does that say “chunkylover58@aol.com”? You mean, you don’t have an email address at your own domain name? Personally, I think johndoe@widgets.com looks a bit more professional.

Promoting your Internet provider or Yahoo, Hotmail and even Gmail doesn’t help your business. Anyone can sign up for a free email address somewhere, and a LOT of people do, and that’s great. Do you want to give the impression that a free email address is good enough for your business?

Everyone’s favorite Internet company (Google, if you didn’t know) has offered Google Apps for your Domain for quite some time, but not everyone is aware of it. What it does is all this:

• Gmail
  Get custom email like bill@microsoft.com. Mobile support and IMAP/POP3 are included, so you can use your regular ol’ email app (Outlook, Outlook Express, etc…).
• Google Calendar
  Organize your schedule and share events with friends
• Google Docs
  Share online documents, presentations, and spreadsheets enhancing your company’s traditional productivity software and helping employees share information efficiently.
• Google Sites
  Create websites and group wikis (not recommended for your *real* site, just internal sites)

From within the GAfyD interface, you’ll be able to instant message with everyone else within your domain name, as well as any other user that’s on Google Chat, or even AOL Instant Messenger (which is alot of folks!). Instant Messaging (IM) has really taken off in the business world, and is much more effective than email in certain cases.

Google Calendars, lets you share calendars and let people see when you’re busy. It makes scheduling meetings a ton easier. You can also invite people to events that you’ve scheduled. It’s a great way to work!

My favorite part of GAfyD, is Google Docs. If you haven’t used this feature before, get ready to change how you work. Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users (sentence borrowed from Wikipedia). So, you and Bill down the hall can work together on the merger documents, all without leaving your comfy office chair!

Google offers two versions of this amazing productivity booster: Premier Edition ($50 / user account / year), or the ad-supported Standard Edition. I’m not a reseller, and I the only money I make off setting this up for your company is for my time in setting everything up and for training. Contact me for a quote to take advantage of the power that is, GOOGLE APPS!!!

More information straight from the horse’s mouth:

• Want to see how much you could save with Google Apps compared to Microsoft Exchange 2007? Estimate your savings
• Google Apps customers typically experience less than 15 minutes of downtime per month. Read more
• Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search.
• At no extra charge, Google Apps supports over-the-air mobile access on BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android and many less powerful phones. Learn more