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Google Apps Premium

On several occasions I have blogged about Zimbra. In June I decided to switch back to Google apps. For about a month or so I had been playing with both Zimbra and Google apps. What's funny is I was relatively happy with Zimbra, but when I was playing with android phones I started looking again at Google apps. It seems like nowadays Google apps is universally accessible on multiple operating systems and phone platforms. Zimbra does use Microsoft's exchange sync but do not as universally compatible as Google apps. The biggest drawback was the limitations on android phones. Even though I ended up not keeping an android phone I actually like the flexibility that Google apps gave me. When I first started using Zimbra I actually A copy of mail both on my Gmail and on my Zimbra account. Recently I have been less concerned about downtime with anyone provider, so that redundancy seemed like overkill.

What I ended up doing was I stopped using Zimbra and started using the free Google apps. Once I got the IOS 4.0 upgrade for my iPhone however I was compelled to purchase the paid version. There was a quirk with each change sync settings and IOS 4.0 that was fixed with the premium version. I tried the 15 day free account and liked it. I ended up canceling my Zimbra account and and now I am only using Google apps. Feature wise I can't complain about Zimbra. Overall the two products were similar. I do however like the UI of Google apps. Recent integration of Google voice to my Google apps for domains also affirms my choice was the right one for me at the time. The

So far I've been happy with my choice for the past few months. I know every year or two I reassess the situation. I did that about two years ago when I switched from Google Apps to Zimbra, any year or so before that when I moved on to Google apps from another mail provider. Let's hope I am satisfied with what I have now for a few years. Of course if Google doesn't continue to innovate I'm open to other options.

A New Blackberry Curve

When I got home from the taping of the Daily Show last night I returned to a box containing my new Blackberry Curve 8310. Since I started my new job in September I have been lazy in researching how to order one. Over the holidays I finally broke down and realized I needed one to stay up to date with the contestant barrage of mail I get. So now I once again have to carry two phones, since I won't give up my personal number. It has been almost 8 months since I had a Blackberry I used every day. I almost didn't miss it.

I have a slightly newer model Curve from what I used at Redcats. The only major difference I see is that this new one has GPS built in, and is a titanium color. I am still trying to figure out what applications I want for it.

Blackberry, Curve 8310, GSM

Google To Zimbra Update

So far I am liking Zimbra, but I do have a few features that I miss from Google Apps. I miss the ability to search and apply tags to everything that is already in my account. Zimbra cannot do that, but version 6 should be able to fix that. I miss the linking of messages to one thread in Google, but on the other hand I don't miss it sometimes. That was a controversial function for me.

I miss the extra drive space. My current Zimbra account only gives me 2 gigs. When I am done uploading all my mail I will need closer to 4gig, and Google apps gave me around 7. I knew this going into the Zimbra, but more space would be nice!

I am liking the syncing to my iPhone. The only quirk is that the photo caller id pictures I have on my Mac address book won't sync with the iPhone anymore but they will sync with the Zimbra server. Weird. I am also having issues with getting the calendar on my mac to sync with Zimbra. I was able to do a one way import to the server but getting it back down to my iCal has been a problem. It hasn't bothered me yet since I don't really use iCal as much as I used to now that my work world lives in Exchange.

I have had a few other odd issues with mail not replicating to Outlook using the Zimbra plug in, but I haven't gone crazy over it yet. Overall Google Apps was a good solid web app, so change is difficult. That being said I am happier that I have a bit more control over my most sensitive data. Sorry Google, I love you in many ways but I am still a bit skeptical about your privacy and data retention policies. And in a nutshell that is the final reason I moved to Zimbra. I still use my Gmail account as a backup, but I haven't logged into my Google Apps account all week.

Technorati Tags: 01.com, email, gmail, google apps, IMAP, zimbra

Free Google Apps, to Paid Zimbra!

My brother in law reminded me that he lost everything in his Gmail inbox a few months ago. He can't recall how that happened, and there is no way to get the data back. Knowing him, I don't think he did something to delete it. This story on top of several people I have spoken to about percieved issues with Googles privacy policy has got me wondering if I should be relying on Google Apps for my mail. To be truthful I was originally a skeptic of Gmail but I have been using Google Apps for about a year with no major issues. That being said hearing horror stories about lack of support or loss of mail (or loss of access to mail), hijacking of accounts, etc got me thinking. I am willing to pay for rock solid service from a mail provider, but even paying for Google Apps doesn't (in my eyes) solve the security and privacy issues with Googles terms of service.

All these concerns got to seriously look at using Zimbra again. Earlier this year I had tried out 01.com's personal Zimbra hosting but ended up sticking to Google Apps. What has changed? The iPhone for one. The need in my opinion to have my contacts synced with my mail system. The fact that I have an iPhone so I switched to Remember The Milk for task management. One major reason I didn't keep using Zimbra was it didn't sync tasks to the Mac and at the time that was a requirement. With me using RTM that isn't an issue anymore. I could have used my existing hosting provider and used simple IMAP mail like I did for years, but I grew attached to a nice web UI. The ability to have the same mail experience on any computer became very compelling, so going back to simple IMAP mail wasn't going to cut it.

Last week I signed up for a business account with 01.com (biz account offers me more features over the personal one I previously tried). I have already moved the majority of my mail from Google Apps over to Zimbra. The moving of mail was slow since I was just coping messages between the two services using IMAP. Getting my contacts and calendar into Zimbra was easy with the import functionality as well as the iSync connector. I am having issues sync'ing my calendar back with my Mac, but everything syncs up perfectly with my iPhone. If I realized Zimbra would work so well syncing with the iPhone I would never have renewed .mac (mobileme). I would have been better served just using sugarsync and Zimbra, but I didn't know about sugarsync in July. I know for next year not to renew mobileme!

Now all I need to do is sort out a few minor glitches with my Zimbra experience and I will be happy to stop using Google Apps.

Technorati Tags: 01.com, email, gmail, google apps, IMAP, mobileme, iPhone 3G, sugarsync, zimbra

I Cannot Stand The Blackberry Pearl

I cannot stand the Blackberry Pearl! I know it is a really small phone, and it is a Blackberry but it drives me crazy. The only reason to have a Blackberry is to use it for email. I think all other functions of it are sub-par as smart phones go, so to have an email device without a full keyboard is driving me up the wall. My office gave me a brand new Verizon Wireless Pearl when I started and I tolerated the horrible keyboard since it was the nicest phone they had. The last straw was about two weeks ago when I was writing my boss and the dam predictive text or whatever you call it could not type out LAN, nor could I cancel out of the options it was giving me.

Early last week I had our telecom person switch me to an Blackberry 8800 that my predecessor had. That phone is huge, and kind of sucks but it has a full keyboard. I will use it until we can figure out why we cannot get the iPhone or any other Wireless Active Sync device to connect to our Exchange 2003 server.

Blackberry, Blackberry Curve, Blackberry Pearl, iPhone, Microsoft, Smart Phones, verizon wireless, Blackberry Keyboard, iPhone 3G, Active Sync, Exchange Server

Google Apps

I remember when Howard & Gus were talking up Gmail when it came out. A gig of storage for life free they said. It was a closed beta so you had to have friends who had an in get you an invite. In a short period of time (shorter than I expected) I had an invite. I was like why do I need this? I want and use my own domain's personal email. Why would I want @gmail.com in my address? I mean the idea was very interesting but I didn't think it was for me.

Not too much time went by and people were still talking about Gmail. I figured I need to use my invite so I can at least secure the username that I like to use, so I did. As predicted I haven't used Gmail that much. I do route mail to it that I don't want in my regular mailbox's, but I could go weeks without logging into the account. That was until a month or so ago.

Recently Google offered Google Apps for free. Google Apps is a collection of web applications that you can use with your own domain. They have cool features like Google Talk, Calendar, etc. What got me interested was Gmail. Now they offer a Gmail front end that you can use for your own mail domain. Better yet it is free for personal use. I get 100 accounts with as of this writing 5.8 gigs of space. Now this information on its own would be interesting but nothing more. In fact when I first read about Google Apps I setup a mail domain pointing to the system and played around with it, but nothing more. I like to get my mail via IMAP, and Google didn't offer that. The final clincher for me was when they announced that Google Apps would support IMAP, also for free. For the past week I have been routing some mail to my domain I had them hosting mail for, and so far I haven't had any hiccups (fingers crossed). Because of that I am beginning the task of routing all my mail to Google Apps.

I can be a cynic. I know that, but I am very impressed by how this tool has evolved. I am even eying the Premier version of the service to get some of the more advanced features. I am not sure if I need them so the free service is fine for now. It is just too bad that I wasted some money moving to a new email hosting provider in September. They are great, but they can't compete with 5gigs free IMAP storage.

Mail Server

We have been having a problem with one of our Mail servers. It is the machine that holds a bunch of small domains we own, and our call center mail system. It wont allow us to log into terminal server. VNC keeps crashing, and LDAP doesn't start. It serves up mail fine though. We have had this issue for a week or so. We have been trying to figure out the problem without causing more issues.

I finally broke down and configured the replacement box today. We put the new hardware up at our data center on Tuesday but had not had a chance to cut all the mail over onto it. I configured Imail, moved the mailbox's and domains. All but our biggest domain is now cut over. Everything looks normal so far. I will cut the remaining domain over when our call center closes tonight. hopefully everything will go smooth. I should just need to update the MX record, and sync the mail. All the accounts are created, and copies of the mailbox's are on there from a snapshot a few hours ago.

Keeping my fingers crossed!!!

Technorati Tags: Imail, LDAP

If I thought I Was Busy Before

If I thought I was busy at work before, I am in way over my head now. One of the guys on my team left yesterday. We are now short handed. The big problem is the small issues now slowing down getting the bigger projects done.

I have 1 Windows 2003 Server with Active directory done for our nyc office. it is already in production. I need to finish moving stuff off one other server and then move the AD roles to the 2k3 server. Then I can rebuild the other box, and move on in the upgrade cycle.

A major web site for a customer of ours is launching tonight. Thankfully it didn't require too much time on my teams part, but it ate up resources.

As I mentioned before I am also trying to merge our mail systems for 1 department. I have 2 call centers who are supposed to interact with each other, but they are on 2 different mail systems. We are going to merge our NYC call center people with our Kingston mail system, since the kingston system is newer and it is cheaper to maintain. Then when that is done we will have all our call center people on one mail system and the remainder of the company on another. The good news is the new mail system (Imail 8.0) is awesome. I have been a fan of Imail for years, since like version 5.0 I think. I never used it at work, but have at home or when I hosted my site with someone. So far I am very happy with it.

Upgrades Galore

Over the past few days I have completed building my first Windows 2003 Domain Controller for our NYC office. Last night I moved a few DHCP scopes onto it. I will finish that this weekend. I also moved our callcenter mail server to our data center. It completes my migration to IMail 8.0. It is a nice little mail program. Next up is moving NYC call center people to this mail server. That requires changing their email address’. No one will be happy about that. I am working on a migration plan now.

I also need to learn more about rsync. We are going to use it for some new things starting soon.

Busy At Work, What Else Is New

Work this week has been challenging. I got nothing I planned on doing yesterday completed. I was busy fixing other issue that crept up. Kai from our Kingston office was down for a meeting and also to just work for a day out of NY. He never did that before so we wanted to bring him down.

We are in the midst of several major projects. Remote recording of voice calls, creating a beta test for remote agents, move a mail server, upgrade NYC’s domain controllers, evaluate SMS, build a new service domain, and oh yeah we had 4 people get hired in the past week. My team is just a bit busy. Don’t get me wrong, busy is good. Overwhelmed is not. We are currently busy but quickly moving to overwhelmed. Hopefully we can get everything done without a problem.