Google has always allowed free access to their business-productivity product, Google Apps. Up to 10 users can have custom email addresses, calendars, contacts, Google Drive, team sites, and Google Docs as well as access to the Google Apps Marketplace. By the end of this month or early in September, Google will be be shutting down new free access. Businesses wanting to use these services will have to pay. Currently the base-level is $5 per user per month or $50 per user per year. Old free accounts will remain active but anyone signing up for new accounts will have to pay even if they are a small business….

The cloud doesn’t scare me. The future will be more secure the sooner bigger companies adopt standards on cloud computing and data storage that makes sense. By that time, we’ll have the infrastructure in place to make the internet accessible from virtually anywhere. The challenge I’ve had over the past few months with Google Docs is the reliability issue. There are very few things in business that are more frustrating than to lose work because of technology. We put in human effort, knowledge, and creativity into doing things. When we lose access to them (or the entire documents themselves) it…

Jeff Bullas had a post up on his blog, Is Twitter About to Terminate Google Buzz, that discussed how Google Buzz is essentially dead. However, I don’t think Twitter killed Google Buzz. I think Google Buzz killed Google Buzz. I had high hopes for it. I really did. I didn’t see it as a Twitter killer or substitution for Twitter, but rather a more social version of the Google Reader Share with Note feature. I thought it might be a nice way to write a few lines about a blog post or news item you stumbled across. And with more blogs disabling comments, I thought it had potential to usher in a new era of blog commenting….

I’ve written about the problems with maintaining Google accounts before. A lot. Sometimes on my bedroom wall, late at night in my own blood. To describe Google’s account systems as massively, time consumingly problematic would be unfair to massively time consuming problems. But help may be on the way. PC World reports that they received a tip that next week Google may provide some relief from account madness. Back in May they announced that changes coming soon will allow Google Apps users to access more services not currently accessible from within Google Apps, with the changeover starting…

Gist, a social networking tool that works through email, today announced a Google Apps Gadget for Gmail. Email, the very first form of internet communication is ironically the last bastion of privacy in a time when everything you send out into the world wide web suddenly belongs to someone else, but Gist has been working hard to change that. Gist works through an add-on for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes or through an iPhone app. Gist hopes to reach a much wider audience by adding Gmail support. As the video shows, you can click on people’s names in the ‘To’ or ‘Cc’ field in an email and using Gist’s…