My Google Sites Test

I spent some time this past weekend, with Google Sites, the new FREE service from Google that enables Team sharing and collaboration. I've long been a huge supporter of tools that enable teams to collaborate and so I had to give Sites a try.

Now I'm not highly technical. I don't code with HTML. And I had no trouble creating a sample company intranet site and also a Customer Site for a service business.

I was easily able to embed and use all the other Google tools (Docs, Calendars, Email, Picassa slideshow, Presentations, iGoogle gadgets) as well as the Sites tools (Filing Cabinet, Announcements, Dashboard and Lists.)

Here's a screenshot of the sample customer service site I created.

Now I've only spent a couple of days with the application but I can see that it will begin to level the playing field for small to mid-sized businesses who simply don't have access to the I.T. resources that their larger competitors do.

With Sites, companies with 10-300 employees could really support improved communication and collaboration.

And they could also use the tool to get closer to their customers.

Sites offer you the opportunity to create a variety of sites under a single account. So I created a sample company intranet and then created a sample customer service site, where my fictitious company could track and communicate issues resolution, share documents, push announcements and even IM with customer contacts.

All in all, my time was well spent.

If you're involved in a small business, or work within a team setting, you'd be doing yourself a favor if you checked this out.

The Irrelevant Giant

As reported at CIO.com today, Microsoft announced that it will be putting it's office applications suite on the web.

They are late to the party AGAIN.

It's an obvious attempt to head off Google's entry of sharable web based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software (which I happen to be using at the moment).

It's hard to tell from my perspective whether Microsoft actually wanted to enter this space or whether they felt they HAD to.

My gut tells me that they've been "playing defense" for some time now.

I'm certain that all the geek pundits will begin blogging about Msoft's imminent/eventual demise.

I don't think Microsoft is in danger of imminent demise. I think they're in danger of becoming irrelevant.

And that's far worse.