First look at Google Applications for Your Domian (beta)
I got a beta invitation for GAYD, Google Applications for Your Domian, from google last night and quickly got down to work. GAYD consists of Email, Chat, Calendar and Domain web pages.
Before you can get started with GAYD, you need to 'claim' that site you registered for the beta testing is actually your's. For this, you just need to upload a html file with verification code to your website.
When you sign into GAYD, you are presented with a sleek dashboard with all the bundled services
User Accounts:
You are allowed to create upto 25 user accounts for your domain. You can either type all or some of the 25 user accounts
or you can save them in a .csv file and upload them. There is a specific format for the csv file. The account with which you have signed in wil be the admin account and rest are limited account(s).
Email: The flagship of google, Gmail, is perhaps the only reason you might want to consider GAYD. To get started with Email you need to change the MX (Mail Exchange) record in the DNS. Its advised to delete the existing MX record and then add any new entries. You can contact your Web Hoster for the specific steps. Its normally found under the DNS tab.
The Gmail Inteface provided under GAYD is same as the one found in the Gmail. Absolutely no change. The only change perhaps is Powered by Google image at the bottom of the page instead of (C) Google found in tradiotinal Gmail. The Email interface also supports the built in messenger service as found in Gmail. Yes...You also have the flexibility replace the Gmail logo at the top left hand corner with any custom image. Each mail account has 2GB capacity. When you log into your mailbox you are not left with an empty mailbox!!!! As a bonus you get 2 mail messages. Both are from Gmail team promoting their products like Google Desktop and Picasa. Yes. Everything is the same including the contextual advertisements on the right side of your mail.
Chat:
To get the Chat working you dont have to do anything. That is the best part!!! 30 mins from the time you log in to your Dashboard, the chat would be available. You just need to download the client and sign in. All the features available in Gtalk are present. You can call people, leave voicemail and pretty much do everything you did in Gtalk.
You are also adviced to setup XMPP for the chat. XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an open, XML based instant mesaging protocol. The help link suggest that you edit the Service Record (SRV) and suggests the values you need to provide. You are better off not worrying about this. The main reason being you will never be able to find the SRV settings in your Domain Control Panel.
Calendar:
There is again no difference between the Google Calendar and the one given away as part of the GAYD. How can there be any difference, both are powered by the same codebase. You can also find the calendar link on the top left corner above the logo in your dashboard and mail interface.
Domain web pages:
You need to change the CNAME record in your domain setting for publishing the web pages. A CNAME record or Canonical Name record makes one domain name an alias of another.
This is a 3 step process. In the 1 step you are asked pick up the address for your website
In the 2 step: you need to confirm the same. Caution: Once you confirm this step you will not allowed to change the address after this step.
Since my site is already hosted, i didnt proceed to the third step. I presume you wil be asked to edit the CNAME with the values provided by Google. You can change the CNAME settings in the DNS section of your sites's control panel. If you skip this step you still be able to create web pages but you will not be able to publish them to your site.
Highlights:
- You can check both gmail and GAYD mailboxes at the same time. ;-)
- 9/10 people would not be able to say if u r using GAYD or Gmail. And if you dont happen to change to your custom logo, then make it 10/10
Lowlights:
- Looks like google was late by few months on releasing GAYD. Microsoft has gone live recently with Live Domain which was in beta for nearly 6 months or more. Live custom domain also offer similar package. Except that the Messenger was not part of the package.
- Of the 4 packages rolled out so far, only Gmail and Gtalk (if you consider Gatlk as an IM client) would be their selling points. Look at my previous post on Google Talk on analysis and market share of Gatlk. Google Calendar and Google Web page creation are just for increasing the package count. Web page creation tool is still a very primitive product by any standard and it never really took off. Google Calendar is still used by the Anything But Microsoft, ABM, group and again in that by the very small subset of die-hard googler's.
Strategy:
Microsoft does provide all these features and more under their Live umbrella. Microsoft still has a headstart of more than 6 months when compared to google. We still believe that Google has rolled out a half backed product. Google should have added few more of their goodies into the GAYD. It could have integrated the Google Video, Earth and the ability to post to blogger from a single interface or from gmail. If only someone would have bothered to lookup in their impressive product list
One thing is proved for sure. Software as a Service is here to stay. Its not just a mere marketing ploy like Web 2.0. This reminds me of my fellow blogger JayaDev's favourite quote.
"What's web 2.0 ?"
"Something which produces more RSS than Revenue" ;) [If you know what he mean]
Happy Blogging