Google Apps Team Edition
Google Apps Professional (http://www.google.com/a/?hl=en_GB) has been around for a while and offers various Google-hosted applications to businesses: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and several other programs. However, this service requires some technical background and costs £30 per user per year. There’s a free Standard version as well, but it doesn’t offer collaboration with others.
That’s why Google recently released Google Apps Team Edition (http://www.google.com/apps/business). Unlike Google Apps Professional, the Team Edition is free and it allows you to collaborate with colleagues. When signing up, you have to give an existing domain name, but you can register one directly, for about £5/year. Next, enter all the e-mail addresses of the colleagues you want to collaborate with; they will subsequently be asked to verify their address by clicking on a link. Team Edition only gives access to GoogleDocs (word processing and spreadsheets), Google Calendar, Google Talk (chat) and Start Page, a consolidated page containing pointers to Calendar, Talk, etc. Note that this service doesn’t give access to Gmail, although anyone can create a free Gmail account, of course. In the Docs and Calendar modules, the members of the “team” can collaborate efficiently and read or edit each other’s documents. Tip. This suite was recently expanded by Google Sites,this module lets you create a team website in minutes - without knowledge of HTML - where you can centralise all kinds of information (from videos to presentations) to share with others.
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