Jon Cole has joined the ever-growing team. He comes from a background of web development, Windows- and Macintosh-based troubleshooting, and youth ministry. Jon has many talents, including (but not limited to) playing guitar, playing bass, playing drums, photography, desktop video (Final Cut Pro), and driving long distances. Jon's day job consists of web programming and workstation maintenance at a sales promotions agency. He is known to lead the music aspect of worship services from time to time at various churches, and splits time with his cousin as the front man for a band called In the Key of G. He can be expected to contribute publicly from time to time on various topics.

We're rounding out this edition of Google Week with a quick peek at Google Apps. The information, tours and demos over at the Google Apps page are pretty good in their own right, so I won't make any attempts to give you the full run down of every feature.

In short, Apps is your church website and webserver right out of the [virtual] box. You can get up and running with relatively little or no cost. The most expensive elements for you are decent internet access (which your church may already have) and the computers with which to access it (which your church also probably has), Google takes care of the rest.

The core modules included in the Apps package are familiar: Docs & Spreadsheets, GMail, Page Creator, Talk, and Calendar. We've written about a couple of these pieces already and as you are probably aware, they're already all freely available.

So what's the big deal? What makes Apps notable is that you can place your own branding on things. During the sign up process, Google will help you acquire your own domain name or transfer an existing one. This means your church web address can go from http://users.randomisp.com/members/~pastorjoe45/church.html to http://www.firstpotluckchurch.org in no time, and your email from pastorjoe45@randomisp.com to joe.schmoe@firstpotluckchurch.com. Apps lets you pull all of these things in under your own umbrella. There is some expense in setting up your own domain, about $10.00, but this is relatively cheap.

There is a Premium Edition of this service for a fee, of course. With this edition you can drop the ads that appear on some pages (notably the email interface), gain access to a room scheduler and have the use of a couple other more technical tools that may or may not be worth the extra cost to you.

We've spent the week on Google tools, not because we're die-hard Google aficionados or that they're the only option out there, but rather because it's one of the few places that you can find such a broad spectrum of powerful, competently constructed tools at no cost. There are other options such as Microsoft's new Office Live that will get you up and running with a professional look for no cost (look for a further review of this tool sometime in the future) - they'll even buy your domain for you - and we certainly don't want to diminish the value of those options.

Good stuff... on the web... ready for you to start using today to improve your church's ability to communicate with your congregation and the world at large.

Google Week Series: [1] [2] [3] [4]

What is it?
Google Calendar is a free online calendar program (similar to MS-Outlooks) that allows you to create, edit, and share calendars online.

What is it good for?

• Keeping your schedule straight
  
• Sharing your calendar with staff, elders, friends & family.
• Notifying others about upcoming meetings
• Verify if others are able to come to upcoming meetings

What are the benefits?

• Quick Entry - just type the details and it adds it to your calendar. Ex - 7-9PM Worship Practice 4/26/07 at Church. And it will automatically place it on your calendar. No fields to fill out.
• Send out invitations via email to specific users for an event.
• Use it to track who is attending the event.
• Invitees can accept, reject, or suggest a better place or time for the meeting.
  
• Embed G-Calendar on your Churches Website or your personal blog.
• Share your personal schedule with a secretary or staff member.
• Share your schedule with an accountability partner. Possibly he/she can suggest a healthy change.
  
• It's free!
  

What are some limitations...
Invitation to other users works better with some email providers than others. Works amazing with other Gmail users, works well with MS-Outlook users, Apple Mail, and Yahoo Mail. Had mixed results when using Hot Mail to accept an invitation. I have yet to seen a good way to sync with an PDA device(s). Also you need a device with Internet access to use it. Some still like the old paper and pencil method. I can respect that.

Learning curve... very easy. Takes a few minutes to figure out the sharing functions.

To get started using Google Calendar click here.
To take a tour of Google Calendar click here.

Google Week Series: [1] [2] [3] [4]