Google

At Foundry Group , we have now completely switched to Google Apps. This started in August when I decided to Try Gmail For A Week . Five months later I am ready to declare this experiment a complete success. As every day passes, I find a new magic happy thing that ties my life together better. Today it was Google rolling out a bookmark importer for Delicious. Amy and I have been heavy delicious users, although I stopped a while ago when it was uncertain what delicious’ future was. Amy kept asking me what the long term solution was now that we are on Google Apps – it turns out that the answer is “import your Delicious tags into Google Bookmark and keep on going.” ...

We are in the final stages of completely switching Foundry Group to Google Apps. This began as an experiment in August 2010 when I decided to Try Gmail for a Week and evolved into an actual plan after Gmail Won Me Over in September 2010. We took it slow to make sure it was actually possible to easily switch from a legacy Microsoft Exchange environment where everyone’s brains were hard wired with Outlook and Windows and shared calendars managed by multiple assistants were a critical business function for a relatively small number of people who travelled constantly. ...

About a month ago I wrote a post titled Trying Gmail For A Week . I haven’t thought about Outlook, Entourage, or Mac Mail for a month and I don’t think I’m ever going back. It took about a week to rewire my brain for how conversations worked and what the keyboard shortcuts were, but not that I’m there it’s just awesome. A few weeks ago Fred Wilson wrote a post titled Inbox Zero . In it he mentioned two Gmail services he found indispensable – Priority Inbox (from Google) and Unsubscribe.com (from James Siminoff who created Phonetag , another great service.) I agree with Fred on both of these, but have discovered a few extra things that are killer. I’ll list them below and for balance talk about a few shortcomings. ...

Now that my Apple and Google experiments have been huge successes, I thought I’d try an Android phone one more time. I like my iPhone 4, but it’s pretty weak with all the Google apps. Specifically, I badly want better contact integration, clean email sync, and Google voice. Plus, AT&T still blows in Boulder. Any suggestions out there for the “best Android out there today.” I was using a Sprint EVO for a while (and liked it a lot) until it was stolen by my assistant Kelly. So, I open to any choice – suggest away.

Today I concluded that my Gmail experiment is working nicely. In addition, we figured out (thanks to Dave Michels) how to wire up feld.com to Google Apps without breaking all the other feld.com users that are being served of an Exchange server. So, breaking rule #1 of all migrations, Ross and I flipped the switch at the end of the day to have my mail end up in my Google Apps account (via feld.com) rather than my Gmail account (via brad.feld@gmail.com ). ...

My week-long experiment with Gmail continues with my first big bump happening last night at around 9pm. After sending a lot of emails (apparently 500) I received an error message “You have reached a limit for sending mail “. I tried again. This perplexed me. So I clicked on the link. I read through it and couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. I tweeted about it and immediately heard back that Gmail had throttled me for up to the next 24 hours because I’d been sending too many emails. I poked around a little to try to figure out if there was a way around this and finally concluded that the solution was to go to sleep and try again in the morning. ...

Ever since I switched to the Mac, I’ve had N (where N is a suitably large number) tell me that I should switch to Gmail from Exchange. I finally decided to try it for a week and see if it works for me. Given my Mac experience – where I had to commit and really use it, I’ve decided to do the same on Gmail. For now, I’m just going to use Gmail (instead of Google Apps) because I don’t want to go through the hell of switching the feld.com domain since I’ve got a bunch of other people (e.g. my family members) on it in a variety of configurations. That’ll limit me a little as I won’t be able to use the Apps Marketplace, but the benefit is I’ll be able to mess around with a variety of other Gmail stuff. ...

The video from the second panel I was on at Google I/O 2010 – Technology, innovation, computer science, & more: A VC panel – is up. Dick Costolo – the COO of Twitter – is the moderator and my fellow panelists are Albert Wenger, Chris Dixon, Dave McClure, and Paul Graham. Someone didn’t like the title so it was renamed “VCs Who Code” but apparently that didn’t stick with the official event panel namers. ...

A few weeks ago I was on two panels at Google I/O 2010 . The video from one of them – Making Freemium work – converting free users to paying customers is up. Don Dodge from Google is the moderator and my fellow panelists are Dave McClure, Jeff Clavier, Matt Holleran, and Joe Kraus. It’s 60 minutes long, but we covered a lot of ground.

I just finished up spending the past two days at Google I/O. On one of the panels I participated in yesterday (VCs Who Code ), the endless discussion about open (e.g. Google) vs. closed (e.g. Apple) came up with Dave McClure stating “Open is for losers.” We had a short but spirited debate about a topic that could easily consume an entire panel before Dick Costolo (our moderator) quickly moved us on. Of course, we got bogged down again later in “native apps vs. web apps” question (which I think is irrelevant in the long run, and said so.) ...