I admit, I’m dissappointed. My most recent experiment with virtal business/all cloud computing went bust. The final straw was at dinner with my husband and brother where they mocked me openly about how virtual apps weren’t really working for me.
Here’s what I tried:
1) Abandon desktop email software and use only Gmail with domain name mapping
2) Abandon Word/PPT/XLS and use only Googe Docs
3) Abandon paid Web hosting and go with free WordPress deployments hosted on their server
Here’s why it didn’t work:
1) Gmail falls apart when you try to use multiple email addresses. I currently use 6 mapped domains, which means six totally different email addresses. With Gmail, I needed to login/logout of each address account in order to keep my email “to” field clean.
When I tried forwarding all 6 addresses to a general Gmail account, much of my inbound and outbound mail was captured by spam filters so my clients couldn’t communicate with me.
The mail that DID get through was marked “marcidevries@gmail.com on behalf of Marci@mdvinteractive.com” which is a stinky way to brand a tech company, right?
2) Using Google Docs was a hassle because I couldn’t really get regular .doc .xls .ppt files to open correctly in Google Docs. Therefore any document sent by a client wasn’t really readable. I also couldn’t edit and then send them a Google Doc back because Word et.al. doesn’t really open Google Docs correctly.
Which, considering that they didn’t receive my emails anyway (see problem #1) maybe this didn’t really matter. LOL
3) The free hosting by WordPress is really pretty awesome. However, there aren’t enough widgets available to allow the site to do what I want it to do. So frustrating. I am still hosting in the free version, but will probably switch to paid hosting with WordPress as my free CMS in a couple of months.
So there’s my update on Virtualization. The Web is SO CLOSE to being able to actually do this. So close, but yet so far…
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There’s authenticity, immediacy, and the holy matrimony of the two.
Here’s an interesting finding from my work on the Baltimore AMA board. We revamped the site into a WordPress/bloggy sort of entity, and opened it up for board members to write on, and all of our members to contribute to.
This simple act of Opening the system to everyone has reinvigorated the site, and brought activity that I didn’t think I’d ever see on an association site. The contributions are genuine and interesting, and the response from members as well as non-members has been immediate and awesome. Check out this entry where an AMA member writes about a company she admires, and then that company responds within MINUTES from the Web. Awesome.
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Posted in Blog Entry, Getting to the Point | Tags: authenticity, blogging, comments, reality