I got an early Christmas present in July when someone pointed me to this blog post on Google Apps blog.  FINALLY they have setup a work around for the “on behalf of” problem.  I immediately started to go through in my head how this was all going to work.  I did a Google Search on setting up Google Apps to see what other users were doing and I found an article about a completely different approach to managing emails.  Users are setting up a domain on Google Apps and setting their main email as the catchall for the domain.  Brilliant!  Now, when I sign up on a website I use thewebsitename@mydomainname.com and can have my filters automatically tag the emails coming in.  Also, if the website sells my information or gets hacked and I start getting spam I can blackhole the email account and decrease the amount of spam I receive on a daily basis to almost nothing.

Catchalls have been around for sometime and I am surprised over time other users haven’t figured out the benefits of using a catchall email account with a domain like I have setup in this situation.  This is a great setup for any user or a small business who wants to look like more than a one man shop.

I own an IT consulting firm, and as you can imagine, that means that I am not always in the office, and don’t always have connectivity available. With my BlackBerry, it was as simple as loading the Sprint SmartView software on my laptop (similar applications are provided by most carriers) and using my BlackBerry’s data connection. However, SmartView doesn’t work with the Samsung Moment, and Sprint has made the (poor) decision to do away with tethering or “Phone-As-Modem” options on their Simply Everything plans which are required plans for their smartphones. I speculate that their reason for doing away with tethering is an effort to drive customers to the increasing number of mobile broadband devices that they carry, including the new Novatel MiFi 2200 router, but I’ll save that gripe for another post.

So it seems that all is lost, I can no longer tether my phone to my laptop to use the data connection, and that’s a deal breaker. Weighing my options, door number one, I stay with BlackBerry and keep on trucking, but that’s not going to be a long term solution as Sprint will eventually drop tethering from my account. Door number two, I buy another device with another data plan, and I’m good to go. But why? Why should I have to fork out the money for another device, have something else to carry around, power, charge, and pay a monthly fee to use when I have a perfectly capable connection hanging on my belt, that I’ve been using for over a year, especially when I know full well that the only reason Sprint is making this change is to try to dig deeper into the pockets of smartphone carrying business professionals. Sprint, I’m still not against you, but I found door number three and I’m taking it (yes, it’s a line from National treasure).

One of the great things about the Android platform is the Android Market and the incredible amount of software that is available, more often than not, for free. One of these applications is June Fabrics PdaNet, a tethering application that is available for several platforms, including Android. Setup is painless on both the phone and the PC, but useage is a little different than what I was used to. The most noticeable difference, which I’ve already hinted at, is that you actually install PdaNet on both the phone and the PC that you wish to use it with. Once installed on both, you connect the phone to the PC via USB or bluetooth (Android 2.0 required for bluetooth tethering on the Android platform), launch the application on your phone and enable your connection method, right click the PdaNet tray icon on your PC, and select Connect.

That’s it, you are now using your phone’s data connection on your PC. PdaNet is one of the many applications available on the Android Market that provides a paid version and a “lite” or free version. The paid version gives you full use of your data connection, while the free version restricts you to http web access only. If you’re on the go as much as I am, you’re going to want the full version. The good news is that it’s cheap, $29.00 one time. I was paying an extra $15 a month for tethering when Sprint offered it.

This was one of the most crucial obstacles to overcome in order for me to be able to transition to the Android platform as a mobile business professional. Next time I’ll discuss some of the other applications and tools that I have found to make Android the platform for business now and in the near future.

In older versions of the Google Apps Directory Sync the tool will provision new users/groups and sync LDAP directory information. With this new update it will automatically suspend Google accounts if the account is suspended inside the LDAP directory.  The Google Apps Directory Sync tool is a one way sync.  It only reads information from the directory to replace information inside of Google Apps, it will not sync back to the LDAP directory.