Google Apps is easy. If you use IMAP on your iPhone then you just need to turn on Notes. Go to Settings, “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” select your account, and flip the switch on Notes (see the screenshot below).

Unfortunately, Google Sync users have a couple of extra (counter-intuitive) steps. You already have an Exchange account on your iPhone where you can switch on and off Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Notes is not an option. You must set up a new IMAP account with your Google Sync credentials and GMail’s IMAP settings:

Incoming Mail Server: imap.gmail.com

Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.gmail.com

Turn off Mail since you already have email set up with Exchange. Turn on Notes (see the screenshot below).

Now, when you use the Notes app to create a note on your iPhone it will appear in your GMail account with the label “Notes.” To access it you must search for “label:notes” or click on your Notes label in the sidebar. Unfortunately, you cannot create notes from your computer by sending yourself an email and then labeling it with “Notes” which makes this a one-way solution. I recommend using Google Tasks or Simplenote if you want the ability to create and edit notes from multiple devices.

What You Need

1. Fluid – This allows you to create applications from web sites. In our case we will be creating a Google Calendar application, and a Google Tasks application.

2. Calendar icon

3. Tasks icon

4. 10 minutes

The Steps

1. Download Fluid.

2. Open Fluid.app.

3. The first app we’ll create is for Google Calendar.  Let’s use “Calendar” for the name.

4. The URL for Google Calendar is google.com/calendar/m.

Note: For Google Apps users it’s google.com/calendar/hosted/[your domain name]/m.

5. The dock or menu bar icon for this application can either be Google Calendar’s favicon, the tiny icon that appears in the address bar of your browser when you visit the site, or something a little fancier, like what I suggested above.  To use the fancy icon select “Other” from the Icon menu, and locate the newly downloaded icon on your hard drive.

6. Click Create.

7. After a few seconds you’ll have the option to Launch. Go ahead. Don’t be afraid.

8. The window that appears is a web browser that will automatically open to Google Calendar.  Log in (if necessary).

9. Go to the Calendar menu and hover over User Agent.  Select “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone”.

10. Go to the File menu and select Close Window.

11. Go to the File menu and select New Window.

12. Go to the Calendar menu and select “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…”  Click OK in the warning window and you’ll have a new item in the menu bar: a tiny calendar icon.  Click on it to see the mobile version of your Google Calendar.  You can drag the lower-left corner to resize the window.

Repeat for Google Tasks

For Google Tasks, follow the same steps (you obviously don’t have to download Fluid again).  The URL you will use is gmail.com/tasks.

Note: For Google Apps users it’s mail.google.com/tasks/a/[your domain name].

Tasks will not properly load until you perform step 9 and set the User Agent to “Other”.  Enter the following text into the window:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20

You’re done! Now you can quickly and easily view upcoming appointments and manage your tasks list.

If you have any questions leave a comment.  Good luck getting organized!

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Cloud computing seems to be all the rage these days, from business collaboration tools, like Document & Spreadsheet apps, to the YouTube’s and Flickr’s of the web. Either way you look at it, it would appear that universal access is getting nearer and nearer. Eventually cloud computing will be the only computing, and the only OS you’ll need will be completely location independent. But for now, there are a few choices to get started with. Between Apple’s .Mac service and Google Apps, which is more likely for consumers to choose?

Let’s breakdown the basic features and compare the two:

Basic Features	.Mac	Google Apps
Mail	IMAP	IMAP/POP
Online Storage	10 Gigs Shared	Unknown
Web Hosting
Backup
Calendar
Address Book
Syncing

.Mac

Since the most recent update, .Mac has brought new and exciting features. The .Mac Web Gallery offers unparalleled ability to share photos and slideshows. Users now have 10 gigs at their disposal to share between Mail and storing files. One feature that has most intrigued me is “Back To My Mac.” Currently it lets .Mac users access any of their computers from outside their own network. If I’m at home, I can access my work computer and vice versa. What interests me most is my hope of one day seeing very similar features across the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Imagine throwing in a bit of Front Row access, and you’re streaming your favorite videos or music from wherever you are. .Mac also offers a complete Backup and Restore utility, the ability to Sync iCal and Address Book across multiple Macs, which can come in handy especially if you’re on the go. In total these features will cost you $99 a year.

Google Apps

Currently Google offers 5.6 gigs for Gmail and has announced GDrive, their answer to online storage. Currently the amount of online storage space is unknown but I imagine it to grow similar to Gmail. Knowing Google, this probably won’t be your average online storage. Perhaps online sharing and then some? Currently box.net is my choice for online storage. They offer the capability of sharing as well as document editing. With Google you know if they introduce something new, it’s going to go above and beyond what you expect.

Google also has Picasa and Blogger under their belt. With Picasa users can currently store and share one gig worth of photos online. Page Creator lets users create websites and upload them to Blogger. Google also features Google Docs & Spreadsheets for online editing. While you may not be able to cross sync computers, or access another computer, having your Calender and Documents stored online makes remote accessibility easy. Having everything edited and stored online means you never have to worry about syncing computers to get the most up to date information. Other features include Google Talk for online communicating, Google Reader, and your own personalized homepage. Naturally the most attractive feature offered by Google is having all these utilities completely mobile and completely free.

One Google to Rule Them All?

Gmail is the true gateway drug. As soon as you switch, you feel compelled to use all the other Google utilities and features available before you. Whether your poison is Google Reader or iGoogle, there’s a strong platform to expand on. With their rate of acquisitions, Google can only stand to gain more ground. So for this user, while .Mac may look pretty and be feature friendly, but I’m sticking with Google. You can’t beat free, and you can’t be mobile the way Google achieves it.

However, I think it’s interesting to note that the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is also on the Board of Directors for Apple. So while they may be competing for universal access, maybe they really are just be building off of one another.

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