I also want to reiterate that you do not need Google Apps for your domain to sync with your iThing or other mobile. This works with regular Google gmail accounts too if you have one, so if you’re already using that, or if you just need a place to park your contacts and calendar, you can do that without a personal domain.

Later on if you wanted a web host again you could choose whichever one you like, change your DNS to point yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com at it, and as long as you leave the MX record pointing at google, your email would keep working without any tweaking.

If your DNS is hosted by your web host, see if you can move it to your registrar — most of them have DNS servers you can use for this, and possibly even a parking page you can use in place of your current “blank” web site. If not, there are some free or very low cost donationware DNS providers out there, although I can’t remember any of them at the moment

To manage which calendars get synced, go to m.google.com/sync from your iPhone/iPod Touch (Google’s really good about detecting which platform/browser you’re on e.g. Windows, Blackberry, etc., and this doesn’t seem to work from other platforms). I don’t remember the specifics, but I think you need to sign in to your Google account and then maybe link (?) your device. Then you can tell Google which calendars to sync. I don’t have an iPhone, so YMMV.

You can also set (in Settings) which calendar is the default when you add events if you’re not adding to a specific calendar.

Kind of a rant here, because I know Garnet is OLD compared to other mobile OSs, but I cry a little when these cool new apps come out and Palm OS support is not even touched on.

All the more reason to move to the Pre for me.

I have a personal domain now, that I strictly use (and have for years) for just receiving email at calvin@mydomain.com. However, I’ve had all this time a “web host” company that also supplies a web page, shopping cart, etc, etc….

If I JUST want to use email with my domain, can I switch to google apps AND remove my hosting company from the equation? And if so, does that mean… what exactly? The NS records at Network Solutions (still there, domain’s been around for 14 yrs now) would now point to google, somehow? What would happen if folks typed in http://www.mydomain.com? (just the stock placeholder now via my host, has been for years)

Finally, how would this affect me if I did want to, at some point, add web pages and other domain related goodies?

Thanks in advance.

Calvin

Great review. I just wanted to add that it also works for blackberry phones. Ive been using the service since it used to sync just calender. Now it syncs contacts.

The service is pretty good. I can go on the computer, edit/add contacts in my gmail or add an event in my calender and it will show up on my bb in relatively no time at all. A great service all around.

Speaking of that, Google Sync is working great for multi-platform syncing — change something on my Touch or N71, and it’s pushed within minutes to the other one. So nice…

I guess, my only concern is how secure is my personal data on the Google servers? Both in terms of system failure and data access. So far, my all-out move to the Google cloud services is limited to non-critical, non-financial, non-identity, etc, stuff.