Hosted Services

Some time ago, I was looking for a way to set up a family calendar so we could all keep track of one another's plans and schedules.  Being a typical, time challenged family of the new century we were having a hard time keeping track of all our activities.  My first thought was to try to whip something up from scratch, but being the spare-time-challenged individual that I am made that a difficult proposition.

Around that time, I had listened to Scott Hanselman's HanselMinutes episode about Google Apps and Windows Live Custom Domains.  I immediately went to find out all the details.  The idea with both of these services is that you obtain a domain name and then configure that domain to be redirected to one of these companies' properties for services like email, productivity applications, calendaring, blogging, etc.  You can check out Microsoft's offerings  and Google's .  I elected to sign up for Google Apps.  I found the signup and setup process extremely simple though it does require that you have access to change and knowledge about the DNS entries for your domain.  The instructions on the web site are easily followed, though.  Initially, the URL's to the various features are quite cryptic, but Google provides a way for you to replace these paths with sub-domains, if you choose.  For example, the path to my domain's GMail login was something like https://www.google.com/a/codespot.com/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fa%2Fcodespot.com%2F&ltmpl=default&ltmplcache=2 and by taking advantage of a sub-domain, it became mail.codespot.com.

The services allow you to set up an eco-system for any group of folks that you like.  You create accounts for those you wish to have access to your domain's offerings and the content you keep there can either be exclusive to the members of the group or shared with all netizens. 

All my family members now have a personal calendar and any of us can choose to overlay our calendar with the events schedules on the calendar of another family member.  We can choose to be notified via email or SMS of any event we choose.

With both offerings, the best feature is that it's all for free.