I was thrilled to wake up this morning to find I can now offer a Google Personalized Start Page for Boles University and that thrill was provided by Google Apps for Your Domain! That means you can have a branded Google homepage for all your users. You begin the customization by changing the CNAME record for your domain. Then you can create a start page URL linked to your domain that might look something like this:
http://start.bolesuniversity.com
Now all your users can see their email and calendar on a Google start page! Here’s how you begin to change the CNAME record for your domain:
Here’s where I added that CNAME entry for my domain hosting service Zone File:
When I returned to the control desktop for BolesUniversity.com, the new Start Page service and the custom URL were listed as active!
Here is the default look of your Personalized Start page:
Here’s where you begin to modify and control the personalization of your start page.
You can grind down the color choices and the content you want to appear by default. You can even lock a column so end users cannot add or delete content.
This is my first shot at the personalized Google start page for BolesUniversity.com:
When you’re done setting up the personalized page, your users can begin their own personalization by clicking on a link in the upper left hand side of the page to add more content to their start page for ultra-personalized customization.
They can even add RSS feeds! They can also delete content you add in the default setup.
There are lots of rumors afloat that the Premium — that means you pay for it
— version of Google Apps for your Domain is coming closer to a release date.
Some think Google Docs will be added, but the biggest rumor is that the default mailbox size will jump from 2gigs to 30gigs on the Premium level. Now that’s worth money!