Thanks to Google and their support of the Bygdsiljum First project, the little village where I live has been given a 500 user account on Google Apps.

This basically means that the village no longer needs to run an email server and keep that up to date, as well as the scripts needed for virus protection, the software that manages the email and everything else. It also means, if you have Bygdsiljum email address, that your email address now acts as a Google account, giving you access to loads and loads of services.

Getting this for free is not only very cool, as it doesn't happen every day, but extremely generous of Google and for that, and their ongoing support with the Bygdsiljum First project, a massive thank you. Massive, massive thank you.

The service from Google is best explained here and it's in Swedish. That page lists all the services you have access to and gives you a lot more information than I can on this post without spending hours and hours writing it.

Bygdsiljum are basically running the Standard Edition, but with a mix of the Education Edition, although what we actually have isn't listed. For me, that makes it even cooler, as our little village in Northern Sweden is unique. But I'm a geek with things like that.

What do users get?

What it basically means is every user gets 7.35GB of space on Google servers to store email. A percentage of that goes towards your storage for documents (Word, Excel and Powerpoint), however if you convert them to the Google extension when uploading - you're not using any of your allocation and better still, wherever you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection, you have access to them.

You also get 1GB of storage on Picasa - the best site on the web to store and share your photo's. The thing is, 1GB isn't a lot of space. I took 1GB of photos on New Years Eve, so it is only a place, for now anyway, to store the photo's you want to keep or share. But soon, you are going to be able to buy more space.

As things stand today, an extra 80GB will cost you $20 a year and an extra 200GB will cost you $50 a year. At these prices, we get to bring commercial cloud computing storage into the home. It is very cool and you might think it is a bit geeky now, but trust me, in 10 years time, we will all be using cloud computing - in fact, most already do, but just don't see it as that.

I'm not going to go, on. There is a list below, but for more information in Swedish click here.

Core Google services provided by Google Apps

• Google powered email - all email addresses remain the same and the ability to add other email accounts and pick them all up from one place
• Google Docs - basically a suite of applications online for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms
• Google Calendar - the name gives it away, but the ability to create multiple calenders and a very nice interface
• Google Groups - now anyone with an account can create an online group - basically a forum and control pretty much all aspects of it
• Google Sites - now anyone can create their own website - as easily as creating a document
• Google Video - basically your own private YouTube. Not as many features yet as a YouTube account, but for uploading and hosting your own video with the ability to share, very nice

All of the above can be accessed via the web interface of your Google account in the top left hand corner. On the top of the page to the right, when viewing your email, you'll see a settings tab - you should have a look in there - it has a lot of cool stuff.

For a list of all the other services you have access to with your Google account click here.