I don't believe it...

I got the usual Google Friends email/newletter which had an interesting new service there called Google Apps This is quite a nice service for anyone setting up a community service, its essentially like Yahoo Groups or similar services but you can set it all up at your own domain. This isn't anything as easy as you'd hope from Google but short of laying on loads of free consultants I can't see how they'd make it any easier. Basically it offers services that the average registrar offers: site space, hosting, email all wrapped up with the google email, chat, etc stuff and, no doubt, the google docs service but I haven't tried that yet. The catch is that you have to point your CNAME / DNS to Google and reset your email settings...

Anyway, I've tried it out with MediBlog.Com, mainly because it allows me to use the GoogleMail interface for sending & receiving email there and it has some useful options for the holding site. Sadly, again I'm cursed with annoying bugs. The bluehost service I'm now using whilst allowing me to change the email settings successfully generated an "unknown server error" when I tried to change the settings on my parked domain. Apparently this is because I don't have the permissions to change CNAME settings on my own domain - I really can't think why the darned service doesn't say that instead of inviting the frustrated user to review the log files for errors. Yet again, correspondence with the Support people - this time BlueHost and - they've promised to change it for me except that before doing so they've changed the way the support service works (don't respond to emails) and I have to figure out how to communicate with them again.

I'm beginning to feel like Victor Meldew, Basil Fawlty or more realistically, Father Jack...