Google makes Quickoffice iPad app free to Google Apps for Business customers

Google made some announcements today regarding its work with the Quickoffice team since acquiring the company in June. On top of noting work to take advantage of Quickoffice conversion technology in Google Docs, Google launched a free version of the QuickOffice iPad app exclusively for Google Apps for Business customers today. There are also free iPhone and Android versions of the app for creating and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files coming to Apps customers in the near future:

Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the easiest way to share and work together, but perhaps not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. To complement what you can do with Google documents, we're also making it easier for you to make quick edits to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files without conversion. Starting today, the Quickoffice iPad app is available for free to all Apps for Business customers, and iPhone and Android versions are on the way.

Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh welcomed the announcement on his Twitter account: "Customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad."

Business @googleapps customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad. googleenterprise.blogspot.com

Google makes Quickoffice iPad app free to Google Apps for Business customers

Google made some announcements today regarding its work with the Quickoffice team since acquiring the company in June. On top of noting work to take advantage of Quickoffice conversion technology in Google Docs, Google launched a free version of the QuickOffice iPad app exclusively for Google Apps for Business customers today. There are also free iPhone and Android versions of the app for creating and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files coming to Apps customers in the near future:

Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the easiest way to share and work together, but perhaps not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. To complement what you can do with Google documents, we're also making it easier for you to make quick edits to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files without conversion. Starting today, the Quickoffice iPad app is available for free to all Apps for Business customers, and iPhone and Android versions are on the way.

Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh welcomed the announcement on his Twitter account: "Customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad."

Business @googleapps customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad. googleenterprise.blogspot.com

Stay Sane with Multiple Email Accounts on an iPhone by Using Different Apps

Many of us juggle multiple email accounts these days, one for work, one for personal, one for various web signups, and whatever else. While you can easily configure the default iOS Mail app to manage multiple accounts and inboxes and flip between them yourself, another approach is to separate the mail accounts completely by using different apps for each account, and launching them only when needed.

This allows for incredibly simple management of different mail accounts, and you can easily separate work from play, and the spam from the important stuff, by doing nothing more than only using the app that is appropriate for the use. Don't want to read work email on the weekend? Don't launch the designated work app. Don't want to have junkmail buzzing your pocket constantly when something lands in your inbox? Disable alerts for that specified app without impacting the important mail in the others. Plus you'll have the added sanity bonus of not having a giant number as the red alert badge on the Mail app.

The obvious caveat with this approach will be the dependency on the additional accounts either being Gmail or Yahoo Mail, but considering how ubiquitous those services are it shouldn't be much of a problem. Head over to the App Store and download one (or both) of the free apps for Ymail and Gmail:

• Get Yahoo Mail for iOS
• Get Gmail for iOS

There isn't much to configure with either app directly, just login with the appropriate account for both or either and you'll be in the respective emails inbox.

The real trick here is how you use the apps and keep your individual email accounts completely separate, and that's going to come down to self control and maintaining the boundaries between accounts. You will find that fine-tuning control over Notification Center will help this, which is done in Settings > Notifications > GMail and Settings > Notifications > Yahoo! Mail. For my purposes, I have Gmail set up with a badge but no alert, and an old Yahoo account serves as a bucket for nonsense mail gets no notifications at all.

You can do the same on an iPad and iPod touch of course, and on the desktop side of things it can be best to create a new user account to force that kind of separation – which, by the way, would be an excellent feature in iOS – then either use WebMail, corporate VPN, or configure Mail app differently for each account.