First: yes, I’m still using GoDaddy (hangs head in shame).

Second: I thought that while I’m mucking around with my DNS records to get crowdify.com hosted within Google Apps as a first-class citizen (as opposed to aliased to xidey.com), I would set up GChat to allow me to talk to the outside world as per the setup instructions.

However, the way to set up SRV records was a little obtuse.  In raw form, they look like this:

_xmpp-server._tcp.crowdify.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.

What the hell is all this?  It looks like a bunch of information all mashed together, and it is.

The GoDaddy domain manager breaks all this up into discrete pieces.

_xmpp-server is the Service.

_TCP is the Protocol. (You can also put in “TCP” with no leading underscore and GoDaddy will convert it when you save your zone file).

crowdify.com is the Name.  You can also use “@” (no quotes).

5 is the Priority.

0 is the Weight.

5269 is the Port.

xmpp-server.l.google.com is the Target.

Taken all together, here’s how my SRV setup looks in the GoDaddy control panel:

(click on the image to see the full-size version)

Next post: how do you tell if you’ve set it all up correctly?

I’ve been using xidey.com as my primary Google Apps domain for a few years now.  I get email there for anthonys@xidey.com, anthonys@smalliron.com, and (most importantly to me) anthonys@crowdify.com.

I decided it was time to sunset the old domains I’m no longer particularly interested in: xidey.com and smalliron.com.  So I thought a good first step was to create a new Google Apps account for crowdify.com, which I’ve never set up before.

However, I got this error trying to set up a Google Apps account for crowdify.com:

The domain name is configured as a domain alias for another domain, and it is the other domain that is registered with Google.
Although your organization may use several domain names, just one of those names is the primary domain name registered with Google. You need to use the primary domain name to log into the Google Apps Control Panel. Check to make sure you are typing the domain name you used when registering for Google Apps.

After looking around at some support docs that suggested that maybe someone else had tried to establish a Google Apps account for that domain within the last five days (dirty hackers! *shakes fist*), I found this:

I’ve highlighted what turned out to be the interesting bit in yellow, above: what’s the stuff about a domain alias?

I found this other snippet on a Google Support page:

Turns out if I go into my Google Apps domain management control panel for xidey.com, click on “Domain Settings”, click on “Domain Names”, I see this:

@!#$*&$$#$%!!!!

The error message could have been a bit clearer at the beginning:

“We’re sorry, we see that the domain crowdify.com is registered as a domain alias for the xidey.com domain.  Before you can set up crowdify.com on Google Apps, you must first remove the crowdify.com domain alias from the xidey.com account.”

At any rate, I went ahead and clicked the remove link, and got the nanny message:

I’m a little skeered that mail will stop coming in just as I’m expecting something from Publisher’s Clearing House or something, but…the price of freedom and all that.  Done.

I’ve been fighting with my Google Apps E-mail setup for a bit this morning, trying to get so-called “disposable” or “plus addressing” to work.  Essentially, the idea is that you can send e-mails to a special on-the-fly e-mail address that will make its way into your inbox, where you can use inbox rules or filters to put it in the right place.

So, for example, if you’re filling out a spammy form, you could enter:

anthonys+spam1@crowdify.com

and the e-mail would be delivered to your anthonys@crowdify.com inbox, where you can route it wherever.

I’m using very clear instructions from Matthew McEachen, but still having one final red-zone problem: the e-mails get delivered and placed in my “All Mail” folder, not my inbox.  And the filter I have set up, to label these incoming e-mails with a particular label, appear not to run against these incoming messages.

Kind of stumped right now.  Will continue to investigate for a bit, because I really want to get this to work.

UPDATE: Love from Twitter: Tweep Marina Martin showed me this Greasemonkey script that simulates the Labs functions: Just hit “l” and the “Apply Label” function pops up. Hit the first letter of your label and it starts to drill down. Amazing, and useful. Thanks Marina!

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I learned tonight that Google Apps users aren’t able to take advantage of the slew of Google Labs features that are made available to Gmail users. Google has recently released new labeling features that I would like to try out, but without the Labs link in Google Apps I’m out of luck.

Google: when will we get Labs in Google Apps?

Google’s released a new mobile interface to Google Apps that is a much better way to access your stuff from the iPhone. You can use this from any browser (I think), but it’s a rockstar on the iPhone.

The upgrades? Easy access to your calendar. Easy access to Google Docs. Notebook. Reader. News.

Point your Safari browser to http://www.google.com/m/a/<your domain> and have fun.

Best practice: I add a home page icon that points to http://www.google.com/m/a/<my domain>#gmail to get to my e-mail in one click.

UPDATE: Sending from one of multiple accounts appears to be possible.  Check out this screenie of the Gmail import process into Google Apps:

Scott Hanselman writes:

I have two domains, one for each family’s last name. I could certainly create a separate Google Apps account for each last name, and you’re welcome to do that. However, I chose to put Hanselman.com as the primary domain, and “Smith” as the Domain Alias. Everyone will be able to choose what last name they want their “From” to show, so it doesn’t really matter.

Once you’ve signed up your first (primary) Domain go into the Domain Settings|Domain Names control panel in Google Apps and create a Domain Alias. When you “claim” ownership for a Domain, Google will give you a big long number and say “go make a text file with this big long number inside, and name it this big long filename. Upload it to your website, then come back and tell me about it, so I can go check to prove you own this domain.” You’ll need to do this for as many domain aliases as you set up.

My question is: will I have the opportunity to pick which “outgoing” account I want to use? I can do this in Outlook 2007 right now, and it’s useful. Sometimes it’s necessary, as when I want to send corporate e-mail for company X using my anthonys@companyx.com domain, and e-mail for company Y using my anthonys@companyy.com domain.

Will report back after I’ve found the answer.