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In an economy where many IT budgets are flat or declining, industry analysts believe cloud computing to be counter-cyclical. In fact, IDC recently increased its SaaS growth projection for 2009 from 36 percent growth to 40.5 percent growth over 2008, and predicts that cloud computing will increase 260 percent by 2010.

"The business case for cloud computing is strong, and we're seeing the pace of investment from investors and customers growing as a result," said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. "The lower up-front costs, the ability to scale usage up or down and pay only for what you need, and the chance to remove depreciating hardware assets from the balance sheet are always attractive. In these conditions they are top of mind. GGV's investment and expertise can help us significantly advance our offerings and continue growing the company to meet the high demand we're seeing."

The economy may be down and jobs may be getting tougher and tougher to find but there is one thing that is going up and that's the cloud computing trend. SaaS providers and products are on the rise -- and for good reason.

There is a much lower cost of entry, lower annual costs (normally) and features and service levels that can only be provided by a company that can focus their efforts on one product (or line of products as is the case with Google).

Forrester and others have some great information on the TCO for this growing SaaS market. Have you checked it out yet for your organization? It could be a huge cost saver.

Zumbox aims to be like email with a street address. It could actually free you up from at least some of your annoying snail mail, too, if enough junk-mailing partners sign up.

There have been a number of startups over the last year or two that are focusing on helping make the environment greener. They are doing this through new web services that allow you to connect with others without hopping on a plane, share cars so there are less on the road at one time and now, send letters without ever lifting a finger (to seal the envelope).

Zumbox is a great idea. They are taking email and making it a little bit easier to get people in the game. If you have a mailing address, you are ready to go. (And honestly if you don't have one, you should probably be more worried about that than reading up on my blog).

I setup my Zumbox account and within a couple of days, I got my PIN number mailed to me so that they could verify that I actually lived where I said I did. Now, if you know my mailing address, you can send me letters, post cards, bills and almost anything else you could think to mail via Zumbox.

Go ahead, and give it a shot. You can save the environment one letter at a time -- Save trees, the ozone layer and the mail man's feet -- all from the comfort of your couch.

I've been using TrapCall for a whole 24 hours now and I'm impressed. The service is streamlined, easy to setup, and saves me a whole host of headaches from telemarketers and others who call me with numbers blocked.

The thing that I love about this service is the fact that I didn't have to really install or change anything but the forwarding number on my TMobile service. No software, no hardware, didn't even have to give access to my cell phone account.

On top of the ease of setup, it's easy to use too. When a number comes through that's blocked, simply hit the "End" button on your phone and the call stops ringing for a second and then comes back through decoded. Don't want to take it, simply hit "End" again and it goes straight to voice mail.

Speaking of voice mail-- At least with TMobile, when a caller goes to voice mail they leave their message just as they normally did except TrapCall puts their voice mail online for you to retrieve as well as on your cell phone. Handy if you don't have your phone with you or you just happen to find it easier to listen through your computer speakers instead.

I recommend you give TrapCall a try. Let me know what you think about it. Will it help you be more productive?

Overview: Signing in with Google Accounts

To use Google Latitude and accept location sharing requests, you must sign into Latitude using a Google Account. Google Accounts include Gmail usernames, Google Accounts you've created for other email addresses, and Google Apps accounts*.

You can create a Google Account for an existing email account (see steps below) or create a new Gmail account. Currently, Google Accounts can only be created from computers or full HTML browsers such as those on iPhone and Android-powered devices.

Note: On Android-powered devices like the G1, you must use the Google Account you've synced with your device.

Creating a Google Account for your email address
1. Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.

I'm sure this may not be news to other people but it was to me and I consider myself a pretty strong Google-proponent. If you're trying to use some of the other great Google services -- Maps, Reader, Latitude, and much more -- with your GAFYD email account you have to register for a Google Account.

While this seems a bit backwards, it seems to be the way that Google designed their system so we have to live with it. Go ahead and use the link above to create your new Google Account.