Market places are the latest rage. In fact, the quality in terms of breadth and depth of applications that are available in a market place is becoming the deciding factor in the success or failure of the main product. You might think that I am referring to the smart phone competition among Blackberry, iPhone, and the Android based phones. In a way I am. But that is the old story, Apple has everyone beat for now. RIM is changing rules to make it more attractive for developers and Android is blazing forward in catchup with its open system.
The new story is the Google Apps Marketplace. Google Apps is a competing product to Microsoft’s Office, except that Google Apps is online (in the cloud), is free, and now has a myriad of add on tools, applications, and services that can be accessed through Google Apps Marketplace. The variety of products is very extensive. From productivity tools, to integration with popular web services such as Harvest and Zoho, to free tools, and to much much more. This vast resource is the little know newcomer to the Google family of free tools. Give it a turn and let me know what you think.