Google's productivity apps will outpace behemoth Microsoft Office? Everything's and everyone's moving toward free? That's what some are saying. I've gotta go, I've been meaning to set up my business email accounts on my Gmail so I can check them from anywhere instead of Outlook.

My economics teacher in high school told us the first day of class that if we could come up with something that was truly free, he would give you an automatic A in the class. No one ever got an A this way. No matter what you said he had a comeback. No one could get him.

I'm still a believer in that basic premise: nothing is free. Ever since "New Rules for the New Economy"'s "Follow the Free" rule I've been there in business as well. There's a blog post about it today that discusses the more technical side of this nothing is free issue.

However we are somewhat moving in that direction. I met with someone at a local tourism bureau this week and he was telling me about how a local web design firm wanted to charge their non-profit organization tens of thousands of dollars for a new website. All they need to be able to do is keep the content somewhat updated, get lots of content they have in printed brochures online, and list some events and coupons. Thirty GranD??? I mean I can't believe what I'm hearing. No, no no. No longer to small non-profit organizations and new businesses need to get ripped off by firms charging tens of thousands of dollars for a website, then charging again when they want to make updates to the text. There are things like Joomla, which can be combined with other things like Google's Calendars and Picasa. Voila! All "free." O except you have to get it all installed and up and running and looking the way you want it. That's where the hook is. No matter what, someone's time is going in there. But still, we're talking hours, maybe a couple days as opposed to weeks or months or months of time. Some organizations might need flashy websites for their target groups, but for most small businesses and organizations on a budget, a well organized and up-to-date website is what's important.

At any rate I would recommend to anyone building a new website or doing an update, consider something like Joomla. You can use free templates, or buy your own template (look and feel) for cheap (something like $40 I've seen), have someone spend a couple days setting it up and transferring over your existing content. Once it's up and running you'll always be able to go in and update it, as simply as going in and writing a word document. Excellent.