This is something I’ve been puzzling over for a while.
Google Apps for your domain is great. For less than $10/year, you can get yourself a domain name. With this service from Google, you can set up things like Google Docs, Google Talk, and Google Calendar to run on your domain name. Perhaps the coolest one is Gmail. Google will host the e-mail on your domain for free and give you the nifty Gmail web interface on top of that.