raise your hand if you love google
I do! I do! And I’m about to tell you why.
I now use Gmail for all my mail - I can send from all my domain email addresses and the labels really work nicely for the way I think. No more looking to see if I put it in this folder…or was it that folder…uh oh, maybe…? No, it’s actually somewhere else because it referred more to that subject than the original one I’m thinking about at the time…I can always find it.
There’s the storage - not that I’m a big storer of most personal email these days - but of course, what I have stored I can search.
reader
I used to be a big Bloglines fan, but Google Reader redesigned and it’s so minimalist. It’s so integrated with everything else I have with Google. When I’m not using my own laptop, I can login to my email & also my feed list at the same time - no need to log in to several places on a foreign machine.
I don’t know what I did before RSS and feed readers came along - oh wait, I must have wasted a lot of time checking websites to see if they’d updated. Since I had to check them all manually I didn’t have as comprehensive a list as I would have liked because then you’d have to check them all! Now I can list everything from web comics to personal blogs to nerd blogs to the Guardian arts blog - and if they don’t update, no time lost.
The most amazing thing about Google Reader though is how the experience is automatically sized for my imate. It knows when I’m on my laptop and when I’m using the imate - and one of these days I’m going to have a screenshot (if I can do that on the imate…maybe that’s the learning curve they were talking about) or a photo of it. It’s just that good.
search
yadda yadda blah blah. ALTHOUGH: with their new toolbar at the top of the page they have chosen what I can easily click through to (news, videos etc) and yet I am not able to customise this. I can’t have Reader in my toolbar?!? I have to use a menu to get to it!?
chat
Finally, a way to get rid of MSN. That thing plagued my laptop and me with all it’s windows. I am a multi-chatter and sometimes I like to leave windows open all day, even if the conversation is not continuous (see: chats with Darren & Steve, one of my coworkers as exhibits A & B). I can search the chat logs, but they’re also securely locked behind my password and stored in with email results should I search.
documents
Microsoft, take that! Google docs is again placing a tool everyone needs in a place that is not environment dependent. I can edit my budget at my mother’s house, or at the mortgage broker’s office (as the case is likely to be right now - the house purchase is a new way of looking at my salary!). I can share these docs and most importantly work on them collaboratively with people.
calendar
How could I have forgotten calendar? This is one of my newly adopted Google features, as Outlook at work has usually sufficed for what I need. However, now Darren & I share a “food” calendar in Calendar with the plan for what we are going to eat during the week (i.e. will it give us leftovers, what needs to go on our shopping list) - as well as social engagements. It’s fantastic.
wishlist
Customising my toolbar, which may come since the toolbar only launched today. Some way to integrate with Flickr (I know, hah) and at least, Youtube. These are the services I prefer for my images and videos.
and, so?
Overall, the Google apps and services are doing a fantastic job. I know lots of people are worried about Google having their info/indexing their personal info/stealing their soul but in a lot of ways I also wonder if those people keep their savings under their mattresses. In New Zealand we’re lucky enough to have a government who aren’t interested in my emails to my mother about dinner next week (at least, not yet) and really you have to give in a bit to the internet and enjoy the best parts of it where you can.
Overall, nice one Google. You’re doing it right in my book.
