Thursday, November 16, 2006

Google World



Yep. Google will own you someday. You will just be a piece of data in their Big Brother global database of human DNA database or whatever. But until then, I sure am enjoying everything that they have to offer.

Of course, there is Gmail, one of the coolest email functions in the world. In addition to the massive amount of storage space (you never really delete e-mail, just search through it to fins old stuff with a search program that works great), you also get threaded conversations. Replies are stored in link of messages that lets you quickly read through the history of the conversation. Except for those people that constantly like to rename every reply they give. There is also a chat function that lets you chat with another Gmail user that is signed in. It even tells you when the other person is typing a response to you. Spooky, but it still rocks.

And I'm not even going to go into how cool Google docs is (online Word doc and spreadsheet creator that you can work on projects collaboratively with people around the world). That just speaks for itself.

Oh, yeah.... this blog is created on Blogger, which is Google. Blatant plug there....

I have been loving on Google Talk and Personalized homepage recently. Google now owns my life. Hope they don't turn to the dark side soon....

Google Talk is kind of like a lite version of Skype. You can call other Google Talk users online for free. You can also send files to people using Google Talk. And there is a nice mail notice that pops up on the screen when you get a new e-mail. But the really cool function of Google talk is the Voicemail function. You can leave a voice mail on someone else's email. If the person uses Gmail, they get a nice play button that plays in in their inbox. Other email accounts have to download the mp3 and play it in something else. It's just a great tool for sending messages that might be misunderstood in text only.

Personalized homepage just flat out rocks. You can create a home page with customized content and tabs. Anywhere in the world you sign in, it shows you what you add there. But it's the content that makes it rock. The picture above is a capture of my first "tab." You can create as many tabs as you want, each with custom content. Here's what I have on my first tab:
  • Google Calendar, which shows me all of my upcoming events.
  • Gmail monitor - shows my inbox
  • Current weather for my town
  • A to-do list
  • Quick search Ebay and Wikipedia
  • Notepad - take notes on what I need to.
The next two tabs are my news tabs - one for general news (world, weird, CNN, aintitcool.com, Star Wars and Sci-fi), and one for Educational Technology news. The fourth tab is the cool tab - my fun stuff:
  • MySpace profile alerts - see if I have new comments, messages, etc
  • NASA's picture of the day
  • Links to favorite comics - Dilbert, Zits, and Calvin & Hobbs
  • New Urban Legends :)
  • Google maps quick search
  • Pac-man!
You can literally choose from hundreds of applications to add to your page. Don't you wish you had Gmail now? Everything comes with your free Gmail account.

3 comments:

u2katrina said...

Don't forget Google Desktop! Yeah, I know -- it lets Big Brother know exactly what's on your computer. But I still love it. *So* much better than Windows search function. Love it!

Matt C. said...

I've heard it's pretty cool. I never really use Windows Search, so I really don't have the need for Google Desktop. But I do love to drink Google Gulp.

u2katrina said...

I'm just bad at keeping everything organized, so I regularly am trying to find where in the world I saved something. :P

Man ... I want a Google Gulp!