Before this class I used Google almost daily to search the internet for pictures, videos and information in general; for maps and to play with Google Earth looking at places of interest from the sky or from a bird’s view. It turns out Google is much more than that. Now I am using it to compare prices of products that I am interested in buying by using Google Shopping. It almost always finds better prices for me; sometimes considerably better. I am beginning to use my Gmail account (Ridelto@gmail.com) and now I know how to search for images that I can use without worrying about copyright problems.
I spent a great amount of time playing with the “more” and “even more>>” menu items of the Google Classic Home Page. Surprisingly, I found “even more” stuff to incorporate to my list of useful tools.
I discovered that the iGoogle personal customizable page is like the “private web site” that I was looking for in Thing #10. I created my own iGoogle personalized page and began to use it right away because when I click on Google on my toolbar it now takes me to this personal page and from there I can click on Gmail on top of the page to go to my Gmail email account or to go anywhere since this page is very easy customizable and I can add links to the internet or to my own computer folders and files. Here is a screen capture of my monitor showing my iGoogle page.
Click on the picture to see the actual screen capture from my computer
With so many new things to keep up with, organization is the key word and Google realizes this.
I have Daily Literary Quotes on my iGoogle page, Art of the Day, Puzzles, News, Jokes of the Day among other things. A page like this one could be used as the perfect home page for school computers with only those gadgets of interests to the students and teachers showing on the page.
But this is not all. I looked at every one of the “even more” tools. In previous posts I either talked (or they are self explanatory) about Blog Search, Books (they are not free), Custom Search, Earth, Images, Maps, News, Product Search, Videos, Web Search, Blogger, Gmail, Reader, SketchUp, etc.
So I will talk about those tools that got my attention. I installed and used Google Chrome in my desktop PC. It is nice, but as all new software, it is not yet supported by everyone and therefore I rather continue to use MS Internet Explorer 8 with its wonderful tab system. Google Alerts is not my thing; I already have plenty reaching my several email accounts (I do check all of them daily)
I didn’t look too much into “Checkout” but I use “Shopping”. Google “Desktop” is very handy when you cannot find a file that you know you have somewhere in your computer but you don’t remember where. It is a local (to your computer) powerful and fast search engine.
Google Finance must be useful for those who have business or investments… not me! I cannot see the use of Google Health, Toolbar and others.
I’ve been programming computers for years and therefore I subscribe to some developers’ forums which usually are good enough, but I can see that Google “Code” can be a powerful tool for software developers in search for code or solutions to their coding problems.
I didn’t spend much time exploring Google Labs… not enough time! There are some new and useful tools to explore and use in the future. Google “Calendar” is wonderful (and free), but I use my cell phone (basically a handheld PC) and outlook so I don’t need another calendar. Same thing with Google “Documents”; I use MS SkyDrive and I don’t need another place on the internet to “hold” documents, but this tool is great for those who need a place on the internet to have their documents and access them from anywhere. Of course I also recommend SkyDrive. One important difference is that SkyDrive gives you 25 GB with every hotmail account and clearly shows how much you have used. I didn’t see any usage indication in Google Documents.
Google “Groups” is another surprising tool that I see myself using in the near future. You can search, find and join groups according to your interests, location, language… according to anything you can think of.
Picasa is just another powerful picture sharing/holding/editing place similar to the ones previously discussed in “23 Things”
Google Talk is great for texting from your computer. My cell phone has a keyboard but my fingers are too big therefore I hate texting. Google Talk promises to change that for me.
Google Translate must be used with caution. If you think that you can understand another language just buy using these automatic translators think again. Use it only to get an idea. I have seen many and very important mistakes made by these translators. Of course, they will get better, but they are not there yet.
The last useful tool that I am already using is GOOG-411. It is the Google equivalent of dialing 411, the phone directory feature of the telephone companies, only free, better and with a more motivated customer service.
There are some many options in Google More that I am sure I will be coming back again and again in the near future and Google will find the way to add more exiting and attractive “things” to keep everyone coming back.
[To Newest Post] [Click Here to Correct Mistakes on this Blog]
No comments:
Post a Comment