Saturday, August 29, 2009

I like Google

I remember back a few years when I balked at using Google's search engine. I always used Yahoo! and I thought it worked just fine. Then slowly, I started to be turned. Jonathan started using some of Google's services and really liked them. Then one fateful day my Yahoo mail account started dropping emails. And they switched interfaces, and I didn't really care for the change. So I made the switch to Google mail, and I haven't looked back. I really enjoy Google mail, and I have started using some of their other services.

Google Reader: Once again, I was a little wary of this at first, but I've really come to enjoy it. Basically you enter all the Blogs that you read and when they are updated you can read the updates all on Reader, instead of going to each of the blogs separately. The downside, of course, is that you don't get to see the layout of each blog - but if you click on the name of the blog, it will open in a new tab. In the picture below I have it showing all items, but usually I just have it show new items. I just didn't have any new ones when I took the screen shot.



Google Documents: Another great product. Here you can save documents, spreadsheets, or presentations. You can share these documents with anyone else with a google account, and give them set permissions within each file. Jonathan and I use a shared spreadsheets for various different things. I keep my Christmas Card list with addresses on there. We have a spreadsheet with a list of all the places we would like to visit. I have a spreadsheet of what articles of clothing I have for Ohlen for the next couple sizes so I know what I still need to get for him. The nice thing is that I can view those documents from any computer I sign on to.



Google Calendar: This is one that I really like, but don't use as much as I should. It's very easy to input activities onto the calendar. You can enter detailed information about where the event is taking place and how long it will last. There is also a gadget in Google mail that inserts a box on the right hand side that will show the next several upcoming events. This makes the calendar even better, as I don't always go to Google calendar everyday, but I do check my mail every day, so I always see what is coming up on our schedule. I have a feeling this will be really nice once we start having the kids involved in more activities.




You should be able to find all these products, and more at Google.com. There are many more products, but these are the ones I use the most.

1 comment:

  1. Nicole, I totally remember the 'anti-google' days. Yahoo! was where it was at, as I am reminiscing, I kinda feel sad for poor Yahoo... Today while I was at school I thought, 'hmmm how can I work on documents at school and at home since you can use webmail at school - oh yeah google docs!!!' works great - thanks Nicole!

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