Google World

For some time now, I have used Google as my search engine. In fact, I have www.google.com as my home page, my on-ramp to the World Wide Web. Whom hasn’t used the phrase, “Just Google it!”… or was that “Just do it”? But I digress…

I never gave much thought to Google as more then a search engine until earlier this year. I was looking for cheap photo editing software. I didn’t need the power of Photoshop, I just wanted to fix some red eye and adjust brightness in a few pictures. After doing some research into different photo editing software I found one called Picasa2 by Google. I tried it and loved it!! Best of all… It’s Free! After a few weeks of using Picasa2, I decided to see what else Google offered. It turns out google offers a whole smorgasbord of programs designed to store our data and organize our lives.

My next taste of the Google world was with Gmail. You have to be invited or have a cell phone you can send a special code to because it offers an ever increasing storage capacity of 3GB, yes 3GB, and Google is trying to prevent rouge elements from using there site for evil doing. Gmail is the best email client ever!!! I don’t say that lightly. Being in the military, I travel constantly. During those travels I’ve had tons of email addresses from tons of different email clients. They have all had problems, but Gmail is as close to perfect as I could hope. Amazingly, Gmail is still considered beta. If only Microsoft could produce a beta as near perfect as Gmail. I’m not going to ramble on about all the features, but if you try Gmail out you will not be disappointed. My wife and me both use Gmail now and we’re never turning back. I mean that!!! With Gmail we’ll never have to switch email addresses again during our moves, unless we want to.

Next, we tried out Blogger by Google. If you’re reading this now you know I love this Blog site. Enough said!

Our latest dive in the Google pool has delivered Google Calendar. It’s an online calendar/schedule that’s based on the iCal protocol. We again love this Application! It is sooo much better then Outlook!!!!! Again, I’m not going to ramble on about features, but if you try it you’ll love it! You can click the link to the right to see my public calendar. This is just one of the many overlays you can make public, keep private, or share with individuals or groups. The possibilities are endless!

In closing, I hope to see everyone in the Google world very soon; and when you get here drop me a Gmail, or better yet share your Google calendar and I’ll share mine!

Sparky