Singing the Praises of Google

Hopefully most of you have already discovered the wonderful world of Google; but for the rest of you who have not yet crossed over the portals of this virtual land of milk and honey, please read on. Google has the ability to drastically change your internet experience. No longer will you think of Google as a mere search engine with a name that you secretly enjoy saying just because it sounds a little funny. ;) Rather, when used properly, Google can both simplify and maximize your internet experience. (And, no, I am not getting paid for this advertisement! Haha!)

Before anyone can take advantage of all the great features that Google has to offer, they must create an account with Google. This is not difficult and it is very secure. After an account is created, the steps to get your features set up are very simple and usually take only a few minutes or even seconds (depending on which feature you are setting up and how comfortable you are with computers). Here are some of my favorite Google features that you may be interested in (and all of them are free, by the way!):

• Google Homepage: I love my Google Homepage!! Whenever I get on the internet, my Google Homepage pops up with a peek view of my Google Calendar; my Google Reader; my Gmail; the top headlines of Drudge Report, Fox News, People, Reuters Oddly Enough, and Time; my local weather; as well as a mini dictionary.com and spellcheck. I also have tabs where I keep other things of interest to me but that I don't necessarily want to have cluttering up my homepage. Some of these things include: Ask Yahoo (posts a random question and answer every day), Woot Watch, Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, Recipe of the Day, Bible Verse of the Day, This Day in History, etc. Google Homepage is easily customized using the high-tech "add stuff" button which takes you to hundreds of options for your page. (You might want to give yourself a time limit on how long you will allow yourself to browse through the options!)

• Google Desktop: Similar to Google Homepage, except this is kept in a sidebar on your desktop. You can choose which features you want to include from a long list. I must caution that Google Desktop does take up space on your computer and some computers are just a little too slow to make Google Desktop a practical feature. I do like Google Desktop a lot. Mine is fairly simple: at the top I have a slideshow randomly scrolling through my pictures; then I also have Google Talk on there; a scratch pad; a to-do list; and a weather thing that scrolls through the weather for Dunbar, Watertown, Granada, and Springville so I know what kind of day you all are having! :)

• Google Page Creator: This is a cool thing that I have not yet explored very much. You can actually create a little website for yourself with Google Page Creator. I haven't done much with ours; but maybe someday I'll get back to it! ;)

• Blogger: Of course, you probably already know something about Blogger since you are reading this....Haha! ;)

• Google Analytics: For all you avid bloggers out there, this is a very fun (and somewhat addicting) program. After you put the address of your blog (or website, whatever it may be) into Google Analytics, it creates reports that allow you to monitor the traffic going through your blog or website. I'm sure this would be very beneficial if you were trying to attract customers to your website. But for us bloggers, it's just kinda cool, I guess. :) Google Analytics uses diagrams and charts to track things like how many visits and pageviews your blog gets each day; what the ratio is of new visitors compared to old visitors (roughly 80% of my visitors are returning visitors); where the majority of your visitors are from (it's always fun to see the random hit from Beijing, China; Oudenburg, Belgium; and Rabat, Morocco); and what sites are sending the most people to your site. So, for the average person, Google Analytics may not be a very useful tool; but for us bloggers it can be very encouraging when we're going through a dearth of comments and beginning to think no one ever reads our blogs to be able to look at Google Analytics and see we're still getting over 50 hits a day! Haha! :)

• Picasa & Picasa Web Albums: Picasa is a free photo editor/organizor. Once you download it, Picasa finds all the photos on your computer and organizes them. It's pretty nice, unless you already have a nice photo editor. Picasa is not exactly a stellar photo editor, but it can do a good bit of editing with the lighting and color of your photos, straightening, and cropping. However, small touchups cannot be done with Picasa. I have yet to explore the Picasa Web Albums much, but one thing that is really cool about Picasa Web Albums is that you can enter in the address of your blog and it will instantly put all the pictures from your blog into an online album. And, once again, there's lots of space for free!

• Gmail: Wow! I don't really know what else to say to describe Gmail! It is very easy to set up, and it is HUGE! Definitely a must-have if you get many big emails with attachments or pictures.

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• Google Talk: Yes, it is yet another instant messenger. However, I make Google Talk my instant messenger of choice because I love its simple format and the fact that it saves all of my chats in a special folder in my Gmail.

• Google Calendar: I started using electronic calendars as a freshman in college. The Day Planner idea just seemed too 'messy' for my perfectionist mind. I bought a Pocket PC for taking notes in class and started using Outlook. To this day, I schedule everything in my Outlook calendar. Yet, in the back of my mind, I was starting to dread the day when I would leave Northland and lose my Outlook. Then I discovered Google Calendar. (I know, I sound like I'm writing an article for an advertisement! Haha!) What I loved about Google Calendar was that I could import my Outlook calendar into it in just a few simple steps and now I will not have to worry about losing my calendar. And I can access it anywhere I can access the internet!

• Google Reader: This is an awesome time saver if you are like me and really enjoy keeping up with lots of people's blogs. There are probably almost 40 blogs that I check almost once a week!! I know, that is somewhat exorbitant...especially if you have to individually visit each page and wait for it to load, etc. But with Google Reader, I was able to type in the addresses of each of the blogs I wanted to keep up with and Google Reader lets me know whenever one of the blogs is updated. It works for other websites as well (i.e., news, weather, or whatever); I then added Google Reader to my Google Homepage and now I know as soon as a new post has been added to a blog! No more checking those blogs that are only updated once every two months!! Haha!!

• Google Notebook: Very cool feature. Google Notebook is similar to the 'bookmarks' in your internet browser, only better. The problem with the 'bookmarks' in your internet browser is that if you browse the internet on any other computer, your bookmarks won't be there. Also, Google Notebook is more like a 'scrapbook' because you can give it categories and subcategories (you can even have multiple notebooks if you like) and you can paste anything you want to in there (almost) and it will automatically add the link for you. The great thing about Google Notebook is that you never have to be without your 'bookmarks' again. Just sign into your Google account, and your Google Notebook with all the pictures, articles, notes, and links that you have placed in it is at your service!

• Google Checkout: This is a relatively new feature, but it is handy if you do a lot of shopping on the internet. We set up our account a few months ago when they were offering some pretty deep discounts to those who used it in order to encourage people to sign up. Very nice!

There are several other features that are pretty cool, but that I just haven't had much use for as of yet. Another fun thing to play around with is Google Earth. But, once again, it is a pretty big program and usually slows my computer down quite a bit. However, it's fun once you get it running!

I know this was probably a very boring post to some; but hopefully some of you will find it to be helpful! :) I am definitely not an expert on the internet (or on computers for that matter!), but I really appreciate the Google features that I mentioned here and wanted to pass them along.