Saturday, June 14, 2008
Google's Services or Why I <3 Google
There are an unbelievable amount of Google services out there, ranging from note-taking, to word processing, to email, to photo collecting, to instant messaging and even social networking. It seems that Google is becoming (or is) a very viable Web-Based Operating System.

Alright, you Technical Tommys. Google isn't really an OS, but it has most of the programs available online (for free) that most people use on a day-to-day basis. Heck, even Walmart was selling (still is?) the super cheap computers running gOS based mostly on web apps.

Ugh... I just went to that site after the longest time... an operating system aimed at MySpace users? Ugh... ugh...

This post isn't about gOS or the fact that it got really cheesed up since I've last seen it and now looks a LOT like Mac OS X. So let's get back on track.

I personally used Google Docs like a mad man during my first two college semesters. I probably will use it again when the next semester kicks off. After I started to use Docs, I had virtually no use for my USB drives. They became backup slaves just in case Google dropped off the face of the earth. All of the computers on campus that I used had internet access, so I had to spend minimal time using Microsoft Word. I did, however, still need to make use of a word processor in order to format the page to my liking. Perhaps I was too lazy or just overlooked some great feature used by Docs for formatting. I'll look into that.

Google Calendar also came in handy more than once during the semester. I could schedule classes, appointments, and anything else I needed to remember. The day of, I could have a text message sent to me 15 minutes (or any amount of time, depending on how much time I needed) before the even happened. I, of course, would always check Google Calendar in the morning to see if anything needed to be done that day, but the reminder via text message was crucial sometimes and saved my skin more than once.

I never got into taking notes with Google Notebook mostly because I wasn't always fortunate enough to be able to get onto my Uni's wireless signal in class (or at all, for that matter... damn you, Broadcom). They've said this will change next year, as they're adding many more hotspots around campus, so fingers crossed. The interface for Google Notebook is very intuitive for in-class notes.

I'm not sure what's scaring me away from using it as my primary source for storing notes, though. It would be almost useless to me for Math notes as I require plenty of space to let my mind organize itself (or explode) on paper rather than line-by-line word processing. However, for classes that deal with historical facts, famous research information, or for anything else that can be easily dictated, this service would be ultra useful. We shall see, though. I'm still waiting on Google to allow for colored section headers and linking between notes.

I'll cut it short here. This is already a long enough post.