Googlelization

This is neither a technology review nor a Google promotion. Part of this post is dedicated to how my daily life has been revolving around Google and its applications. Another part is on how I think some of the world's biggest companies should review their way of earning revenue albeit this is just another humble view of mine.

Let's start with gmail.

Gmail & Me

Well, these days, more often than not, I usually start my days checking emails in gmail. It became a habit of mine to check emails in the morning when I arrive at my office. This is a habit of mine that acquired from my previous jobs since I was supposed to check office emails early in the morning. But in my current job,(please don't be surprised) I have no office emails to look forward to. Yes, I have no work email account in my current job. Please do not ask me what on earth I am doing in this job without an email since this is not my main intention of this post.

Let's get back on track. I was saying I start my days with gmail. When I was first introduced to web mail, I started with yahoo mail. I was about 18 years old then. Please do not surprised that it's already 18 years old when I first used a web mail. I came to Singapore from a relatively less tech-savvy nation. It was yahoo when I started using web mail but a few years later, gmail was born with google's cool promise of 1GB storage space. If I remembered correctly, it might be one of the reasons why I switched to gmail from yahoo. Since then I stick to gmail till now. For no apparent reasons, nowadays I prefer to use gmail than any other web mail for personal use. Well this is just about gmail and me.

Well. let's move on to the next application that I am often using.

Gnotebook & Me

I always ask myself, "What's wrong with Google marketing people?". They have names like Gmail & Gtalk. They do invent names like Google Earth & Google Notebook. Why don't they use all uniform names like Gmail, Gtalk, GEarth and GNotebook, etc? Well, of course you would have guessed what I mean by GNoteBook in the title. I am referring to Google Notebook. For simplification purpose and easier reference, I hope you don't mind me using Google Notebook as gnotebook.

Well. With this naming conventions apart, I just want to say that this gnotebook is something very useful for me. Firstly, logging in to Google Notebook is pretty simple. You can just use your Google Account user name and password. This application is all about collecting, organizing and sharing information from the web. It's has got features like sorting by label and date, search through your notes, and shares your notes to others, etc. It's well-documented about its features and capabilities. I will leave that part for you to Google it. What I will be highlighting here is how I personally find this application useful.

I used to have this inconvenience that I forgot to bring my note book(here,I really mean a book which contains pieces of papers, not a laptop)to work and I can't remember what is written in it. Because I am already at work then, I could not possibly go back home to take it back to work.But with gnotebook I no longer have that trouble. It does not matter whether I am @ work or @ at home, my note book is just a few clicks away. Nowadays I would jot down things to this online notebook rather than putting pen to paper.

Moreover, as I blog, I visit other blogs including my friends' blogs. All those blogs contain links to other blogs which in turn have links to other blogs. As I browse all these blogs, links after another, I would jot down some info, urls and links when I come across useful and enjoyable information. You are not expecting me to just subscribe those nice blogs or bookmark them straight away , are you? After some time, I would revisit them from the information I jotted down in my gnotebook. Yes after some visits, I would eventually subscribe to a particular blog and the information that is in the gnotebook will become less useful. Well this is all about notes, right? The notes will eventually be erased after it has served the purpose, right?

In addition to that, I keep all my friends' email list in this. When I want to send an email to multiple recipients, I would just copy them from the notes to gmail.

These are just a few usable examples about gnotebook. I am using this application for some other purposes too. Although it's a simple application from Google, I am quite happy that I am using it. Let's end our topic about gnotebook and me here. We will move on to another topic.

Blogger & Me

I have been spending some of my free time trying to modify the design of my blog's template & preparing topics to post to my blog. Although those tasks are rather time-consuming, I enjoy doing them. Blogger nowadays is user-friendly in many ways that it allows label categorization; it auto-saves the draft post periodically; it allows you to purchase a custom domain right from their site; users can extend the template and so on. If you have a Google Account, you can easily login to blogger using the same account just like any other Google services.

If you are a blogger(not a service from Google, a person who blogs), you can hardly resist not using Google Analytics for which somehow helps you to track the behaviour of visitors. You also might have to deal with another Google service called Google Pages if your blog is not running on your own host. As for me, I would upload animated gif files, video files and some images files to Google Pages, then I would just link them from my blog. The story does not end here yet. I am also using Google Reader in connection with the way I visit other blogs including my frineds' and some other which I liked. I adds subscription to those blogs and this would ensure that I would know when those blogs have made any changes. But I do not subscribe to news sites from Google Reader since they update a number changes everyday and I rather go visit the news site if I feel like I want to. Well under this titel "Blogger & Me", I wrote about Google Analytics, Google Pages, and Google Reader because they are all related to the way I blog.

I am thankful to Google folks for their great contribution to online community.

To Be Continued.