Google’s Many services

As you may or may not know ( most likely not ), I am a huge fan of Google. I admire the company, its goals, its visions, and its structure very much so. In this post I am going to do a little bit of a review of some of what I feel are Google's best products for the average person. I do this to express how much I like Google, but also in hopes that you may find their services and products as useful as I do in my everday Life.  Of course, each of these things are already rampantly popular, but there are still a lot of people out there who don't really know what google is all about other than their search features.

 Google – To shorten and summarize, googles business model is as follows: Unify, organize, and make readily available the world's vast amount of information and to do so while doing no harm.

 

 Major Products:

Search – Obviously, Google's main thing is search. Google does indeed do this very well as their search engine is ranked number one in the entire world. By using a revolutionary way of organizing results by way of backlinks to measure relevance, Google nearly overnight became the most used search engine of the world. 

Gmail – One of my favorite of Google's offerings is Gmail. Gmail started off by giving all of it's users 1 GIGABYTE of storage to store emails. Compared to 2mb and 10mb from hotmail and yahoo mail, 1024 mb of storage began to blow competition out of the water. When these competitors started offering similar 1 gb to 2 gb, Google once again underpromised and overdelivered by upping the limit to infinite storage. Of course not all at once obviously. Currently , users of gmail can store up to over 2.7 gb of email and files. Plus, you never have to delete emails and there is a built in chat function embedded in the browser whenever you chat.

Google Desktop – Google desktop is application that is installed onto your hard drive that makes it much easier and faster to search for files on your local computer. This is handy because the built in search with the microsoft puppy is, despite the puppy, absolutely terrible. In addition, if you so choose, its possible to have the desktop bar take up a portion of your desktop and actually give you live useful stats like emails, weather, stocks, maps, pictures and pretty much anything you can think of thanks to the easy to adapt interface. Like Konfobulator or many other widget applications that have recently become so popular, the side bar has thousands of user developed widgets or modules you can install. Highly recommended.

 

Google Maps – This is googles map program to compete with stuff like Yahoo maps and Mapquest. I've spent a lot of time using each of these throughout the years and in my humble opinion, Google Maps is superior by far. Not only are the maps simplified to the perfect amount of detail but you can also search any listing for stores and restaurants and homes right in the google search bar to find a number of addresses and directly click them to display on the map as opposed to copy pasting the addresses. EVEN BETTER than that is the ability to show the real time view, road view or hybrid to super impose streets and such into a satellite image of the area you are viewing. Just amazing. great for directions and cool for browing too. If you like this then you should definitely check out Google Earth. It is the same thing except rendered in 3d and you can zoom smoothly and see buildings in 3d. Amazing.

Google Calendar – Google calendar is somewhat of a new thing but nevertheless I must express my love for this service. Google Calender is much like Outlook where you can plan and schedule your days hour by hour. I am a busy guy and Calendar helps me out a lot to remember my work shifts, my appointments and even birthdays. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use and continue using. It is directly linked into Gmail so if you use both then they work with eachother (if you recieve an email with a date in it, you can have the option to directly add that into your calendar). The best part about this though is the fact that it is all online. This makes everything much easier for those of you who do not own a laptop or PDA as you can access everything related to your schedule in one easy place. And of course, in the spirit of non stop praise… Calendar allows you and your friends,spouse,coworkers to share calendars so that you can skip the whole "Are you available this day?" section and directly see if they are available. One more thing, each person can have several calendars each being a different color so say you want to seperate your work calendar and your personal dates calendar, Google Calendar makes it simple.

Google Spreadsheets – I havent been using this much yet but it is definitely one to look out for. Google Spreadsheets is one of the first steps in what appears to be an Online Free office suite that Google is trying to provide. Spreadsheets is much more simple than excel but sometimes for managing important data that may not be a good thing. Still, it does allow you to view and access your spreadsheets from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection as well as to share your spreadsheets with others. Definitely keep an eye out for this one.

Google Notebook – This is exactly what it sounds like. You browse the internet for say a school project. Everything you see you can note and save in a built in notebook and save it and take it wherever. I've never used this yet but that doesnt mean im not eager to try it out!!!!!

Google Reader – Store all your RSS feeds in one place. That way you dont have to go to a bunch of different websites to keep up with the times~!

Well Gang, its been a lot of fun and games but now its time to close our special time talking about google. Thanks a lot for letting me rant about how cool they are.

Im Currently Listening to = Never Let You Go by Third Eye Blind
 

The Xbox 360

So about 10 days ago I finally caved in and decided to purchase an Xbox 360. Its actually interesting because for my information systems class I actually did a research project on the next generation of video gaming and with all the knowledge available at the time, I decided that the 360 would be the way to go over the ps3 and over the nintendo wii. In fact, I also decided I wouldnt get a 360 until the end of the summer so that I could practice some self restraint. Oh well, so much for that! I got it for a steal of a deal; the core system with an additional hard drive as well as the HD cables that come with it all for only 300 bucks. About 100 bucks cheaper or more than retail. Not too shabby. Later I will post some pics of the 360 in my room and everything (my new room) in my room moving post.

 

ANYWAYS… The 360 is a lot of fun and the Xbox live really honestly makes a huge difference. The online community is huge and the resources available for videos and music and pictures and streaming and online content is all just so superbly incorporated into one solid dashboard. Its actually very funny too that the 360 decided to go this route. Any modded xbox original can already do most of the things that the 360 was selling as improvement points. I suppose they learned something important from their underground fans!

I bought Ghost Recon advance warfare and so far it is a pretty sweet title. I'm not very good at these kind of tactical shooting games but its definitely a change of pace from what I am used to. I also bought Fight night Round 3 for multiplayer purposes and so far I am nothing but impressed. The boxing system is intuitive as well as fun and the graphics are totally out of this world. The movements of the boxers is nothing short of realistic and really captures some of the more distinct movements of certain boxers (Ali).

Xbox Live also features some really cool demo features. With Xbox live, gamers can download demos of the latest games. Some of the demos even feature online capabilities so that you can play with friends! ON DEMOS! really great stuff Microsoft. I applaud you.

In spite of all the fun things that are possible with the xbox 360, Vy and I, and what seems like the rest of my fraternity, are all stuck on Geometry Wars. Geometry wars, if youve never heard of it, can be described as the most simple shooter ever featured on the xbox 360. there are only three inputs, the triggers, for bombs, the left analog and the right analog, one for movement and one for directional shooting. This 2d game is the epitamy of hectic -siezure inducing fun. The demo is even appropriately difficult so you can actually play that for a while. The full version is only like 5 dollars or something so it is very affordable.

Overall, I was expecting a lot from the xbox 360 and i can honestly say that it did not let me down one bit. In fact it suprised me with how easy it was to use and how functional all the features actually are. The 360 is truly a next generation machine that has the capability to continue to grow with the next generation as games get better.

Currently Listening to:

I'm Currently Listening to: Over My Head by the Fray