Google Technology – Don’t You Just Love It?

So here I am sitting in the office waiting for a backup on my machine to complete. To cut a long story short, somewhere between shutting down the PC and restarting it at a customer site this morning it bricked. So having travelled back from my customer I’m sat at my desk. Backing up my 30 gigs of data, so I can re-image the damn thing with the latest Beta image (Win7) from our IT support group. Anyway, while I’m doing this I’m checking out Google – the Google car passed me this morning; I should have mooned it or something – when I think, how can I think about using its technology for my advantage?

iGoogle

First of all I use iGoogle all the time. I love the way I can position different gadgets on the page. Currently I have the following:

1. Google Latitude: Basically Google maps which tracks your ‘friends’ via their Latitude enabled mobile devices. You install Latitude on your smart phone and give it permission to report your location based upon cell resection. Excellent for seeing if your mates are near. The real power is if you do this for your kids. You can make sure they are not straying too far from where they should be.
2. Google Mail: Well what’s not to like about Google Mail? Searchable mail, folders, sharing, favourites, all the time saving functionality within an easy to use format.
3. Weather: I have my favourite locations set up which first thing in the morning allows me to get dressed according to the weather in my destinations location. Handy if you’re a long distance commuter like me. 50 miles can make a huge difference in weather conditions especially when you factor in London’s microclimate.
4. News feeds: I currently have the following news feeds set up;
   1. BBC UK News
   2. Daily Telegraph UK News
   3. The Times UK News
   4. New Scientist Headlines

Google Wave

So with this set up, how do I make the most of the technology? Well, having gadgets on the desktop allows me to see everything I need to know in the morning. Once at work, I collaborate with friends on social media technology using Google Wave.

Google Wave is ingenious and I love the way that you can organise stuff, like social gatherings, holidays, project management all sorts of stuff. It seems to be limited by your imagination only.

Google Docs

Google Docs allows me to write documents and keep them in the cloud. That means that I can access them from any machine in any location as long as I have an internet connection. I use Starbucks a lot for coffee and relaxation, I always have my Samsung NC310 with me and being a Starbucks Loyalty Card holder means I have free Wi-Fi access via BT OpenZone.

So writing documentation on the go is no trouble. Saving it to a location which I can share with others is also no trouble. Easy to use and easy to share, this makes Google Docs a must have application if you are a light traveller like me.

Google Docs provide all the usual business applications such as a word processor, presentation app, Spreadsheet app and a forms generator. All handy little apps to help you run your business on a zero application footprint.

Picasa Photo Management

My final application which I use a lot of is Picasa. As I mentioned earlier I love to travel and I don’t travel without my beloved Sony Alpha 100 camera.

This is a great way to store and share your photographs. You can even embed your photos into your blogger page from here like so:

That’s a nice picture of the modern architecture at Valencia, Spain. Oh and this gives me another opportunity to show off Google maps. Here’s a map of where this photograph was taken:

View Larger Map

The green arrow is where I took the photo from. Well it looks like my backup has completed. So I’ll sign off from writing this update.

Cheers,

Kevin.

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