After becoming one of the early adopters of Gmail I have not been dissatisfied with the support and development of Google's products. Recently I have begun exploring some of features Google's has to offer such as Docs & Spreedsheets, Adsense, and Calendar. There seems to be a common theme among all of the innovations... making things easier to do and being convenient. I have chosen to write this article primarily in the Google Docs and copy it over to my blog when finished.
Google Docs.Is a veristle program that allows simple word processing online. I found some of the best functionality of this program is the ability to store documents online and allow other users to access this document and alter it. This provides for a limitless workspace and backup for documents. You can access your work files while you are on the road and not have to worry about having the right program to open the documents. As a test to this I decided to begin typing this at home and then am now currently retrieving and editing this document from the Chula Vista Hotel in Wisconsin Dells, WI. I have had no problem with accessing or editing the document. Although versatile this program does lack some of the necessary bells and whistles of a larger more cumbersome office suite such as MS Office. Though for whats its purpose is and the many uses for this its excellent solution for jotting down some quick notes on the road, at home, or wherever you have internet access. This is also a great way to bridge distance for brainstorming with others by sharing your documents.
Google Adsense. As I became more interested in blogging and archiving some of my thoughts online and sharing them with others I decided to explore for pure curiosity sake the use of Google Adsense. As an alternative supplement to any website this is great solution. First, you have the control on location and type of advertisement media on your site. This is great because you can put as much or as little as you would like on it. Second, compared to other alternatives Adsense is far easy to manipulate and setup than a lot of other similar products. If your looking to get rich off of this then it might not be the best solution for you, but it can be feasible if you get enough traffic and interest generated. Finally, if your looking at generating a small revenue enough to pay for hosting costs than this can be a viable solution.
Google Calendar. This new feature provides another avenue to have a public calendar system that you can sync or share with other people and that you can import some of the more common types. I currently have used it to import my iCal calendar data files into and it worked Ok. Its does not display some of the data as clean as you would with iCal or if you would have entered the data directly into Google calendar. Although following in true Google fashion this product provides some of the generally consistent features. It allows you to share data with others, have access to your calendar anywhere with internet access, and allows you to have streamline product that is easy to use.
So overall these Google products feed the need for on-demand convienience and plays to an on-the-go audience. What is remarkable though is Google continued commitment to providing easy to use products that don't have all the excess baggage or bloat. I have used them all and can say that each serves a specific purpose and can be very valuable if you are a small business, working on class project, or some other avenue that needs collaboration without spending big bucks on a corporate system. I would encourage everyone to try them yourself and see if you might have a need.
The Dude Abides.
