Though I’d heard of Google Docs before, I didn’t actually use it until this semester. Man, I was missing out!
One thing that was always a huge hassle in undergrad was when I’d do research on school computers, or when my laptop was broken and being fixed in UB Micro (at least once a year…) and I had to use the school computers, was saving files and saving links. I always ended up saving multiple word docs of links to pages to remember, or citations to remember, or articles, or outlines & beginnings of essays, and it was a mess to save them in a way I could retrieve them on a different computer later. I was constantly losing my thumb drive, and so always ended up emailing multiple docs as attachments between email accounts. WHY didn’t I check out google docs then? Being able to have all those things saved into one place that I could access from anywhere would have been so much more convenient!
I’ve slowly been realizing how great Google is. Once I tried gmail, yahoo mail was forever in the past. iGoogle has been my homepage for well over a year now, cluttered with gadgets I rarely look at and some I use every day. Google Earth is a great way to waste time. Google Chrome has been a revelation since I got my new laptop and it was the default browser – I liked Firefox just fine on my last computer, but haven’t even bothered to download it on this one after using Chrome.
After looking at the list, I realized just how much I still didn’t know existed. I tried out the calendar and books.
I had no idea all of these books were available to read online! I can see myself using this a lot, despite the fact that reading for too long on a computer screen will probably make my eyes hate me. Even though I don’t yet have one, I’ve been looking into a Nook or Kindle for Christmas, and I’d be interested if with the download feature, if the pdf you can download will work with the Nook, which my roommates who each have one tell me you can put pdf files on them.
The calendar, to be honest, was useful but wasn’t perfect for me. It took a little bit of getting used to, and, to be superficial about it, I couldn’t find a way to make it pretty enough. Although some would find the alert function of it useful, if I didn’t have a blackberry and it emailed me an alert, I might not get it for hours. As it is, if I really need to remember something, I can put it in my BB’s calendar, and not have to wait for an email. Very functional, but not something I would use myself. Google certainly continues to amaze though, and I look forward to checking out more of the apps on the list.
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