Call Me Al

I have to hand it to Google. They went from being a "new fantastic search site" to a whole lot more. Not every product they create/own appeals to me, but overall they're doing a great job. I use Blogger to maintain this blog. Nothing has changed since they bought it, but some day it will get its turn. Of course I use Google to do my searching. If I can't find my results on the first page, either the topic is really obscure or I just need a little refinement in my query. I especially like how I can limit my results to a specific domain by using site:microsoft.com. I use Gmail for my email. I used to use Yahoo mail, but I really like the threading of Gmail.

I've fiddled with Google Earth, Froogle, and Google Maps a bit. The integration between Google Maps and Gmail is interesting. If they find a street address in my email, they'll tell me how to get there automatically. Having relevant ads appear on the side can be silly at times. My instructor sent me an email about my term paper and Google kindly provided me with several websites that would write my paper for me.

I use the Google News site for scanning the headlines. These ideas, and more, are usually a product of Google Labs or can be found in their list of services.

While Firefox has its Live Bookmarks and is working on incorporating a feed reader int Firefox 2.0, Google now has Google Reader. While still rather cumbersome to use, Google Reader applies the same techniques to blogs that it does to mail. You can star items. You can add labels. I look forward to seeing more from this site.