13 Things I love about Google

1 – GMail – Love my Gmail.  It’s become my ever-present inbox, to-do list, and reminder system.  I email myself everything I’m afraid I’ll forget (I do it from my Sidekick if I’m not at a pc), and the email stays in my inbox until I’ve taken care of it.  When somethings actually done (bake the kiddies cupcakes; write 4 pages; mail off books, give the dog a bath) I get to move it out of the inbox.  I like my inbox the way I like my kitchen counters – clean and spotless – and I’m a chronic email checker, so having anything at all in there motivates me to Get It Done.  (The smart cookies out there just realized that if they want me to do something, emailing me is going to get it done a lot quicker than calling me.  I can let phone messages sit for days unanswered without a lick of guilt.)
2 – Google Calendar – Kinda like my Gmail.  And did you know you can add things to your Google Calendar by email (Gmail) or text message?  Whee!
3 – Google Reader – Luckily I don’t have an aversion to an overflowing RSS reading list, since there are usually hundreds of (today over a thousand) items on there I haven’t read yet.  Time to do a mass skim-n-dump I think.
4 – Google Personalized Homepage – I used to swear by the old basic www.google.com as my homepage – it was it’s own built in speed test, since it should pop up immediately, and in the time it took me to click I would know if my occassionally flakey DSL was up or down today.  But I’ve slowly been corrupted to having actual content on my page.  And lately – gasp – a theme.  It now takes about 1.1 seconds instead of .21 seconds to load.  I deal with it.
5 – Google Documents – I don’t love this as much as I thought I would; getting things to look right when printed (especially spreadsheets) is a bit too much work still, and I’ve recycled quite a bit of paper trying to get things lined up.  But I archive a lot of information here anyway – things that won’t likely ever need to be printed – and it’s a great way to share documents between groups of people.
6 – Google Groups – So, so much better than Yahoo groups.  Of course you could say the same thing for a two headed rabid coyote.
7 – Google Alerts -  Daily reality check, on whatever your reality of choice is.  Mets scores?  How many kids did Angelina adopt overnight?  The price of bacon in Timbuktu?  If there’s been anything new on the web in the last 24 hours, you’ll get it delivered to your inbox (Gmail! Sweetness!).  You can even set alerts for your own name to see who’s talking about you.  Not that anyone I know would do that, no ma’am.
8 – Google SMS -  This one just warms my little geek heart.  The perfect tool to keep my calendar in sync, while getting updates on weather, news, scores, flight info, driving directions, stock quotes, translations…   all through text messages while far from a pc.
9 – Google Talk – for chatting with other Googleites.  And even some non-Googleites.
10 – Google Notebook – great for little snippets of info you want to be able to access from different computers
11 – Google Browser Sync – Sync your favorites between multiple pc’s!  I don’t use it as much since I started using Smart Bookmarks extension – I’ve got my 26 most visited places right there on my icon bar, and Del.icio.us the rest.  But it’s still a great feature, and it keeps the few bookmarks I set actually sync’d.
12 – Google Earth.  And Google Mars.  The best free public mapping in our world, and beyond it.
13 – Google Labs – this one’s a bit of a cheat.  Because there are so many other ways Google makes my geeky heart sing, I can’t get them all in a list of 13.  Google Code Search, Video, Trends, Page Finder, Accelerator… you name it, the great minds at Google have likely come up with it.  Or are working on it.  And if they haven’t, drop them a line and suggest it to them.  Maybe you’ll be eating at the Google Cafeteria yourself someday!

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
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