The future is now!
If somebody asks me what the future will be like, I will answer: "Google"
See, Google is not only the best search engine ever. The new msn search has an almost-as-good search algorithm, and Google's algorithm is not patented forever.
But, Google has much more to offer: Look at the Google Desktop search. MSN has a Desktop search too! Though, Google is about a year ahead of MSN. Microsoft is going to introduce us to a really cool Windows Sidebar in January next year - with all kind of features you can think of. And they are talking about it for months now. Now, take a look at Google - without even mentioning it once, they just released a sidebar with the same - and very soon a lot more - features today. At this moment I see random pictures from my PC, and websites I visit regularly - plus, 2 kinds of news: live updated news from my favorite news sites like golem, tagesschau, financial times germany, faz and so on.. there are also one-click links to my favorite websites, which are not news related. A calender is also integrated, the Google calender with really really cool features; I'm coming back to that later. Those are not just gimmicks I might use while I'm bored, it's all stuff that I used before - but it was never that comfortable.
Then, there is Google mail. First introduced around april fool's day last year iirc, nobody believed that you would really get a whole gigabyte of space for free, just for mails. By now, you have 2.7 gigs. I mean, it's getting more, and you can keep your mails forever. You get the best spam filter ever invented, and columns view for your mails, which was seen first in the thunderbird e-mail application, and copied by microsoft just a few weeks later. It really is a cool feature. This far, Google is the best mail service on the web - and this is the moment the Google system really starts. A few days ago, they implemented a full chat client into the website. And even better - a voice chat too. Furthermore, everything Google offers is combined to one big hot piece of candy. One username, one password, and you have all the information you can possible need at once wherever you are.
Now to the calender: it's clean, it's practical, and easy to use (as every Google product). To add a new event, you need one click and just type something like "Meeting with Tanja tomorrow at 2pm" - Google gets all the information it needs out of it. Try that on any other calender you may find! If that mysterious Tanja is in your address book, you can tell google to send her a e-mail at that moment. To make sure she will show up. You can also give her the rights to invite some more people, and you'll get a message as soon as she does. You can even make your calender public - or just certain parts, if you want. National holidays of dozen countries can be shown, if you want.
That's also something which you will get used to pretty quick: You can just register, use all features, and go to sleep. Or: you can spend days and days to customize everything as you want. Afterwards it will be what you personally need, and nothing else.
You can share everything or nothing, you can let Google use all the informations you have on your computer, or none of them. With the Google Desktop Search you can also search your whole local area network.
Well, that's it for today.
I was writing all that mainly because I wanted to practice for my final english test next week, and on a little bit because I really like Google.
By the way, I will tell you something about the contras tomorrow.
Have a good one.
See, Google is not only the best search engine ever. The new msn search has an almost-as-good search algorithm, and Google's algorithm is not patented forever.
But, Google has much more to offer: Look at the Google Desktop search. MSN has a Desktop search too! Though, Google is about a year ahead of MSN. Microsoft is going to introduce us to a really cool Windows Sidebar in January next year - with all kind of features you can think of. And they are talking about it for months now. Now, take a look at Google - without even mentioning it once, they just released a sidebar with the same - and very soon a lot more - features today. At this moment I see random pictures from my PC, and websites I visit regularly - plus, 2 kinds of news: live updated news from my favorite news sites like golem, tagesschau, financial times germany, faz and so on.. there are also one-click links to my favorite websites, which are not news related. A calender is also integrated, the Google calender with really really cool features; I'm coming back to that later. Those are not just gimmicks I might use while I'm bored, it's all stuff that I used before - but it was never that comfortable.
Then, there is Google mail. First introduced around april fool's day last year iirc, nobody believed that you would really get a whole gigabyte of space for free, just for mails. By now, you have 2.7 gigs. I mean, it's getting more, and you can keep your mails forever. You get the best spam filter ever invented, and columns view for your mails, which was seen first in the thunderbird e-mail application, and copied by microsoft just a few weeks later. It really is a cool feature. This far, Google is the best mail service on the web - and this is the moment the Google system really starts. A few days ago, they implemented a full chat client into the website. And even better - a voice chat too. Furthermore, everything Google offers is combined to one big hot piece of candy. One username, one password, and you have all the information you can possible need at once wherever you are.
Now to the calender: it's clean, it's practical, and easy to use (as every Google product). To add a new event, you need one click and just type something like "Meeting with Tanja tomorrow at 2pm" - Google gets all the information it needs out of it. Try that on any other calender you may find! If that mysterious Tanja is in your address book, you can tell google to send her a e-mail at that moment. To make sure she will show up. You can also give her the rights to invite some more people, and you'll get a message as soon as she does. You can even make your calender public - or just certain parts, if you want. National holidays of dozen countries can be shown, if you want.
That's also something which you will get used to pretty quick: You can just register, use all features, and go to sleep. Or: you can spend days and days to customize everything as you want. Afterwards it will be what you personally need, and nothing else.
You can share everything or nothing, you can let Google use all the informations you have on your computer, or none of them. With the Google Desktop Search you can also search your whole local area network.
Well, that's it for today.
I was writing all that mainly because I wanted to practice for my final english test next week, and on a little bit because I really like Google.
By the way, I will tell you something about the contras tomorrow.
Have a good one.