A Few Google Toys to Play With

As many of you know, I recently let go of my privacy issues, and joined the online gathering called me.dium.com. I figured at this point, what else did I have to lose? I decided to go ahead and get all the cool Google services I have lusted over for quite some time now.

Google Alerts is very cool. Just put in your interests, and you will receive via email, a list of relevant links. I put in about ten subjects, and have it set to receive daily reports. Each subject receives it’s own email. One of the subjects I am currently studying, is prokaryotes. I received my first emails from Google Alerts today, and I was quite impressed! I realized that I could set this up to help me stimulate daily blog ideas. I like it a lot.

iGoogle is like the most awesome homepage ever! First off, it has a create your own tab feature. Each tab you can name whatever you choose. The tabs I created were: Computers, News, Main, Games/fun, Words and info.. Each tab is it’s own section of my homepage.

There are an endless number of widgets to add to your home pages.On my main page, I have installed a *to do* list, Yellow Pages, Google Map Search, a measurement converter, language translator, alarm clock, convert text to pdf, current moon phase, weather, clock, Craig’s list search, and the Google calendar. This page alone, allowed me to get rid of several Firefox extensions.

There are plenty of neat little games to play, informational tips and guides….you will be looking through these widgets for hours.

You can also choose between a few different backgrounds for your page. I like the one called *beach*. As the day goes along, the sun will change positions, and the sky will reflect the hour of the day.

At the top of my Google home page, I have the option: Web History. I click on this, and there is a detailed report of where I have gone, and the exact time I was there. Now I do not have to install a Firefox extension like Trexy Trailbar, to know where I have been. When you sign up for this service, you are given the option as to whether or not you want to keep track of your web history. Unless you already are using something like CustomizeGoogle, they already know everywhere you are going anyway. This way, you at least know where you have been also!

Google Toolbar is pretty well known already, but I will point out a few of it’s neat features:

• It comes with page rank, so I was able to uninstall another extension.
• A little pop down menu lists what is currently in my Gmail box.
• You can send a web page to a friend instantly via your Gmail account.
• You can use it to store bookmarks, and they are accessible anywhere you go. You can even upload your current Firefox bookmarks into the Google bookmarks.
• The Google search bar is pretty cool, with lots of add-ons. There are several toys for the main bar, and you can decide how they are displayed. It is all integrated into your browser, so you can drag and drop stuff from the Firefox customize option. Once again, very cool.

I will soon be sharing some other cool Google toys with you. In the meantime, I highly recommend those listed above, they are really worthwhile!

Technorati Tags: Google, iGoogle, Google Alerts, Google Toolbar, Firefox, Firefox Extensions, Organization, privacy, me.dium.com, shadowmyth, lockergnome

[tags]Google, iGoogle, Google Alerts, Google Toolbar, Firefox, Firefox Extensions, Organization, privacy, me.dium.com, shadowmyth, lockergnome[/tags]

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