Google’s Googleplex of Googling Goodies
Most people are at least familiar with the now-ubiquitous search engine Google. What does it do exactly? Well, it lets you search for things, right? Yep. You type in a set of words that you think relates to the thing that you want to find, press a button, and hope that the internet gnomes find you agreeable enough to hand deliver you a pile of pages that may or may not have anything to do with what you’re really looking for. Of that group of people that know of Google, a slightly smaller group of people know about another aspect of Google: Gmail. That’s Google’s email hosting site. The same internet gnomes that look on the internet for what you submit also host your email and allow you to store an ever increasing amount of information (I think my account is over 5G of info for the max limit). For those that care, it’s also POPable. So, for the Mail/Outlook/Entourage/Thunderbird/etc. users of the world you can get your private email straight to your mail client, no problem. Of that group of people, there’s a third even smaller group who know about Google Analytics, which helps site hosts keep track of who comes to their site, how long they stay, what screen resolution they’re using…. needless to say, Google Analytics helps me know pretty much everything about you all as you’re reading this (I’m a user and an abuser!). There’s also the famous and entertaining Google Maps helping users around the world stalk people find locations and directions to pretty much anywhere in the world. And for those like me living in the luckiest areas, we get Google Maps Streetview, so you can see what the area looks like from, well, the street.
What many people don’t know about, however, is a nifty place called the Google Labs. This is where the magic happens. The team over at GWO (Google World Order) is constantly coming up with new utilities that will dominate your life. For example, have you ever wished that Google Maps existed for other planets? No? Well, I think it’s pretty awesome. And it does. It’s (appropriately) named Google Mars. Looking for quotes? Try Google InQuotes. Blind? Why not go for Google Accessible. Does Google Maps not meet your stalker needs? Try Google Trends and find out what people are doing. Want to make a website but find yourself completely inept? Why not use Google Sites?
The bottom line is this: Google has an ever expanding library of appendages that range from completely useless to the Golden Child that will deliver you from boredom or anonymity. I, for one, use Google’s products pretty much every day. I wake up and POP my Gmail account, check Analytics to find out how site traffic has been going, search for random subjects throughout the day to satisfy my need for useless knowledge, and then find directions to the million and a half places I need to be throughout the week (or try to see if it will give me directions to swim somewhere… try San Diego to Diamond Head Honalulu and check turn #336 “Kayak across the Pacific Ocean“) I’ve used Google Scholar to look up articles, Google News to sift through more reliable news updates and Google Video to watch random funny things (until they bought YouTube…)
If you don’t think there’s something out there for you, I definitely recommend checking Google Labs out to see if it might have something that interests you or can help you take your work another step further.