Google Applications
From IT Jalakam - Unofficial IT syllabus for grade 10 students
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the late 1990's, started off as a small side research project during their degree courses in Stanford University. Little did they know that this small, humble project with great potential, would eventually compete against AltaVista, Yahoo! and MSN search engines (which were very popular at that time) and soon become one of the bets and the fastest growing IT company specializing primarily on searching the vast resource of the Internet.
It wasn't long before Google realized that they could offer a host of other features (ie. other than Internet Search) to users like us. This led to the conception of a myriad of new services, of which the more popular yet useful ones, including an introduction to Google Search, are listed here.
A screenshot of the Google Services page (found here - http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/options/ )
Contents |
Google Search
One of the most important feature to have ever been used, the Google Search feature is one of the most powerful yet simple internet search engine that is ever known. In fact, Google Search is so popular, that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has truncated the word "Googling" into it's dictionary, where it means "to search or look it up in Google.com".
If at all you'll need something more specific than a random search, then an "Advanced Search" option is also available, which will enable you to streamline Google's search for any particular term according to your needs, whether it's to search only Indian domains, according to region, time or even date,together along with it's powerful servers, this feature is indeed one of the best you will get in terms of searching the vastness of the internet.
A more detailed guide on how to use Google's search engines will be posted at a later time.
Gmail
Gmail, or Google Mail as it is also known as, is an e-mail service from Google, similar to Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail from Microsoft. However with a host of features such as browser-based video/text chat support, superior spam filters, over 7GB of free space (and increasing even more day-by-day) and free IMAP and POP3 support (which enables users to view their email through a desktop email client like Outlook or Thunderbird) not offered by other competitors led to Gmail becoming very popular among internet users.
Orkut
Started by Orkut Büyükkökten, employee of Google, as an independent project, it is now synonymous with social networking, especially in India. As the description suggests, it is a social networking site, where friends and family can share views, photos, videos or even meet up and stay in touch with long-lost friends.
By creating a profile on Orkut, one can either stay in touch just with their friends and family or join social communities, where other like-minded people can discuss topics of their choice like football, cricket, celebrities, movies or even toothpaste. "Scrapping" on orkut is a unique feature wherein people can communicate with one another, whether online or offline.
Add these to a whole range of features including complete customization of a person profile by adding likes-dislikes, turn-ons, testimonials, "trustworthy"-ness etc. , it wasn't much of a surprise to learn that Orkut is one of the most popular social networking sites in India, beating Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 by a resounding margin.
Picasa
Whether you want to upload your photos for viewing pleasure online, or do a bit of editing on that red-eye that turned up while clicking a photo, or even manage and tag your photos just that you remember where you saved which photo and when, Picasa enables the user to do all these tasks with remarkable ease.
Be it editing videos, cropping photos, managing photo folders, air-brushing an image and printing them, you dont need to be a geek to use it as it's pretty simple and easy to use.
Youtube
"Broadcast Yourself" are the two words that best describe YouTube. Again, a company bought by Google the minute they sensed it gaining popularity, YouTube is a video-sharing website that entitles the user to upload his own videos on to a wider platform that is the internet, and thus gives him a chance to gain popularity, judge public opinion and share views on the same. With over millions and millions of views per day, it is easily one the most popular website the internet has ever seen.
OK Go, a relatively lesser known band, shot to fame in 2006 when their video of the song "Here It Goes Again" which features the band dancing on treadmills became a featured video of YouTube, which is one of the most views of any video on Youtube with over 47 million hits.
YouTube has been categorized into various "Channels", where you can bookmark any channel of your choice be it Metallica, Linkin Park or even Manchester United, as they update it with relevant videos, giving a chance for fans to watch and comment.
A list of channels can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/members
All in all, YouTube is a great website to share and view videos of all kinds.
Blogger
Express yourself online
Google Books
Find any book that you want. Be it fiction or study related. You will find it hear. If the book is out of copyright or the publisher has allowed google, then you may even find the full text of the book here. In some cases you may even download the book in PDF format.
It has option for "buy" and "borrow from library" too.
Check this out. Very helpful to make you decide if its all hype or some facts about certain book.
Search here: http://books.google.com/
Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Now a days none is unaware of word or excel facility provided by Microsoft. But they don't come cheap and you actually can't work anywhere as you might be having that doc you were making yesterday with you.
Google came to help you here. They provide a very similar user interface for word as Docs and for Excel as Spreadsheets. The good things are, these facilities are free and you can access anywhere if you have a PC and Internet connection.
Google Docs allows you to download the file as HTML(Zipped), PDF, OpenOffice, RTF, Text and Word format.
Google spreadsheets in other way give you the facilities of working in MSExcel. Its not that robust or powerful but, at least does what you wanted to do.
It allows importing your existing Excel file saved in microsoft excel format(2003) (xls), MSExcel format 2007 (xlsx), openOfficeSpreadsheet format (ods), csv and txt files.
It allows to export files in the following formats: CSV, HTML, ODS, PDF, txt and xls.
Google Reader
Its a service that helps you get all the news on something or everything that interests you.
Log in to your google reader account and subscribe to the news feeds that interest you. Google will continually supply you all the happenings around the world 24/7 on that topic.
Reach it here: [www.google.com/reader Google Reader]
