A Look Into Google: Part 2

In Part 2, we look into Google’s organizational tools for any professional or personal projects you are working on. From their online spreadsheets and documents, to calendar, and more, we go over their uses and features that are of much benefit to you.

As always, the best way to learn about Google is to explore yourself. The second best way is to read this guide!

Personal & Professional Organizational Tools

• Part 1 - Advanced Searching & Customizations
• Part 2 - Personal & Professional Organizational Tools
• Part 3 - Communication Tools & Desktop Enhancement
• Part 4 – Advanced & New Features at Google

If you don’t have one already, you’re going to need a Google account. Make sure you’re logged in, too.

First off, let’s take a look a Google Docs & Spreadsheets. This site is incredibly useful for a multitude of reasons, and I’ll go over them.

• Mobile - One of the most useful features of having all your documents stored online is that it is completely mobile from computer to computer. You can write and edit your documents from your school or work computer, your laptop, your home computer, a computer at a friend’s house, a computer at your families house, anywhere. This type of flexibility is very nice when you are working on papers, you are able to get to them anywhere.
• Organized - It is very easy to add tags to track your documents, or flag them if you need to focus on a set of documents. When you add multiple tags, you can sort by those tags as well to easily track certain types of documents, much like how Gmail works.
• Revisions - If you created the document through the website, it’ll save each revision you make. You can track the changes you make, and even revert to older revisions if needed. This tool goes great with…
• Collaboration - If anyone you know needs to collaborate with you, all they need is a Google account as well. Add them as a collaborator, and they get all the tools you do for that document. Then, track the revisions they do, and they can also track yours, so you can see the edits and changes made to the document as it matures.
• Publish - Publishing your document online is easy and done with a click of a button. This makes getting your document on the internet easy, so you can link to it for e-mails, blog posts, forum reference, and other reasons why you might need a document online.
• Security - No longer do you have to worry about losing your documents. Using this for your documents gives them a very reliable backup in case of any problems on the computer where you are storing your data. It also auto-saves your progress, so no need to worry about saving every few minutes.

These tools provide great results for personal work or professional projects. It really shines when you are doing group works, so multiple people can edit the document while tracking all the changes made.

Next we’ll take a look at Google Calendar. This is great for all the reasons calendars are great, however it makes the automation and management of your calendar a lot easier to do. It includes a lot of tools to make adding a lot of events on your calendar quick and easy. But the real gem lies again in its mobility across computers and the tools that let you share your calendar. You can completely setup the calendar to share just free/busy time with specific people, or all calendar details, or give them rights to add and edit events on the calendar. Again, this is a useful tool for personal or professional uses if used correctly.

We’ll dig into GMail and Google Talk, two of Google’s communication tools, in the next part of this guide. To outline them, though, they are both very easy to use and their interface is used well. GMail is especially useful with it’s great spam prevention and large mailbox size, so you don’t have to worry about filling up your inbox anytime shortly.

Now all those tools and services are great. But let’s take it a step further with Google Apps for Your Domain. This is specifically useful for organizations looking for a firmer organization and control of their website. You can use Google’s Email, Chat, and Calendar services to coordinate and organize your website’s work. You can also use their publishing tools to update certain portions of your site, if not the site itself. These tools are good for small or medium sized organizations who need to further their communication and organizational abilities.

If you want to use Google to further expand your website’s use, perhaps you’d consider Blogger, Google’s blogging service. Blogging is great for personal reasons, for obvious reasons. But it is also good for tracking professional developments in a slightly less formal attitude, YouTube’s blog being a great example. On a personal note, this is my favorite entry. As for Blogger, it’s really all about it’s easy interface that is a real use of all of Google’s products. But even more so, it can be used on their sub domain (at blogspot.com), or integrated directly into your site by following a few easy instructions.
And that is it for now!