Cool Google Features and Products

The first is Google Alerts. If you have Gmail, you can create alerts about any topic and they are sent to your email everyday. You can have alerts about some topic that interests you such as Buddhism or the Oakland Raiders and Google will send you websites that have updated info on these topics to your email. You can also limit them to blogs. What I like best about the feature is that I have my name as an alert so that anytime my name pops up on the internet I get an email alert. I also have created an alert with my Social Security Number as well but have yet to get an alert. Who doesn't want to be immediately alerted when any personal information about them pops up on the internet. Here is the link to Google Alerts:

http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en&gl=

Another cool Google product I found is called 1-800-GOOG-411. It is a free 411 phone directory that is voice activated. Unlike the regular phone company 411, GOOG-411 is free. I tried it out to see how well it works by calling for the phone number of some local businesses near my house in Los Angeles near Reseda and it gave me the correct phone number and also connected me to the business. Pretty cool. And you do not need a Google or Gmail account to use it. Here is the link to the Google page explaining GOOG-411:

http://www.google.com/goog411/


I also like the Google Documents products they have. They are simpler versions of programs like Microsoft Word or Excel but they are web based so you can work on them anywhere and for a lot of applications, the Google Docs are more than sufficient. I copied my resume from Word into the Google docs and it comes out just as good. You need a Google account. Here is the link.


Here is the link to the page that lists the Google products:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/


There are also some cool search features that I think many people don't know about. If you want a definition of a word such as "entropy", simply type "define: entropy" in the Google search box and you will get the definition.

Also, you can get the conversion of metrics by typing "10 centimeters in inches" or "20 miles in kilometers" and it will give you the conversion. Here is the link to a list of other Google search features:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html