For people who have newly migrated to the Internet this freebie-sm seems incredible, magical or even downright suspicious. An uncle of mine,when introduced to the benefits of free email was like ,"No way this is possible. They must be costly."
"No Uncle. You don't have to pay for sending email. In fact you don't have to pay for anything. Just create an account and start sending mails".
"But what about the costs of maintaining this service? All the wiring, all the electricity, all the pretty colours? I am pretty sure that they ask your bank account or credit card number during that account creation stage"
"Relax Uncle. I have an account and I don't have a bank account By the way I think they recover their cost through advertising. And I am pretty sure they don't pay for the wiring." This was quite some years ago and I was still not very clear about the economics of the Internet. I am a little surer now!
"Hmmm is it completely free then? I don't have to pay anything?" There was this you-are-kidding tone in his voice and he looked very hard for that data field where he would have to key in his account number when creating his email account. I think he was kind of disappointed when he didn't find any!
Since the Internet offers such a wide variety of tools for free (in rare cases they charge, but very little) it's upto us to use all of them for managing our life. One of the pioneers in offering free service is Google with everything ranging from photos, videos, web analysis tools, gadgets, maps, books and whatnot offered for free. Most of us know about or use only a minority of these features: Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, Blogger. Let me elaborate on couple of services that you can use regularly.
Google Reader: This one is a life saver for jobs like mine, where you have to read stuff from plenty of websites of all stripes. You can usually get redirected to this service by clicking on the link titled Reader which will appear on the top left of the page once you log into your google account. You can also get it by googling Google Reader. On the first try you might have to enter your password but that's about it.
"What are we supposed to do with it?". Good thing that you asked. Whenever you visit any Website look out for this orange icon either in the search bar or in the main page.
Click on this icon and you will find that all the contents of that Website added to Reader. Add as many Websites as you want and you will get the daily dose of news,photos, nonsense and fetish at one place.
Google Calendar: Did you ever forget your mum's birthday? Were there times when you got on the bus cab and remembered that you forgot to bring that discount coupon for the eatery near your office? How about forgetting to give your environmentally passionate girlfriend that card for Earth Day? Fear not, with Google Calendar there is no need to dream up last minute excuses.
Google Calendar can be accessed from the same top panel of links, or from here if you are feeling lazy. Log in and you will be presented with a calendar, the kind which is available in business planners.
The USP of GCal is its ability to talk to your phone. Depending on your service provider you can elect to receive alerts of the events in the calendar on your mobile by SMS. These alerts can be set to be received before a user specified time frame. Go to Settings and in the Mobile Setup area and validate your number. Google Calendar has saved my skin a number of times and I am a heavy user. What's cooler is that you can share your Google Calendar with other people and also send invites by Gmail.
Web apps that are free to use are a great way of organizing your life and effectively multitasking and communicating. I fully subscribe to this view but also append a note of caution: never trust your data in a single place, if it's of any importance to you. ALWAYS keep a physical backup. Multiple copies are the safest bet. Utilize the facilities of Internet but be careful not to depend on it.
I am curious as to what free apps do you use, Web based or otherwise to streamline your life and work. Fire away in the comments
1 comment:
good stuff, even I have not utilized google reader as yet. Apart from other things I use google analytics. It provides comprehensive traffic information of my blog. For those who are interested in marketing or media, there are a lot of free online survey sites available. I have used them in my job to the fullest extent.
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