The Wonderful World of Google Software and Services Maps, Blogging, Gmail, and More Vangie Beal
Maps
Google Maps is mapping technology and local business information — including business locations, contact information and driving directions. Google Maps offers users business search results, draggable maps, satellite images (similar to the Google Earth app's views), detailed driving directions, and keyboard shortcuts to move around in a map view.
And with Google's new Google Maps API you can tap into the power of Google Maps on your own websites by adding embedded maps that utilize Google Maps technology.
Google Scholar provides a way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Google's specialized searches lets you narrow down search results to a specific topic. Current Google Special Searches include a public service search university search, U.S. Government, Linux, BSD, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft.
One of the first Google products, Gmail offers a Google-branded option for Webmail. Webmail is software run by an ISP or online service that provides access to send, receive and review e-mail using only your Web browser. Users can enter the Webmail Web site URL in their browser's address or location field, and use their Webmail account by typing in a username and password.
Google's Gmail is a beta service, but many people have found it easy to get accepted or referred by someone else already using Gmail. Gmail comes with built-in Google search technology and more than 2,600 megabytes of storage (and growing every day). There are no pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail, only small text ads. Gmail also integrates instant messaging into the e-mail through Google Talk and integrates with Google calendar as well.
Google's free talk client offers a way to communicate over the Internet using instant messaging, e-mail (using Gmail), or by voice. To use all three communication methods using Talk, you need an Internet connection, a microphone, and a speaker. Without the voice talk, you can still use Talk as an IM client.
Google Groups allows groups of people to communicate through e-mail and the Web. Each Google group has a home page hosted by Google where members can start new discussions or reply to older topics. Google Groups also allows you to easily create your own announcement lists, mailing lists and public discussions.
One of the most recent additions to Google products is the Google Calendar. This service is designed to lep people organize daily, monthly and yearly events and also share calendars with co-workers, family or friends. If you use Gmail, you can also send events directly from e-mail to your calendar.
