Posted on: February 27th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Today’s blog is about Google since Jordan will be writing about Google today as well.

I wouldn’t believe it if anyone told me they’ve never heard of Google.  I’d also find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone hasn’t used Google ever or benefited from a google query.  Lets face it, Google owns the search industry!  Google also is very efficient at indexing the internet for quick searches.

In recent years, Google has released several new features including, but not limited to, gmail, google earth, google calendar, google docs, and google web toolkit.

I have not tried google docs, however have heard that their terms of service say that google can access your documents whenever they want.  I’m not sure how true this is, so I will say no more. (http://www.jordandelozier.com/2009/02/does-google-0wnz-your-soul/ verifies this).  However with storing private information anywhere on another service, you have to trust other people who have access to your account (administrators).  I’m not sure if I’d like to trust a free service with my documents, regardless of how popular they are, but thats just me.

As for the google web toolkit and google search, I use both often. I don’t think I could live without google search!  I submit a good 100 queries each day to google.   As for the google web tool kit, I love how it simplifies javascript into java.  This has helped me on numerous websites that I’ve developed.

As for google earth, I’ve tried that and it is impressive, however I don’t like the fact that it installs a program to my computer that then interfaces to an internet connection, therefore I’ve uninstalled it and haven’t used it since.

Gmail is also impressive, I tried GMail twice.  I thought that I could make it interface with imap and sync my email to every device I have.  Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that their IMAP sucks.  You cannot upload email to their servers via IMAP to a sent mail folder.  I also found that when using a text based client called pine, I couldn’t access the server due to unfamiliar directory names.  I also hate how they don’t allow unsecure access via IMAP.  I do however like their web interface.

Google calendar is also impressive, and I used this on one website that I created.  Google calendar however has a small problem with it, its embedded and you can’t customize the calendar all that much. It also uses a format that is different from the normal ICS file format so a calendar parser can’t quite parse the google ics files correctly, however this may have been fixed by now.

With mobile applications and google, gmail syncs to a smartphone correctly, however won’t syncronise tasks, calendar appointments and contacts effectively.  I found many bugs with the one software program that does exist to sync the calendar to my mobile phone.

After finding all these problems, I now pay for mailxchange from www.1and1.com.  I got my own domain and it syncs to everything perfectly.  It also provides me with standard ics files to power http://calendar.famousphil.com!   I’m sure that Microsoft Exchange can do this also, however I wasn’t about ready to pay for hosting on Exchange with the very small space allotments most hosts provide.

Because of the sync issues I’ve had and pine issues, I use 1and1′s mailxchange service, and they even provide a storage area like google docs!   I have also read their TOS and they will not release my personal email or documents unless a legal case comes up requiring they do it.  I trust their staff, probably because I pay for it.  Google should allow its customers to pay for services like syncing if you ask me.

Thats enough blabbing about Google   I like thier search and will likely always use google for all of my search needs.  Their mail on the other hand needs some work before I’d consider using it.

Tags: 1and1.com, calendar, contacts, exchange, Google, ics, mailxchange, Microsoft, sync
Posted in Technology
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