Google

It's so much more than a search engine By Rick Castellini Special to PRIME Google started as a college project 12 years ago, then as a startup search engine just 10 years ago. Today, Google owns more than 60 percent of all web search traffic and employs close to 22,000 employees worldwide. You probably interact with Google primarily via their search engine. However, you are missing out on some truly great Google services. Today, I will tell you about seven of the many other must-use services Google provides. Google News To access this feature, when you arrive at www.google.com, click the link that says News at the top of the page (or directly visit www.news.google.com). Google News is an auto-generated news page that refreshes automatically every five-to-10 minutes and displays headlines from more than 4500 news sources around the world. To me, it is the ultimate newspaper . unbiased and unfiltered. Also, starting a search at Google News instead of the Google home page will return results only from those news sources. iGoogle IGoogle is a feature that lets you set up an automatic filter for Google News. At iGoogle, you create a customized web page with sports, news, weather, entertainment and any other category you choose. You select the content and sources for that content and your news is automatically updated each time you return. If you are still using your Internet provider's home page as your home page, try iGoogle instead. To get started, visit google.com and then click iGoogle in the upper right of the page. You can thank me later. Google Maps Mapquest.com still provides good maps and information, but Google Maps (< a href="http://maps.google.com">www.maps.google.com ) provides better maps, faster maps, and cleaner maps than any other site on the Web. Add in the extra features such as walking maps, public transit maps and street level views, just to name a few, and you, too, will soon be saying, "mapquest what?" Google Mail (Gmail) Google started their own e-mail service less than five years ago as a closed beta project. Two years ago, Gmail became available to all and more than 10 million signed up. Gmail, in my opinion, surpasses any other e-mail system currently available. It offers superior spam filtering (including phishing prevention), superior organization and searching via its unique and groundbreaking Labels system, fast access on any computer or phone and far too many more features to mention in this article. Trust me, it works and it works extremely well. Google Alerts My favorite Google service, (beyond search), is hands-down Gmail. But a close second would be Google Alerts. Google Alerts works to bring you news alerts about any topic you choose from the Web, news sources, blogs or any other source on the Internet. For example, if you are a huge Tiger Woods fan and want to get all the latest news about Tiger, visit www.google.com/alerts and enter Tiger Woods in the search terms box, choose what part of the web you want Google to search, choose how often you want to be updated, and finally, enter your email address and submit. Now anytime a story comes up with Tiger Woods in it, you will receive an e-mail. You can create as many Google Alerts as you desire and cancel them at any time as well. Google-411 Google decided that phone company information lines dropped the ball long ago and set out to provide phone-based information themselves. Google-411 is a service that lets you harness the power of Google away from your computer . with your phone (land line or cell). Dial 1-800-Google-411 (1-800-466-4411) and a friendly computer voice will answer, ask for the city and business name, then give you the option to connect to the business automatically. Like all other Google services, Google-411 is fast, easy and accurate. Google Options The last service I will share with you is a list of all Goggle Services. Perusing the list makes for a interesting journey in and of itself, but click some of the fabulous new (and old) services that Google provides to find your own favorites. Google lists all their services at: www.google.com/options. When you find some that you like, head over to my site, HelpMeRick.com and leave me a comment of your favorites. Rick Castellini is an author and computer consultant who hosts a nationally syndicated computer radio show from Colorado. Visit his web site at www.HelpMeRick.com for tips and to sign up for his free weekly email newsletter.