To Casual observers Google is known only as a search engine. Everyone knows exactly what you mean when you use the household phrase “Google it.” But what is the deal with Gmail? Or the even lesser known Google Docs and Calendar? Some might say these online applications are simply jabs from Google CEO Eric Schmidt towards his longtime nemesis, Microsoft. Others, including Google, claim that online applications are they wave of the future.

Google Calendar

Still in it’s beta stages, Google Calendar completely online based, free, and fully sharable. You control who your calendar is shared with, and what information others can see by adding their email to an event, or your entire calendar. Other users can then have the option to see your two calendars layered together, only your calendar, or only their calendar. Sharing an entire calendar can be useful when you’re part of a group that has shared events, like a softball team.
Some other features of Google Calendar are:

• Views by day, week, or month or next four days
• You can invite people to events on your calendar by adding their email addresses in the Guests section of the event.
• Guests can RSVP to your invitations by email, whether or not they use Google Calendar themselves.
• Reminders help you keep track of important events. You can choose to be notified by email, popup window or text messages sent right to your mobile phone.
• You can set up multiple calendars for different areas of your life, like one for your softball team’s practices and games.
• You can search your calendar, and events that are made public by other Google Calendar users.

Google Docs

Boasting similar sharing/networking features of Google Calendar, Google Docs consists of a word processor (which this was written with), spreadsheet, and presentation program, all online, no downloads, all free.

In it’s basic form, Google Docs are similar to Microsoft in that you can create documents from scratch, or from a template, and all the standard functions are covered including:

• bulleted lists,
• sorting by columns,
• adding tables,
• images,
• comments,
• formulas

So why are Google Docs any better? Because of the sharing capabilities. You choose who can access a given document by entering their email address and sending them an invitation. Anyone you’ve invited to either edit or view your document, spreadsheet or presentation can access it as soon as they sign in. Multiple people can view and make changes to a document at the same time. There is an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when. As for presentations, anyone who has been invited to view a presentation can follow along with the presenter.

There’s nothing to download; you can access your documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any computer with an Internet connection and a standard browser. Additional features include:

• Online storage and autosave — no worries about local hard drive failures or power outages.

• Save your documents and spreadsheets to your own computer in DOC, XLS, CSV, ODS, ODT, PDF, RTF and HTML formats.
• Organize by dragging and dropping your documents into as many folders as you want.
• You can publish your documents online, as normal-looking web pages
• Publish to the entire world, just a few people or no one. You can also un-publish at any time.

Gmail

The central hub that all of this revolves around is Google’s best known side project: Gmail. A free web based email service that offers 1 gigabyte, or 500 times as much storage space as a free Microsoft Hotmail account. Gmail features a built in search engine that uses the same search technology as a standard google search, making it simple to locate emails, even by only typing in a phrase from the email such as “sailing this weekend with BillyBob.”

Other features include:

• Quick load times by using a plain layout, sparse graphics, and unobtrusive text ads.
• Messages are grouped together in a string. This conversation view continues to grow as new replies arrive, so you can always see your messages in context.
• Built in chat, reply to emails via chat. And Gmail can archive all of your chats, making them searchable.
• Gmail uses labels to help you organize with more flexibility. A conversation can have several labels, so you’re not forced to choose one particular folder for messages. You can also create filters to automatically manage incoming mail.

Google’s spam blocking technology: