Googling Friday #5

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Google Friday. This week I really don’t have a review as much as I want to share how I have used Google to keep me on top of things with my contacts and calendar both in the cloud and on the desktop. But first, as always, some Google news for the week.

Google Searching goes Instant

On Wednesday, Google updated its search engine to now present search results as you type them. What this means is after you type just 1 or 2 letters it will start to present results based on your past search history. This is going to be great for power users as it will save quite a bit of time. Here is a screen shot I took just to give you an idea and then go try it for yourself...it’s OK...I’ll wait.

Pretty snazzy huh? What will Bing and Yahoo do in response?

Gmail Priority Inbox Initial review

Last week I told you how Google was adding a new Priority Inbox to Gmail. It has since been made accessible to me and it is very good. It does a great job on recognizing important email to me from the regular day to day email. For example, anything job related goes right to my Priority Inbox where as my mailing list stuff goes to the regular Inbox. Also, if you star email in either section it will place in in a third Starred email section within your Inbox. So basically your Priority Inbox has 3 sections: Important and Unread, Starred, and Everything else.

Chrome 6

Google released version 6 of its Chrome web browser. It is a lot faster and a newer interface. Well worth the update.

Google launching Music Store?

Google apparently is negotiating with major music labels regarding a music store. My thoughts are cool, I will continue to use iTunes, but if they can offer me music cheaper and still have it sit within my iTunes player like Amazon does, then great! I love competition for my dollars.

Staying in touch from the cloud and the desktop

Now for my thoughts this week. I love using Google Calendar and Contacts in conjunction with my desktop applications BusyCal and Apple Address Book. I really don’t update anything within the Apple Address Book as I do within Contacts in Gmail, but with BusyCal I do quite a bit and it syncs back nicely to Google Calendar which then syncs to my iPhone and iPad. So whatever device you are near, you can update it and it will reflect to your other devices. What this means for me is coming up in January, I will probably cease my MobileMe membership as the Google Calendar and Contacts are free. With BusyCal it has a side view for a ToDo list which really helps me stay on top of things. I’m using it to remember to call people back. My wife still writes things down in a planner, I have gone digital, so if it is written down and not in my calendar, I will probably forget it.

So that is what I wanted to share this week, see you all next week for another edition of Googling Friday.