Google

Google has been coming out with some great offerings lately! I have been really impressed with a number of the free offerings, especially the fact that they are free!

Google Voice is probably my favorite application that Google has come out with. Google Voice allows you to connect all of your telephone numbers and have them ring to a single phone. It offers voicemail transcribing and sends the transcribed message to your email and/or via a text message, which is definitely a cool (and fun) option! It could use some work on recognition, but I don't expect it to pick up some of the messages I get, especially when I can barely understand them myself. Some people are just a little incomprehensible in general... You can send text messages from your Google Voice page online, through a Google Voice app that is offered for Android phones, and text to many places for free! You can also get great long-distance rates to many countries via Google Voice! You just add money to your account and use that already allocated money in the call, so you don't end up with crazy unexpected bills at the end, which can really ruin an otherwise great phone call!

Google Sky Map, which I have on my T-Mobile G1 cell phone, is an amazing app! It's another Android app by Google and it basically maps out the skies and can show you what stars you are seeing, just by pointing your phone towards the area of the sky you are seeing stars in. This is truly amazing, I think...

Google Maps, as another Android app, is also truly amazing! It was pretty cool before, but with directions, speech capabilities, and also the familiar street views, and other options, this program is loaded up and ready to guide you to victory! It's another one of my many-used Google apps that I've found invaluable!

Google Wave... Hmm, I just finally got my invite to Google Wave and haven't gotten a really good feel for it yet. I'm not 100% sure of all of the benefits of it, but I know many people have talked about how great it is. I just signed up for it, so I hope that it turns out to be pretty cool, as well as the rest.

Google is staying on a great path in leading the way, with their Gmail, Google Voice, Google Wave, and more to lead the market. Google's search engine has become the standard and people generically talk about "Googling" something to look something up, much like "Kleenex" has replaced "tissues" in many conversations as a generic term instead of a brand name. I hope they continue to keep developing such great (and free!!) applications in the future, as I'm definitely a believer in them as of now! I'm not really one to worry too much about all of my stored information out there that they may have, so that hasn't been a real issue for me, though I know people do talk about it. Keep up the good work, Google!