I was an early user of Google and many of the tools and apps they rolled out over the years. 149 posts going back to 2002. In no particular order:
Talk, Google+, Reminders, My Activity, Glass, Picassa, Gmail, Chrome, Goggles, Voice, Docs, Buzz, Tasks, Reader, Living Stories, Wave, Maps, Earth, Spreadsheets, News
I’ve previously posted about creating a Gmail account in 2004. Google launched the service on April 1st of that year and I created my account (invite-only at the time) on April 21, 2004. In those 20+ years I accumulated more than fifteen thousand emails. Google’s pitch was their search was so good you could just keep all of your emails and they’d help you find it. And it worked pretty much as advertised. But I rarely needed to find an old email. And my ALL MAIL folder just got bigger and bigger. If memory serves, I downloaded all/most of my Google stuff a couple of times during those 20 years but never had a need to use those backups.
Most of my computing these days happens on my iPhone and my MacBook. But given my lengthy history with Google (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar), I’ve never migrated over to Apple for these tools. Until now.
I was very impressed with Apple’s approach to AI (“Apple Intelligence”) and to get the full benefit I’ve decided to go all-in. Starting tomorrow I’ll be using Apple Mail and Calendar. Not sure yet about switching from Google Drive to iCloud. I have a lot of files in Google Drive (850 GB).
As for deleting 20+ years of emails? Felt great. If I experience any regrets, I promise to update this post.
Google Docs launched in June, 2006 and Google Drive didn’t come along until April of 2012. (I’ve always been a little fuzzy about the Docs and Drive) I’ve found docs going back to 2010 and I put everything in Google Drive. Today stumbled on a feature I hadn’t seen before.
If you put sub-heads in a Google Doc, you can scroll to those headings with the little scroll button in the iOS app. Just pull the little button to the left. Very handy on a long document.
It is fashionable of late to bash Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon et al. There’s plenty to complain about I suppose (and I’ve done my share) but after the fire has been peed on and the dogs have been summoned, I really like Apple, Google and Amazon (I’ve never used Facebook). I like them a lot. Do I like everything they do? Of course not.
But this post is about Google Calendar. I’ve been using it for years. Anything of importance, anything I want to find later… goes into Google Calendar. Case in point: I’m in the process of switching health insurance companies and today I got a call from a representative of the new company, checking on one of the drugs I take. He also asked about a drug I didn’t recognize and said it was a one-time script on February 4, 2014. I had Google Calendar open so I hit the “G” key and typed in that date.
That was the day I hit some black ice and slid off the highway, getting just banged up enough that Barb insisted I get checked out at the ER. They gave me a muscle relaxant as I recall. Here’s a screenshot of that entry.
Note the link to my blog post on the event as well as links to PDF scans of the towing receipt; a summary from the ER visit; and a couple of insurance documents. Four years ago and I had it all from a 5 second search.
Is Google doing something with all of my data? I assume so. But I never see ads an they don’t charge me a dime. I call that a good deal.
I loved the bare bones simplicity of Google Talk (Gchat?) as it appeared the sidebar of Gmail. Don’t recall why I turned it off. Seeing stories today that Google forcing the switch from Talk to Hangouts. I preferred the spartan UI of Talk but like Hangouts well enough for this.
I only use it with a handful of online buddies who don’t have an iOS device. 90% of my IM’ing happens Messages on my iPhone. But I’ve added Hangouts to the Gmail sidebar and will leave it for a bit.
Maybe. This is the only way I could come up with. I have the Google Drive app on my MacBook. It syncs with my account in the cloud so anytime I add a file either place, within a few seconds it’s in both. When I open the app on my MacBook I see fields across the top just as I do in Finder (it might be finder). File name, Date modified, etc. I just added “Date created” and then sorted by that field (newest to oldest). Then I opened each folder, one at a time, and looked for the older file in that folder.
Assuming I’m not overlooking something, the oldest doc I have is from April of 2010. Google Drive launched in February 2007. This would mean I didn’t use Google for the first few years. Can’t imagine why but that’s possible.
I’ve been making a lot of screencasts lately. (Sort of like the guy with a new table saw can’t stop cutting up 2x4s and sheets of plywood) I’ve done a bunch for a friend with a new Chromebook, but this one is just me cutting up 2x4s. It runs 15 minutes which is too long for a screencasts but once I realized nobody was going to watch this anyway I figured, why not? My imaginary audience is made up of people who insist Google+ is a dying ghost town.
CORRECTION: I was wrong in saying the “All” circle was posts from everyone using Google+. It is everyone in any of your circles.
Google has a million little shortcuts like this but I’m damned if I can remember to use them. Key in “my reminders” in the search box and Google pops ’em up.
“Google’s My Activity is a new tool that will show you everything from the Netflix programs and YouTube videos you’ve watched to sites you’ve visited, the things you’ve searched for, as well as the Google products you have used. The tool’s detailed results will show you your search terms, the times and frequency you visited web sites, as well as what device and browser you used for the activities.”
My first thought was, “This is pretty cool.” My second was, “Why is Google doing this?” It really drives home just how much Google knows about what we do online. I jumped back to look at what I was up to on July 1, 2014. It’s all there. This goes waaay beyond browser history. Check this out and tell me what you think.