Thing 29--Google Tools

The first Thing to try here was an alert. I signed up for alerts on a favorite author and a personal copyright item on both Google alerts and Twilerts. I'm still having trouble comprehending just how this will work. I'm not seeing how this feature would be useful to me at work.


The second thing to try was Google News. I was very impressed to see local newspapers listed when I personalized to add local news. Wow, the Redwood Gazette... I also rearranged the layout. I don't seem to be able to remove the Top Stories section. I'd rather have my customized feeds at the top that I set up for local and Minnesota news. No, it won't let me drag anything above it. Anyone know how to get around the Top Stories?

I then tried searching the News Archive. It said that it had stories back to the 1800s, so I thought of grasshopper plagues and searched for the word "grasshopper". I was a little confused at first, but it seems to give you a summary of what the article contains and then you can also view the actual article. I went on to search for "immigration to Minnesota" and found that you could narrow down your search years, using this feature I was able find some neat articles from the 1800s about Minnesota Immigration. I can see using this a lot for research and sharing this with others.

Moving on to Google Search Wiki. I don't care for it either, moving hits and adding comments don't help me. They get in the way and waste my time. I like Google just as it is and don't find these features useful.

And moving on to Google Web History. I don't see the benefits of this either. If I find a link that I like, I bookmark it. I don't need to save my search. This is creepy.

I have several Gmail accounts and I have them set up to forward into my mail account. It works brilliantly. I edit a newsletter and have a seperate account for that, I have my photography gmail account, I'm on a fantasy nascar team, the race I organize, etc, I have all those accounts set to forward to my main account. I really like it. I also like the history available through your Gmail account. It can tell you if you've already replied to a message or not.

I have a link to my calendar on my iGoogle page. It's pretty handy. A co-worker manages our library calendar on our website with the Google calendar feature.

I've been looking at the Google site information and wondering if it would work for my race. It would be nice to send a link to city hall to post, and then I could still make changes and not have to ask for their help in making changes to the website if I notice a mistake in the information. I will play with it to see if it will work for me.



There were painfully too many items in this Thing. Took me weeks to get through.