iGoogle

Well, idon'tGoogle more to the point. I like Google for searching and the setup of iGoogle pages is indeed marvellous to behold, but I don't feel a need for another orphaned page out there, let alone another email address (to add to my work, home and Yahoo accounts). If I didn't already have a site or two I'm happy with, complete with gadgets, I'd be all over this, but I don't feel a need. Do I therefore fail this task?

Google Docs and Google Books

Isn't Google Docs just a prettied up FTP site on which to park your stuff? That's useful for collaborative purposes, but I'm not sure I'd want to rely on something like this for accessing Files (rather than a USB stick, for example). Using the Internet to emulate a Desktop seems somehow a bit wasteful to me :).

Google Books is another useful tool, but I think librarians are well ahead in this area. Among other searches, I put in "Elisabeth MacIntyre" (my favourite obscure Australian children's books author/illustrator) and retrieved a nice, but far from comprehensive, list of results. Still, it did beat LibraryThing on this one, so it's certainly worth considering.

Putting in an individual title - my example was "Dodo: a brief history" - was very effective, retrieving a fine summary, with lots of places to go next.

Still, the real point is the fulltext, available or soon to be available, this way...

Google Maps - The World Just Gets Smaller

It's been a while - I hadn't intended to leave it this long. Actually, I have been looking at some of these things, but didn't get around to Blogging about it.

Late last year I had a look in Google maps, and naturally had to try to find my place - not an easy task in any case - there it is in that yellow rectangle.

It was a good chance to check out Madagascar and Tasmania as well - fascinating!