Thingy 9: Google Tools

Who needs Big Brother or H.A.L. (from 2001: A Space Odyssey, not dear Mr. Dickens) when you have Google Tools? Truly this is an impressive array of tools--in fact, it's nearly paralyzing. I do respect Google's emphasis on innovation and how they dedicate 20% of their staff time to this.

Most of the Google tools require you to download software to your computer, so I just perused many of them, not being eager to become host to all kind of semi-known, nascent, potentially un-useful programs. The Picasa photo program seems interesting and helpful, particularly in its emphasis upon working with the pics on your hard drive, organizing them, backing them up, etc., and giving you the option to post them on the web, as opposed to Flickr, which is completely web based and thus focused on the social dimension. Of course, I haven't downloaded the Picasa program yet (I think I have commitment issues). I like how it is integrated into one's extant Google account (one less password to remember!).

An aside query: Anybody have any terrific ideas of how to conveniently and securely keep track of the burgeoning user names and passwords that one develops in using various websites? I'm hesitant to just use the same password for everything, lest someone blow my whole life wide open.

Back to the matter at hand: Google Docs does seem useful--sort of like a specialized wiki. Though I again worry about the inability to back up web-based documents, I suppose it has some advantages over just being on my hard drive. I do like the idea of being able to access a set group of documents from any web-connected computer. And as the nifty video shows, it can be very helpful for working on a document collaboratively and avoiding having millions of versions floating around.

To be honest, at this point I think I am dealing with oversaturation of Web 2.0 items; it'll be interesting to let these things percolate a bit and see what I actually end up using in my ongoing life. Provided I have such a thing.