Google

Here are some Google products I use and that I would strongly recommend!

* Google Search: obviously

* Gmail: I have tested more than 40 different free web-based email services, and while I found that fastmail.fm was better than all the rest, Gmail far surpasses even the latter!

* Picasa: an excellent picture editor I used to keep the visual records of my life organized. User-friendly, posts albums to the internet, etc.

* Google Reader: my trick to keeping up with all my friends' weblos! I can read all their new entries just as I would read an email, plus I can take it offline!

* Google Earth: The best way to explore the Earth. The number of features recently added to Shanghai is great - go visit my current home!

* Google Talk: my favorite instant messaging service

* Google Documents: I've used this at work to coordinate student lists with the English teachers team. You can put text documents, spreadsheets, etc. online, and people you invite can edit it.

* Google Calendar: There a Chinese holidays calendar, my work calendar, my activities calendar, my theatre group's calendar, all of which can be turned on or off for ease of reference and quick browsing.

* Google Sketch-Up: a 3D modeling software I'm using to design the interior of the condo we recently bought. I've put up all the walls, doors, balcony, and have started to put in some furniture.

* Google Sets: works like a search engine - you put in a few words and it creates a longer list. I used once, for instance, when trying to buy healthy, good quality shoes. I knew the names of a few good brands, plugged them in, and Google Sets expanded the list so I could look up others on the web. I used it once for teaching English. My theme was the ranch, so I put some ranch-related words, and it gave me a bunch more!

* Hello: only used it a couple of times, but really fun - you can use it to have a dialog exchange of photos with a friend.

Yay! Google updater is cool too, and I used Google Desktop for a while, but it slowed down my computer too much. When we get a new one in a couple years I might use it again.