Learning New Things Daily

I started tonight's assignment by reviewing the details and how to's of Gmail.  I really expected to be shocked at what I didn't know how to do.  Surprisingly enough, I found that throughout my years making mistakes and not getting my email to do what I wanted it to do, I had figured out how most of Gmail worked.  One new and interesting find was the search feature that Gmail offers.  I can't tell you how many times I've said,  "I know I received that email." The search feature gives a much easier way of finding the "lost" email by just typing the title into the search box.  I know I will be using this feature in the future.  I also love the amount of storage capacity that Gmail offers.  Having a young child and not having all of my family in the same city, I enjoy sending pictures of all the fun things my daughter does to our extended family.  With Gmail, I can send multiple pictures within one email instead having to send multiple emails with one or two pictures.

Next, I explored Google Calendar.  Since college I have despised carrying a calendar! Somewhere between my over-organized college days of always having my calendar in tow to my first job out of college days where I wasn't allowed to take my calendar out of the office for security reasons, I came to despise feeling attached and tied down by a few sheets of paper.  Silly, I know but it is a freeing feeling.  Its almost like the feeling I get when I accidentally leave my cell phone sitting on the counter.  Freedom!  Even with all my crazy feelings about life with a calendar, I did find Google's Calendar intriguing.  Being able to sync a calendar to my cell phone would be nice because then I wouldn't have multiple items to carry around with me, especially with the addition of a diaper bag in the near future.  I also liked the fact that if I happened to go somewhere that was offline, I could still get the read-only version of my calendar.  This feature seemed nice since when I did enjoy carrying my calendar I was addicted to having it with me.  I really felt uncomfortable without it.  I'm starting to think I was way too busy in college! :)

Finally, I explored iGoogle.  I really had no interest in iGoogle before tonight mainly because I didn't know what it did.  I found a new love! A personal webpage with only the topics I enjoy.  Of course, I would always include a sports section so I can keep up with all my husband's sports talk.  It reminds a lot of the homepage I had at home when I was a Comcast subscriber, only their homepage was preselected and I wasn't able to select my preference of topic.

All in all, tonight's  TECH was very educational!