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Google Products You Forgot All About 95

Posted by Zonk from the hiding-in-plain-sight dept.
Googling Yourself writes "Lifehacker has an interesting blog post on the 'Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About' that includes stalwarts like Google Trends and Google Alerts and a few others that may not be quite so familiar like Google Personals, Google's WYSIWYG web site creation tool, and Flight Simulator for Google Earth."
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Google Products You Forgot All About More

Google Products You Forgot All About

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  • No replies? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Coldness ( 829686 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:34AM (#21863318)
    Guess everyone's busy trying out the "new" flight simulator!
    • That's what took me so long to get to the comments, but I can't get the damn landing gear up with my joystick.
      • I spent all day playing it before checking the comments, I can't stand flying using the direction keys. The mouse is smooth though.

  • Google Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:35AM (#21863326)
    The best is called Google Google. It's by Google. It's a search engine, which searches Google, to find all the various products and services which have been released as beta (of course, Google Google is still in beta).

  • Google personals is not Google Personals (Score:3, Informative)

    by Paktu ( 1103861 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:42AM (#21863354)
    Google "Personals" isn't really Google Personals, it's just a feature of Google Base that links to personals on outside websites
  • This article is over two months old. I read it in November. Geez. Just because it's New Years eve, we can put any top 10 list from the year on?

  • google SMS 466453 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lehk228 ( 705449 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:47AM (#21863382) Journal
    best is google SMS. it gives you many smart phone / web phone like features on any SMS capable phone text queries such as "weather [zip code]" "pizza [zipcode]" "define catemite" "price someBrand someModel ionizer filter replacement" (yes i used that one in a thrift store once to see if the ionizer they were selling for $5 still had filters available and for a reasonable price, turns out the filters only run $12 so i got the ionizer) to 466453 (google)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by peipas ( 809350 )
      It's in my phonebook. You can just dial 46645.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )
      I use Google-SMS. It's cheaper than paying for web access on my cell phone.

      BTW, it's 46645, you don't need the 3.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
        i used 46645 for a long time, for a few days that one went out and it worked with 466453, so i never bothered to go back and see if 46645 was back on.
    • It would only feel right if I could type my messages in with my number keypad...
    • Yep, Google SMS rocks, except when it decides to be obtuse. me: 123 Main St. City ST to 987 Elm St. City ST GSMS: Did you mean "123 MAIN ST. City ST?" Uh, yeah, that's what I meant, which is why I typed it.

  • Didn't forget. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:48AM (#21863390) Journal
    Actually I didn't forget any of those. Instead:
    * I didn't know about 5 of them.
    * I haven't needed to use 4 of them.
    * I've stopped using the one I did need and know about (Notebook) due to Google's habit of changing their functionality which can infringe on someone's privacy that they didn't want.

    I doubt very many people thought those were fantastic features, and then simply forgot about them.

    • Re:Google alert ... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by benji fr ( 632243 )
      I guess the one that may be very useful (at least for me) is Google Alert ...
      Remember : you just type a web search phrase and Google send you an Email each time there is something new on the web for this research.
      Yes, it doesn't really work in realtime as we may want to, but it's still a killer feature for the web imho.
      And other "forgotten" apps are quite crappy. I hope Google will still develop Google Alerts : it deserve it.
    • I spend an unfortunate amount of time in VBScript land, and find it amusing that the main language I actually need to search for info on isn't in Google CodeSearch.
      (No, I don't want VB, and no they're not the same thing, though they are annoyingly close)

  • Code Search (Score:2, Informative)

    by katterjohn ( 726348 )
    I certainly didn't forget about this. This and Koders are very handy!

  • GoogleFight (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by 10e6Steve ( 545457 )
    I liked GoogleFight [googlefight.com].

  • Driving Simulator (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dze ( 89612 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:57AM (#21863434) Homepage
    Google should really do a driving simulator based on Google Earth, similar to the flight simulator. You could drive around any city virtually, which would be pretty useful if you wanted to learn the streets of a city you were visiting. I'm sure there are a ton of other possibilities too, which I'll refrain from spelling out in detail since I've played a few too many hours of Grand Theft Auto.
    • Yes they should. And then I'd be rich because I registered a similar project on sourceforge three years ago: https://sourceforge.net/projects/impressionante/ [sourceforge.net]


      Not that I ever wrote a line of code, obviously ;)

      That would be an awesome idea, anyway, especially using the data collected for the 3D cities.
      • I hope you filed a patent for it. You don't need to actually have invented anything or made anything, just patent any idea that comes into your head and litigate your way to wealth, fame and fortune!

    • Yes that could be useful, even while you're actually driving through the real city. Stuck in a traffic jam and want to find an alternate route? Have a passenger "drive" onto that side road to see where it takes you. Looking for a place to eat in an unfamiliar city? Each passenger can "drive" separate ways to find something. Well yes, then there's the whole 'GTA' aspect of it too. :-)
    • You want a driving simulator for google earth? Will this suffice? http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/ [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) *
      I'm sure there are a ton of other possibilities too, which I'll refrain from spelling out in detail since I've played a few too many hours of Grand Theft Auto.

      What, like beating up virtual hookers, and having Google look up the amount of money hookers in that area are likely to be carrying?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Don't know if they thought it was not forgotten about but Picasa is the best photo organizer I've found and it's free.
  • Google don't forget you, you have no right !
  • this one will open your mind:

    http://tools.google.com/gapminder/ [google.com]

  • Sketchup! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @05:14AM (#21863956)
    It's something they bought, but my God is it easy to model things in 3D once you learn the tools.

    Seriously, Apple should have bought it first and called it iCAD. It's *that* fricken sweet.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by badzilla ( 50355 )
      The world demographics demo is interesting but how do you use the tool for your own stuff?

      "In the basic tutorial you learn how to use Gapminder World with preset data. In this section you will learn how you can use the tool itself for your own data. [...] The advanced features are currently being developed. The tutorial will be added as soon as the features are ready."

      I can't figure out how to put in my own data in place of all those bubbles about the population of Albania.
      • I just use it as a modeler for my 3D art, which means I had to buy the Pro version to export to formats that Bryce and Vue can read.

        It pissed me off at first, but then i realized it was a pretty clever way to divide the audience. People who just want to add things to Google Earth get to use it for free. People who want to use it as an actual modeler for other things pay the price that it cost anyway before Google bought it out.
    • I have a friend who's an architect and he uses Sketchup all the time to throw together quick models/diagrams for clients. Of course, he still uses AutoCAD for the actual plans and everything, but he swears by Sketchup for quick 'n dirty stuff.
    • Agreed. I do lots of home improvement and use Sketchup for planning everything. Easy to use, even for someone who's never done any 3D modeling.
  • Google is pretty cool, and they have a lot of smart people working there. They are churning out a lot of stuff and it's pretty chaotic. It's like they are using a sort of an open source model where lots of people are throwing stuff at the board to see what sticks. In most companies, there is an orchestrated attempt to strive for a goal. That's not apparent at Google. It will be interesting to see if Google can grow their business from all these little gadgets or if it just turns out to be a big waste of

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gmuslera ( 3436 )
      They are not "chaotic" stuff, all or at least most share the same general direction, under the surface the goal is the main one of google, to do a better search, giving tools around it or helping people to move content to a better (? at least they control it) searchable environment. And maybe more important, there are some increasing interaction between the "chaotic" google products. Things that maybe are less used now may evolve into something more integrated with the rest in a future.

  • Try Google earth with a Space Mouse.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Monday December 31, 2007 @08:16AM (#21864654) Homepage
    You haven't lived 'til you've done google earth with a Space Mouse (or whatever they're called these days - I've got one of those old fashioned ones).

  • This wasn't even news 2 months ago when it was originally published.
  • Now someone just needs to convince Google to publish the API for the flight simulator so that mod authors can go in and add support for entirely different types of aircraft. Sopwith Camels, P-51 Mustangs, Protoss carriers, Colonial Vipers, Sovereign class starships and Firefly class transports.

    Because you *KNOW* it would happen.
  • Google's newly acquired phone service, GrandCentral.com [grandcentral.com], was mentioned in the comments. I had not heard of it, but it sounds pretty amazing. It certainly explains Google Android and their bid for RF spectrum!
  • If you Google Google, you'll break the Internet.
  • I have it set for my name, my company's name, and few friends.
  • I think most people would agree with me that most of Google's apps were discovered via "tribal knowledge". That's how I discovered Google to at the start. To me, until recently, I never heard of most of the applications Google offered. This is one the areas that I think Google really dropped the ball. Maybe this "word of mouth" tradition is what they really want. Who knows. If that is Google's intention, it's good to see that it has backfired on them somewhat.
  • Seeing as I get so much spam on the subject ... I thought I'd see how effective the spam is being at generating searches. This spam search [google.com] returns the result:

    Your terms - penis extension,breast enhancement - do not have enough volume to show graphs.

    But that's exactly the problem - I don't have enough volume in my pests or breanis to satisfy my horde of lovers and wanabees.

    We demand more and better spam!

    See - the Nigerians [google.com] are working!

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