Happy Birthday Google!

You must have heard and read about the masseuse who turned rich on Google shares. As Google celebrated its 10th birthday I was thinking of the tools and sites I have been using and contributing to the success of the company and well the other masseuses working there :). Here is a list…

Google
When Yogesh introduced me to the internet, apart from Yahoo’s mail and a few porn sites, Google was one of the first sites he had shown me. “Type in a word and hit Enter, you will get all the information”, he had said and Google crawlers have kept his word true till date. Long back I had noted down in a post that I hate Google when someone searches for Sudeep Sharma and I am not the first one to be linked. When my girl friend’s cousins came to know about our engagement plans the first thing they did was to google me out to see my photo and landed here. Now her family knows about this blog where as mine doesn’t, great isn’t it? Don’t be surprised if you find censored posts on this space now on :D

Blogger & Blogspot
If Suraj had not shown me his blog three years back, then I doubt I would have used these servers and I wouldn’t have been typing this and you would have been reading something more entertaining somewhere else :). Even though Blogspot is blocked by the System guys I am lucky that I can access Blogger to keep posting.

Reader
My access to the blog world for staying updated with all the nice, very nice, not-so-nice posts everyone writes on their blogs. I have some complaints regarding Reader but I won’t turn my post into a jeremiad. If you are a Reader user, then have you got directed to a feed which you hadn’t subscribed to? Well I got one such feed, when I had entered a changed url of a fellow blogger who had moved to different url; and unfortunately it was of a teenage girl who was fed up with something/someone and was contemplating either running away or committing suicide. Soon that blog turned into another language (probably Spanish) blog and I don’t know what happened with that girl, if she was real. I hate bloggers who don’t set their blog feed to the full :-.

Gmail
Earlier I hated the fact to compulsory shift to Gmail for Blogger and Orkut login id but when I started using Gmail, I found it to be great. In fact I have stopped using Yahoo and Hotmail since then. The best part of Gmail is the conversation windows (cascading mails).

Orkut
Yesterday’s newspaper carried an article how some companies have started looking at the social networking site profiles of candidates to get an insight of the person’s character which is not seen in the resume. Orkut in the initial days was an addiction; with no messengers allowed at the work place it was the only source of free networking and reaching out to friends. Now that Orkut is also blocked it has been a year I have logged there but I loved it (and still like it) for many reasons.

Gtalk
Even though this is also blocked, people here find out amazing ways to meander their way across the firewall. I use this rarely but since all the address book contacts are present this is a good way of interacting. Absence of invisible mode (not in the applet of Gmail) is one complaint regarding this.

Picassa Albums
I use my photo blog to share my pics but most of my friends use Picassa to upload their stuff. Thanks to this I came to know that there are many wonderful photographers in my friend circle. And Sean still prefers Photobucket! :D

iGoogle
The live cricket score gadget on iGoogle was the main reason I accessed it. A lot of nice gadgets shows how immensely talented people are coming up with such stuff. Jokes, puzzles, astrology, games, videos, weather etc. all come under one roof. I had subscribed to Babes of Googledex gadget on Google’s recommendation but they have only Angelina Jolie and Jessica Alba’s photos. Not that I don’t like these two but they are ranked way below in my list of hot babes. So later I subscribed to Sports Illustrated Model of the Day and now I rub shoulders or let’s say eyes with hot bodies like Ana Beatriz Barros :). Did someone mention censored posts somewhere in the post? :D

Google Groups
The conversation windows in Gmail are best to be used for group activities. My katta group had a conversation of about 150 mails in one day on a very silly topic.

Then there is Google Analytics for analyzing blog visits but I prefer Sitemeter, when I have time, for having a good laugh at the search words people use to land here. Also had started using Google Docs but for a very very short time. Google’s Language Tools also comes handy to me when I am working on my company projects as I have to deal with 8 foreign languages. When my company’s ex-CTO was with us we used to surf Google Earth and he used to tell a lot of interesting stories about some places he had been to.

Google has launched a project on the 10th birthday, so if you have a great or simple idea, which will change the world, then participate in it. With all the creative juices flowing may God bless you, me, all bloggers and readers, Google and the masseuses working there :)