How to put lesser known Google
services to good use, including Schemer, Fonts, Sky, Keep, Dart, NGrams,
Think insights, Trends, People Finder and more
Plan your free time with Schemer:
Everyone plans, plots, and schemes. Google’s Schemer is like having
a social networking website solely for the sake of your own personal
plans and schemes. It’s the ‘Facebook events’ of websites. A place where
one can make plans to Goa and call a mixed group of friends (and, if
you’re feeling socially experimental, then maybe a bunch of complete
strangers that you couldn’t possibly know anything about). The app could
use some refining and possibly a touch of publicity but it has
potential for harebrained plans and arranging cultural events and
rallies, maybe even a flash mob or two (an authentic flash mob. Not the
planned stuff that happens in malls and public places in India).
Admittedly, the range of this app is somewhat limited for our country,
but there is a scope for improvement, and one should keep an eye for any
kind of update.
You can try out schemer for yourself at the official website: http://www.schemer.com/
Google’s Schemer
Jazz up your text with Google Fonts:
Google Fonts (which was previously called ‘Google Web Fonts’) is an
open source database of fonts available for both private and commercial
use. The font developers use this as a platform to display their
talent, and you can make your website and professional showreel look a
bit more unique than it would have otherwise.
Check out Google Fonts for yourself at: http://www.google.com/fonts
Look to the Google Sky:
A spin-off of Google Earth, Google Sky goes a few light years
beyond physical experience. Putting together data and extrapolations of
NASA and other space agencies, this software brings stargazing straight
to your computer screen. Not quite like having the Hubble at your
fingertips, but the closest we can get to that. http://www.google.co.in/sky/
Organize your thoughts with Google Keep:
Much like the numerous diary apps on the Apple, WP8 and Google Play
stores, Google Keep is an app to consolidate your daily thoughts and
ideas in one place and store them on the cloud. At first glance, Google
Keep does absolutely nothing different. The only reason one would
suggest this feature to you is the fact that it syncs data with the very
popular Google Drive. This makes it easier for people to sync their
Keep notes with every device they own, making it a virtual storage space
for those inspiring moments where you need to write your thoughts down
for reference, and then can’t remember when you need to because it’s on
your PC (or in the classical way, you wrote it down on the first piece
of paper you found, which vanished a few minutes later. Download the app
from your respective phone app store and find out more about this
feature at: http://dgit.in/googlekeepintro
Code your way to Dart:
Not to be confused with DoubleClick, which used to be called Google
Dart, Dart is Google’s self-developed open-source programming code. Its
initial purpose was, in the words of Mark S. Miller, “ultimately to
replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open
web platform.” It is a class-based, single inheritance, object-oriented
language with C-style syntax. It was designed to be so simple that even
beginner developers could use it.
The code is available for people online at: http://www.dartlang.org/
Isntances of Asimov, Clarke, Sagan, Lucas appearing over time
Expand your research with NGrams:
Google’s Ngram Viewer is a handy little tool. It lets you search
millions of books over half a millennium for keywords. This comes in
handy when you’re trying to find trends over a period of time. The Ngram
Viewer also has advanced options to make this more effective. This
helps expand your search if you’re looking for keywords that are
specific parts of speech or if you want to combine keywords.
For example, here’s the graph for Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and George Lucas in fiction: http://dgit.in/sci-fivisionaries
Multilingua Franca avec Google Chat Bots:
Google Translate’s chat bots are an interesting feature for Google
talk. If you tend to chat with people of a certain nationality very
often, it makes typing in their language much easier. Adding a chat bot
is quite easy:
Check the bot username from the list of available chat bots here: http://dgit.in/firangibots
Add them to your GTalk
list with the domain ‘@bot.talk.google.com’ (for example,
the English-French bot would be called ‘en2fr@bot.talk.google.com’)
Type in what you need translated, and the bot will reply with the translated text. Check the image for an example.
Google Chat Bots can be a lot of fun
Manage Your Website and Business:
Webmaster Tools, coupled with Google’s Data Markup Helper and
Places for Business has made website management a skill more easily
available for people. These tools help monitor a site’s health, traffic
and eyeballs.
Google’s Places for Business: Google’s Places for Business is the
LinkedIn of enterprises. It’s a place where you can consolidate all the
information you need to put forward with respect to running your own
business enterprise. It’s a great instrument in the hands of people who
can really use it to its full potential. It’s also good for
entrepreneurs who want a place to meet people and expand their influence
in the right circles. Check it out: http://dgit.in/tntwbms
Trendy and Insightful:
Google Think Insights and Google Trends is very useful for people
who want to study emerging patterns in the behaviour of the masses.
Keeping an eye open on this helps people know more about their
constantly changing target audience.
Google Trends (as the name suggests) tracks the trends of people
online based on searches run and pages which have been more frequently
viewed by people. Try it out: http://www.google.com/trends/
Google Think Insights does the same, but with some more detail. It
gives the user a list of studies conducted, trends and ideas across
industries, platforms as well as audiences in one place. Everything from
high-level visions to deck-ready data points is tracked and laid out.
The website is effective, clean, and easy to use. http://www.google.com/think/
Finding those who are lost:
Google People Finder is Google’s initiative to help people in times
of crisis when families and loved ones are separated from each other.
When there is a major natural crisis, GPF creates a database of
information provided by organizations and people in general in case they
find someone who has been lost in the chaos. This information is
available online for people looking for their loved ones, possibly from
the other side of the globe. Currently GPF has been running databases on
people still missing in Japan as well as the casualties of Typhoon
Yolanda in the Philippines. It’s an admirable effort, and seems to be
quite effective in its own right. It may not always have good news, but
it does offer closure to people who have lost track of their family and
loved ones in crises, one way or the other http://dgit.in/googlepeoplefinder
As mentioned before, Google’s come quite far from the search engine
it used to be. Over time, it has expanded to occupying a more prominent
space in modern culture. It has captured the trust and (almost blind)
faith of people all over. Quite the street cred.
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