What is Google Drive?

If you haven't heard of Google Drive before it's an office suite and cloud storage service in one. It comes with unlimited Google Docs file storage + 5GB of free cloud storage for other files to share with friends or workmates.

You can edit online, edit offline, do some of your work on your mobile or tablet. It doesn't matter because with Google Drive's sync and a robust revisions system all edits are saved, even when offline. Google will even automatically convert your uploads into a compatible Google Docs format for you, if you want, so you save even more space.

There's hundreds of ways to use Google Drive: You could use it just to share family pictures and videos with relatives or collaborate with colleagues.

Maybe you just need a way to access your own documents from different locations or back-up your files. The answer is Google Drive.

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Apple Buys Their Very Own Map Company

Back in July of 2009, Apple quietly bought the services of Placebase.  If you don’t know what Placebase is, it’s a mapping service company like Google Maps.  In the near future, if not already, you might noticed Google Maps taken off of the iPhone and replaced with Placebase.  Apple is trying to get rid of all things to do with Google from what I have read.  They are planning on making their own maps.  This is made clear because they bought Placebase!  Peace out, Google!

Placebase is a much more customizable service than Google Maps.  You are able to customize tons of layers and you have multiple kinds of data sets onto maps.

If Apple’s got a new Maps Application coming that’s totally un-Googley, does that mean we can finally get a real Latitude App, since it won’t’ confuse us anymore?  Even if Google’s tiles stick around in the iPhone Maps Application for a while, Apple’s definitely doing something with their new toy!

Expanding Google Voice

Recently, there has been quite about of news coverage concerning Google Voice. Personally, I have been very interested in the whole concept of Google Voice. While I do not have an account, I have thought of a feature I would love to see incorporated into the service.

I know that one of the biggest features of Google Voice is the ability to tie multiple phones, with multiple numbers to your one Google Voice number, but my question is... why stop at phones?

It's clear that Google is really trying to innovate in the mobile space as of late, but the fact remains, Google's largest presence remains on our computers. It is, and will remain to be, their bread and butter. That is why I would like to see Google Voice move into the PC. More specifically, Google Voice integrated into Google talk. This would work much like Skype's call out feature, however, if it is done right... Google could easily have the advantage over Skype.

Imagine that you are sitting in front of your computer, and you get a phone call.... your computer would be tied to the rest of your phones, and with one click of a button, you'd be able to accept the call, have a conversation, (handsfree, using the built in microphones that are included with the majority of computers) and continue your work at the computer.

The real perk here would be the the fact that, unlike skype, it wouldn't cost you extra. Because Google Voice is tied to your main mobile number, the service could easily act as another phone, and deduct from your mobile minutes from your service provider.

I am not sure if this is a feature that has been discussed within Google, or elsewhere, but it is certainly one feature I could see myself utilizing a great deal.

Google Latitude For iPhone Released

Google latitude has been released for the iPhone.

For those who are unaware, Google Latitude is a location service that uses your cell phones GPS and WiFi signals to learn your location, with other Latitude users. (Presumably friends and family). One of Latitude's biggest features is the ability to view the locations of your Latitude contacts, from your computer, within iGoogle. This may be useful for a parent who is at work, and would like to check in and see where their child is. Of course, Google has built in a number of privacy settings that you can customize to your liking.

The iPhone version of the application does vary slightly from that on other phones. According to Google. Apple requested that the App be web based, and not be a localized application... to avoid confusion over the built in Maps application on the iPhone which google also powers.

If you are interested in learning more about Google Latitude you can visit http://www.google.com/latitude

Google Apps for Your Domain

I've been using the internet since 1995, and since then have gone through 20 or more different e-mail addresses. I've had one's provided for me in school, ISP addresses, and of course have used web based versions like Yahoo!, Hotmail, GMail and most recently MobileMe. Now maybe this is because I have OCD (not officially, but I'm sure I do) but I've never ever been happy with any of them. They've annoyed me in many different ways, ISP emails have included very long domain's (@warp.nfld.net & @nf.sympatico.ca), I've never trusted emails provided by schools to be secure and private, and usually my main complaint with web based email is that I can never get the username I want, I'm usually stuck with adding random numbers to the end of my name.

Up until 2008, GMail was the best I had ever found. It's spam filter was far superior than anything I had ever used, it's interface and features was much, much better than what I had experienced with Hotmail or Yahoo!, plus ads, which are always going to be present with anything free on the internet wasn't in your face, it is artfully put in a place where it doesn't get in the way of using it. I should have been happy, right? But I wasn't, as I mentioned earlier I couldn't find the username I wanted. Steven Davis is a rather popular name, so I was forced to add numbers at the end. This bothered me far more than it should have, given the awesome feature-set GMail has.

Then along came Apple's MobileMe. I had an iPhone & the though of true pushed email intrigued me. Plus, since it was a new service & it cost $100/year the name I wanted was available, without numbers! Beyond the email it also allowed me to back-up application data of various apps on my iPhone, which was very important to me. I didn't have a Mac at the time, so syncing to desktop versions of apps like OmniFocus (GTD, todo list app) wasn't possible. I had extra cash last summer, and given all of these features and the pretty looking online interface I made the purchase. I finally got what I wanted, I definitely should be happy now... right? Not bloody likely.

I missed GMail, plus MobileMe tends to only work when it wants to, it's much improved from the early days but it still has it's issues. I don't really know how to put this other than saying MobileMe lacks pretty much all the "geeky" features that everyone loves with GMail.

Then a few weeks ago, the sky opened and the lord spoke to me. Not really. It was just an old archived blog entry at lifehacker.com about Google Apps for Your Domain. Basically it allows you to add Google provided applications like GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs to your domain, plus you don't even need a hosting plan for a website, you just need to purchase a domain. At this point I don't really need a web hosting plan, I'd like one, but right now I just don't have the extra cash for it, since I'm in school. So i picked up a domain at GoDaddy.com for around $15/year signed up for Google's service, went through the relatively simple set-up process and it was done. It took less then a half hour of actual work, and now I have a GMail email but using my domain. For example: samplemail@stevend.ca .

So now I've got everything I wanted. The domain is short, all the GMail features, and any user name I want. It's amazing. And now that Google is offering full exchange support for contacts & calendars it's gotten even better. I suspect email exchange is coming soon, but for now IMAP on my iPhone is perfectly fine! I'd recommend this to anyone and everyone! Google's services is compeltly free (there is a pro version, but I have no need for that), so all it's going to cost you is the cost of a domain!

Have fun trying this stuff out! I'd aslo like to thank David for giving me the opportunity to write on his social blog! If you're interested in reading more of my stuff or following me on twitter I can be found here:

http://stevend.ca

http://twitter.com/stevendavis