Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Moving Online - GMail - the final frontier

I work from too many computers to be able to successfully keep my email address books on all of them up-to-date. I add an address on this one, then delete an address on another one. Before long, I have several different (and all incomplete) address book.

I tried Plaxo, but could never get it to synchronize.

So, it's time for a Kevin Gamble type experiment. I'm going to try using Google Mail as my only mail client. I've imported my address books and have all of my mail accounts being forwarded to my GMail account. I've been using GMail as a storage place for all of my Sent mail for several months now (BCC all messages to that account and set up a filter to automatically archive messages from my other accounts). I've resisted using GMail as my primary because I felt it just lacked the features I 'needed' in order to work efficiently. But now my frustration from working from different computers has just gotten the best of me - time to make a drastic change in the way I work.

It will be an interesting experiment. I'll let you know how it comes out.

A couple months ago, I stopped saving files to my hard drive (and using the flash memory stick only for backups) and started using Google Docs almost exclusively for my word processing and spreadsheets. There have only been a few features that I've missed. Otherwise, I've been VERY happy with that experiment. I even used ZoHo for creating a presentation.

I have also stopped (mostly) using my browser's bookmarks in favor of del.icio.us and have been THRILLED with that move.

My pictures are going either into my Facebook account or into Flickr.

I'm storing my presentations on Slideshare.

What's left?

Would you like to join me in this experiment? What are you liking or missing?

4 comments:

James E. Robinson, III said...

flickr is very limited unless you "go Pro". Picasa is not as limited at first, but you only get a Gig free.

I think you're on the right track with your experiment...

Google owns me. :)

Jonathan Davis said...

You didn't mention how you are handling your calendar needs. Any plans for that?

John Dorner said...

I am required (or at least strongly encouraged) to use the organization's Oracle calendar. So, I use that.

However, I also use Google Calendar and try to keep the two synchronized as much as possible. I really like the ability of the Google Calendar to create multiple calendars that can be shared with anyone or just specific people. It allows me to separate different type activities. We maintain my Boy Scout troop's calendar and include it on the troop web page - www.troop701.org and I keep my Fire Dept. activities separate. Then I have one for personal, one for my trainings and one for other work related events.


The only thing I haven't been able to figure out how to do with Google is to synch it with my Palm Tungsten E2. If I could figure that out, I would just keep my work life on Oracle for the organization and Google would become my primary calendar.

Floyd Davenport said...

Rebel...