As a full-time web worker, I sometimes forget that not everyone geeks out over the latest internet productivity tools.
For instance, many of my non-geek friends don’t really get the point of feed readers, no matter how often I extoll the virtues of RSS. “Rather than checking CNN.com fives times a day,” I say, “Wouldn’t you rather have all the top stories delivered directly to your reader? You’ll never miss an update!” (It turns out no, they wouldn’t. Too much thinking involved. But you should still subscribe to the Guppie Life’s feed, of course!)
The one site I cannot live without is iGoogle, Google’s customizable homepage. I’ve set up mine so that all of my essential web tasks are available with a flick of the mouse:
- gCal for scheduling work and personal appointments and deadlines
- Gmail for monitoring personal email (and also for when my coworkers confuse my work email address with my personal address)
- a Weather forecast widget
- Google Reader for monitoring industry news and commentary (and a few personal blogs)
- a Bookmarks widget that stores sites I’d like to be able to access from anywhere in the world
- Google Docs for collaborating on documents and spreadsheets in real-time with coworkers
- a Sticky Note widget that serves as a To-Do list and a repository for brief reminders
- Google Maps for getting around
What’s the point of all this? Couldn’t I just get email through Outlook/Thunderbird/Mail like everyone else? Couldn’t I just use iCal for my itinerary? And use Word and Excel for creating documents and spreadsheets?
It’s true, everything I have on my iGoogle homepage can be replicated using standard-issue software.
One advantage is that consolidating all of these common tasks in one place is an enormous time saver.
But the real beauty of iGoogle (and similar services) is in its accessibility. Anywhere I have an internet connection, I’ve got email, news, weather, calendar, notes, and more— all in one place. No more remembering 20 different URLs, user names and passwords. It’s the ultimate one-stop shop, and it’s called living in the cloud.
As I see it, there are two downsides to cloud-services such as iGoogle. For one, you’re entrusting some huge, faceless corporation with all of your personal data. Scary.
Also, you become way more valuable to identity thieves when you store your entire life under a single internet account. Could you even imagine what a person with malicious intentions could do to with access to your email and schedule? Even scarier.
Of course, there are a lot of other ways to live in the cloud. You’re doing it if you use Facebook to store your digital photo albums, for instance.
For me, the gains in my personal productivity are worth the risk. But what about you? Do you live in the cloud, too?
