by Michael Skinner

Created on: July 18, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2009

You can live your whole online life through Google if you wished. There are that many Google desk top tools you can use. Some of the tools are easier to use if you actually sign up for a Google account.

Once you login to Google you can set a theme for your page. Some available themes are Backyard Birds, Mountains, Great Landscapes, Black and White Photography, Travels to the Edge, California Wild, Frozen, Views of Yosemite, Under the Sea, Birds of Prey, Threatened Ecosystems, Songbirds, Ocean Blue, Man & Nature, Colorful Creatures, Wildfire on the Edge, Diversity of Life, Color, and Earthscapes.

Now that you have a colorful background for your searching, perhaps you should get blogging. In the upper right hand corner click on the hyperlink that says My Account. Now you see a whole lot of Google products that you can use. In the center of the screen click on the one that says Blogger. From the Blogger screen you can create a profile, create a blog, view a blog or create a new blog posting.

In the upper right hand corner find the My Account hyperlink and click on it again. Let's say you want to manage your collection of photographs of edible fungi. Click on Picasa Web Albums. You upload new photographs and images or admire your own. You can share you work with other or explore the works of others.

In the upper right hand corner click on My Account again. One of the most useful things Google has done since the search engine is Gmail. Gmail is said to be able to filter some of your email to see if it come from a genuine sender. This ability is not as extensive as it could be but it is a wonderful idea and it may stem the tide of spam. Go in Gmail mail to send messages and even to do a little chatting with your friends.

Gmail is a convenient place to get to some of your other desk top tools. In the upper left hand corner click on the Calendar hyperlink. From here you can put items in your calendar, create events and tasks and see when the next holiday is coming up. You can share your calendar or send it to a friend.

Click on the Documents hyperlink in the upper left hand corner. If you click on it you can see that you can upload and share documents. You can rename the documents, hide them, move them and delete them. If everyone in your group needs to get at a voluminous document and you want to be able to share it with them, this may be the way to go.

If you look in the upper left hand corner again, click on the more hyperlink to review more what you can do with Google. You can use Google to get to videos, news, street and highway maps, to go shopping online, to find and join like interest groups, to list your own Great American Novel or read someone else's. You can search for scholarly tomes or even use Google to check out your stock portfolio. There are even more things you can do with Google but that's enough for now.

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