10 Reasons Why I Love Google

June 13, 2007 by Jimson Lee

As you may know by reading my bio, I am a coach at our local track club, Metro Athletic Club.

As with any club, group, or organization, we needed ways to collaborate and be more productive with our time, especially when on the road traveling for competitions. And not spend a fortune.

Here are 10 reasons how Google helped our team.

1) Personal Email with Google Apps. This provides our track team with a professional jimson@metroac.net instead of a @gmail, @yahoo or @hotmail address. Since it’s really Gmail, any Gmail user will be familiar with the interface. Plus it has Blackberry support, so I can always stay connected.

2) Web Hosting with Google Apps. Our club www.metroac.net has its presence hosted with Google Web Services. You can use their pre-built templates, or upload your complex HTML files like I did. It allows 100Mb of disk space, and like Google, it has great up-time. No more worrying about server crashes. No more unprofessional URLs like www.geocities.com/mytrackclub. Note that our blog is hosted with Megahosters.

3) Shared Calendar with Google Apps. While Microsoft Outlook can share calendars, it places the views side by side. I prefer a superimposed view and see at a glance everyone’s status. Sometimes we have 2 different track meets on the same day. Great for keeping track of workouts, physio and massage appointments, travel arrangements, picks and drop offs at airports. And holidays!

4) Docs & Spreadsheets with Google Apps. No need to buy Word or Excel. Plus, when traveling at an Internet cafe or collaborating with Coach Hansen. No more sending attachments and losing track (no pun intended) which version is current. Sure, memory sticks are great, but what happens if the Internet cafe doesn’t have Word installed on the computer? Plus, you can save your on-line files to PDF!

5) Start Page with Google Apps. This consolidates all our information in one central place with a single sign on. Email, calendar, documnts and spreadsheets. Plus gadgets like a World clock to keep track of our athletes when overseas. Bookmark our non-RSS favorite track web sites. Plus, of course, the local weather!

6) Google Reader. How the heck do you keep track of the 20 best web sites and blogs? By using bookmarks, and having go back to check if there is fresh content on a daily basis? No! By using RSS feeds from web sites or blogs, Google Reader centralizes all your RSS bookmarks and updates you immediately when new content is posted.

7) Google Analytics. Forget WebTrends! We keep track of our web site & blog stats through one central reporting system. It’s amazing to see who comes to your site, and where they came from (i.e. Track and Field news, Let’s Run.com, IAAF.org, etc). Plus, it emails me reports on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on how I set it up.

8 ) Google Adsense. Why not make a few dollars and advertise relevant ads based on the content of your web site? Even movie theaters show trailers before the main screen. I call them commercials or ads!

9) Google Pack. This is a great collection of software such as Firefox if you don’t like Internet Explorer. If you’ve seen the latest Microroft Vista and its neat gadgets, then you’ll love the Google Desktop to make it look like Vista. Picasa’s Photo Organizer & Photo Screensaver are great, too. After all, we will share our pictures from Osaka and next year’s Olympics in Bejing with our freinds and family!

10) Google Talk. Our Track team can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free anytime, anywhere in the world.

Best of all, there’s no hardware or software to install or maintain.

So, you’re asking how much this costs our club? 4 easy payments of $249.99?

Free. Zero. Goose Egg. Ziltch. Nada. Gratis.

Oh, did I mention it was all free?

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Written by Jimson Lee · Filed Under Coaching, Technology

Comments

16 Responses to “10 Reasons Why I Love Google”

World Healing » Blog Archive » Why I love Google on June 14th, 2007 6:33 pm

[…] Lee, a technology consultant who runs the coaching blog Speedendurance.com just wrote an article on why he loves Google. He neatly poses 10 technical reasons for it. Great article. I like Google for these reasons too; […]
Emanuele on June 15th, 2007 11:01 am

Jimson,

Thanks for this google apps info. This will save me lots of time and effort to establish a web presence for my new business.
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Alphablogs - Blogging services: Research, Editorial, Multimedia » Canada 9-5 - Second edition on September 7th, 2007 5:03 pm

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