Well as all of you regular readers know I am a Google fan.  Also, I haven’t written a column just about Google for a while, so here we go.

Now before I start talking another Google item I want to mention something that I am not such a fan of; internet browser toolbars.  Yes, they make about a zillion of them and they all have things that they do well.  The thing I don’t like about them is that they take up more screen “real estate”.  If you have a notebook or netbook computer this extra space can make a big deal in reading a long article and having to scroll more.  Sometimes another quarter inch used for a toolbar at the top of the screen could limit your ability to see an entire photograph.

For the past several weeks I have been experimenting with the Google Toolbar.  I have to announce that I have now come over to the dark side of using up screen real estate.  In my opinion, I think this is worth the space that it takes up, even on my 8.9 inch netbook.

Before I get into Google’s toolbar I thought I would let you know of a few others.  There are Alexa, AOL, Ask, Compete, Dictionary.com, Dogpile, eBay, MSN, Yahoo and on and on for about forever (search for others).  There is also one that does a fair job of combining many of the above and more.  An all-in-one toolbar at Groowe.com; however, it lacks a lot of the details that the others provide.

Google’s toolbar offers the standard search criteria for the web, images, videos, etc.  However, it also has your Google Documents, Calendar and many more.  Google allows you to add more “buttons”.  Right click on the Google toolbar and choose, “Get more buttons” and you will see a remarkable amount of additional items (buttons) to add to your toolbar.  I added Facebook and IMDB buttons to my toolbar.

It comes with a Bookmarks button which can be very valuable.  It makes it so any website you add to this button will be available on any computer you log into.  By using bookmarks you always have your favorite sites with you.  I know there are other ways to perform this task but this is really convenient.

The list goes on so take a look at all the features while you are on the site.  I am sure you will find a feature of interest to you…actually hundreds.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 4:17 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.