URL:

1. Google Maps: http://maps.google.com
2. Google Books: http://books.google.com/
3. Google Squared: http://google.com/squared
4. Google Sets: http://labs.google.com/sets
5. Google News Timeline: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
6. Google Similar Images: http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/
7. Google Audio Indexing: http://labs.google.com/gaudi

What is Google?

I would hope by now anyone on the internet has at least heard of Google, if not, here’s some history…Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. Google has also developed an open source web browser and a mobile operating system. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of March 31, 2009 (2009 -03-31)[update], the company has 19,786 full-time employees. The company is running millions of servers worldwide, which process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every hour. Google conducts hundreds of millions of search requests every day. (via Wikipedia)

What you may not know about Google

Google is more than just a company trying to organize the world’s information and making it easily searchable.  Google offers a variety of methods of obtaining content on the internet, such as the 7 methods mentioned above.  Furthermore Google also offers a variety of web tools and services such as email clients, advertisement options, web analytics, and ridiculously much more.  Its actually quite remarkable what can be done with Google.  I’m done talking, go play.

Here’s a video on 7 Google search techniques that are really cool:

http://www.tripit.com

What is TripIt?

TripIt.com is a tool for organizing all of your travel.  Just forward over your email confirmations from your airlines and hotel reservations and let TripIt help organize your trips.  You can even set up resturant booking, event ticket purchases and more for your trip.  Then print out an itenrary with all of your trips vitals such as confirmation numbers, dates times, departures, arrivals, maps, phone numbers, and even the weather predictions!  It’s the ultimate tool for travelers.

What you may not know about TripIt

TripIt has a built in social networking system that not only allows you to plan and organize your trips with your friends an colleagues, but it also shares with you which of your friends are going to be traveling to the same location as you.  So now you can call them up and arrange for drinks with them while you’re both traveling to the same location!  You can even see which of your friends are traveling to your home town, so you can see if they have time to meet up with you and catch up over a cup of coffee.

Here’s a quick video on TripIt:

http://www.twitter.com

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends. (read more at Wikipedia)

What you may not know about Twitter

Twitter has a search tool that allows you to search what other users at ‘tweeting’ about. This tool is a great way to find help on a subject, popular trends, or maybe a deal on a product you’re looking for, or a link about a subject. Regardless of the topic, people ‘tweet’ about things everyday and you can use that to your advantage with Twitter Search. Twitter search can be found at search.twitter.com

Here’s a quick video on Twitter Search:

URL:

http://www.last.fm

What is Last.fm?

Last.fm is a social music community that keeps you in touch with your music using a music recommendation system called “Audioscrobbler”, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (”scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user’s profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favourites. (Read more at Wikipedia)

What you may not know about Last.fm

Last.fm has a great piece of software for your computer that will recognize your favorite music player, plug in to it, and track the music you listen to.  Over time the music that Last.fm tracks will help determine new music that you are interested in.  Last.fm will compare each artist with other artists in the system based off of what users are listening to.  Example, say I listen to Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, and Hinder, another users listens to Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and Seether.  Based off of Last.fm’s analysis, you can conclude that listeners of Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace like Seether and Hinder.  So now Last.fm can recommend me Seether and the other listener Hinder.  See how that works?  Want to discover new music based off of what you are listening to?  Download Last.fm’s audioscrobbler and discover new music.
Watch this quick video on how to get Last.fm’s audioscrobbler and how it works with your favorite audio player: