{"id":263,"date":"2010-09-01T13:37:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T18:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/?p=263"},"modified":"2019-05-06T13:08:31","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T18:08:31","slug":"the-5-google-things-i-dont-want-to-live-without","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/?p=263","title":{"rendered":"The 5 Google Things I Don\u2019t Want To Live Without"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote an e-book about Google, in case you missed the ads splattered all over my website about it, so I get invited to speak about it often.  I have always loved Google and the services it provides, and when I got my Android phone a whole new world of Google &#8216;things&#8217; was opened up to me.  I have way more than 5 things that I love about Google, but I get asked all the time what my favorite &#8216;things&#8217; are.  So here is my top 5, in no particular order&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>1. <strong>Google Voice<\/strong> &#8211; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/voice\" target=\"_blank\">link<\/a>) now that it no longer requires an invite, GV will transform the way that you deal with voicemail.\u00a0 Just try it.\u00a0 You&#8217;ll thank me.\u00a0 And if you happen to have an Android Phone, you can get the free Google Voice app to download your voicemails to your phone.<\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0 <strong>Google Maps<\/strong> &#8211; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\" target=\"_blank\">link<\/a>) there are lots of mapping websites out there, but I don&#8217;t think that anything can come close to the experience you get with Google Maps.\u00a0 And the &#8216;street view&#8217; is simply the icing on the cake!\u00a0 Add in the fact that you have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/local\/add\/analyticsSplashPage?service=lbc&amp;utm_source=\/places&amp;utm_medium=van&amp;utm_campaign=en\" target=\"_blank\">Google Places<\/a> integration<\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 <strong>Google Maps Navigation<\/strong> &#8211; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/mobile\/navigation\/\" target=\"_blank\">link<\/a>) I have owned numerous GPS units in my life, but nothing comes close to Google Maps Navigation on my Android phone.\u00a0 Voice-guided directions, points of interest along the way, integrated street view, and the ability to submit real-time events to Google Maps (liked blocked roads and accidents) make this one of my must-haves.<\/p>\n<p>4.\u00a0 <strong>Voice input<\/strong>&#8211; on my Android phone I have voice input built into all aspects of the phone.\u00a0 I can do a Google web search with my voice.\u00a0 I can search for things on my phone using my voice.\u00a0 I can dial someone using my voice.\u00a0 I can transcribe text messages and emails with my voice.\u00a0 I use it daily, all the time.\u00a0 I need it.<\/p>\n<p>5.\u00a0 <strong>Google Reader<\/strong> &#8211; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/reader\" target=\"_blank\">link<\/a>) I don&#8217;t search for news anymore.\u00a0 I let Google do it for me.\u00a0 I tell Google what I am interested in&#8230; these sports teams, these politicians, these products, these companies, these news topics&#8230; whatever&#8230; and on one page Google provides me headlines for all those things I am interested in from news sources all over the internet.\u00a0 I simply look down the list to see what the latest news is and go read what interests me.\u00a0 I save untold amounts of time in my day using Google Reader.<\/p>\n<p>Man, that was hard.\u00a0 I left out so many things that I love&#8230;. Google Skymap, Google Alerts, Google Shopper, Google Translate, Google Listen, Google Earth&#8230;. and on and on.<\/p>\n<p>So, did I leave something out of my top 5?\u00a0 What would your top 5 be??<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like><\/fb:like><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote an e-book about Google, in case you missed the ads splattered all over my website about it, so I get invited to speak about it often. I have always loved Google and the services it provides, and when I got my Android phone a whole new world of Google &#8216;things&#8217; was opened up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[22,9],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3043,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/3043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}