Man Plus Machine

Google has revealed a page with Mac versions of their software. At this moment, Google has the following programs to offer:

• Google Notifier, a Gmail and Google Calendar program.
• Picasa Web Albums Uploader, a tool for uploading your photos to the Picasa Web Albums service that works both as a stand alone application and as a plugin for iPhoto.
• Google Desktop, searches your desktop.
• Google Earth, see the world from above.
• Google SketchUp, a nice tool for creating simple 3D objects.
• Google Toolbar for Firefox, that brings Google functionality into your browser.

These programs are not all equally useful and not all need the same presentation. We all know Google Earth, for instance. If you don’t, I suggest you stop reading this (but of course bookmark the page for later use ;-) ) and head over to Google Earth and download the program. It is that good.

Google Toolbar is very nice if the built-in Google functionality in Firefox isn’t good enough for you. I had some problems with Firefox 2.0 and the toolbar some months ago, so I’m actually not using it at the moment. However, I plan to give it a try as soon as I have some time on my hands for testing.

I haven’t got any experience with Picasa Web Albums and therefore I can’t tell you whether the uploader is any good. Try it out yourself, if you’re a Picasa Web Albums user. I use Flickr instead. Feel free to post your experiences as a comment below.

The Google Desktop is in my opinion useless on Mac. I’ve only tried it on Windows XP, where it is very useful because the built-in search functionality in Windows XP is everything else than … functional. But Windows XP doesn’t have Spotlight and Dashboard which do the same as Google Desktop. I wouldn’t use Google Desktop but if you have another opinon, please let me know.

Now, Google SketchUp is a great program and this I have seen up and close. A friend of mine is waiting for his new appartment to be built. To kill time he found out that Google SketchUp could help him visualize the appartment. He scanned the house plan into his computer and imported it into SketchUp. Here, he could tell the program everything about the appartment, and voilá: SketchUp delivers a full 3D model of the appartment. This isn’t all of it; once the model was ready he added textures to floors, walls etc. and he found models of furniture (in the program) that resembled the furniture he already had or considered buying and that way he was actually capable of furnishing the appartment long before it was ready. Now he already knows where to put the TV, tables, the sofa and so on. On top of it all, you can take a “walk” inside the house to see what it is all like. It should also be possible to enter coordinates and directions and see how the sunlight will be at different times of the day and year. Very cool. This is of course not the only thing SketchUp can do, but it’s the one thing I’ve seen it used for.

I haven’t tried Google Notifier either, but I have a Gmail account and I guess I also have a calendar somewhere. Maybe I should give it a shot and try it out some time. Especially online calendars need to be very convenient and at hand before I want to use them - maybe Google Notifier can change this.

Please feel free to add your experiences with some of these programs in the comments below.