Google Universe

What do you like about the Google product? What do you dislike? Would you recommend the product to friends and colleagues?

I tried out 2 programs from Google. One is Google Docs and the other one from Google Labs is called Aardvark. I also use a gmail account on a regular basis.

The Google Docs program works really well. When I open a document that has been sent to me as an attachment in my gmail account, I get several choices for opening up the document. The choices are: View as HTML; Open as a Google document; or Download. If I choose open as Google document, then I can edit the document online; invite people to my document and make changes together, in real-time; and I can open my account at http://docs.google.com.

There is large amount of space to keep documents online in my Google Docs account. I haven't found anything that I dislike about this product so far and I would recommend this to friends and colleagues. I especially think that this is a good way to backup important documents in case of computer failure and also so that you can access them from any computer. This is much cheaper than buying an external hard drive to keep backup copies in.

The Aardvark application (at http://vark.com/) is designed for you to ask any question and through IMing (Instant Messaging) your question will be forwarded on to someone who may be able to answer the question. You can also sign on to Aardvark and use one word commands, such as "try" in an IM conversation box to see if you have an answer to any of the questions that are currently waiting for an answer.

I like the idea of a pool of people to share information through a third party (the Aardvark site) which keeps e-mail addresses confidential. All e-mail (even replies) are sent through Aardvark, so neither person knows the other person's e-mail address.

My only complaint about the service is that I have not yet found an answer to my question. The question is this: Where is the pauper's cemetary near Calgary, Alberta? I am still hopeful for a positive answer. I would recommend this, but only to people who are fairly computer savvy because the instant messaging format and the one word commands to be used add a degree of difficulty to the process.