Explore Google

You have used Google for search and Gmail for e-mail. Of course, you would have also used Picasa (photos) and GTalk (chat). But many are not aware that Google has a service called Latitude, which uses GPS to track one's friends.

If you have used Gmail, Picasa, Orkut, Docs and Google Talk, and you think you have explored almost all of Google's services, you are wide off the mark.

Even within a specific service such as Gmail, there are features the existence of which many don't know. Many are not even aware that Gmail has a Labs option that allows you to tweak the email client. This is apart from the general Google Labs that has experimental services such as Transliteration and Fast Flip. There are also country-specific Labs, such as the one for India.

Do you know that if you store an event in Google Calendar, it can alert you by an SMS at the right time — free of cost?

Talking of SMS, Google India has an excellent SMS service. This service offers details of train services (including fares), stock quotes, flight status, definition, weather, currency conversion, etc — for the price of a normal SMS. All you have to do is to send an SMS with the correct keyword (for a list of keywords, send ‘Help') to 9-77-33-00000.

If you want the gold price, you need to send ‘Price Gold' to 9-77-33-00000. You will get the reply in minutes. If you want the sleeper class fare for train number 1018 from Bangalore to Mumbai, send ‘train fare 1018 Bangalore to Mumbai for SL'.

If you have used Google's Indic Transliteration service, there is good news for you. There is a downloadable ‘Transliteration IME'. After you download and install it in your computer, you can type in any of the 14 Indian languages supported directly in any application, Word, for example.

So, the next time you use Google, just explore.