My reflection

We've been asked to write our reflection about Google sites and blog, since we did Google site which contained 10 Google tools which we used and we should provide screenshots as well to illustrate the way of using each feature in every tool. In the blog I used to write whatever comes to my mind to share my way of thinking and my interests as well, and I attached some of videos which I thought are really cool. Now I’ll rank every Google tool that I've been using and will write my own opinion about each one of them.

1-      Blogs

·         Helpfulness:-

I used Google Blog to do my own blog which contained 10 posts and it’s really cool because it enable people to visit your blog and check your interests they may comment on any post if they wanted and you can share pictures videos, It can be helpful for accumulating information in one place and users can be creative and do their own themes as well.

·         Ranking:-

I give 5 stars this tool is beneficial and easy to use it enable users to even download videos using URL instead of having the video or picture in you PC you can just take the URL and paste it in the blog and the picture will be uploaded even faster than when you download the picture and re-upload it again.

2-     Gmail

·         Helpfulness:-

People started adopting Gmail leaving Hotmail and others because Gmail has a lot of nice features which are easy to use such as changing the theme and you may set auto responder in case if you were in vacation. You may have video conversation with lot of users once but you have to download certain programs to do so. Also, you have to create a Gmail account to be able to use blogs and sites.

·         Ranking:-

It’s obviously 5 stars because I really liked the idea when the whole class was connected through video conversation it can be helpful a lot and you may create filters as well.

3-     Google Calendar

·         Helpfulness:-

Google calendar is a helpful tool ot can be connected through smart phones as well so you can keep track of your events through your phones, laptops or computers and you can adjust the whole thing, colors, events, make many calendars one for college one personal and one for work if you have many deadlines and it’s easy to use.

·         Ranking:-

It’s a good tool but the only problem is people started to use their smart phone’s calendar so it’s hard to convince people to keep using Google calendar even if it was on their own phones they’ll be using the normal calendar.

4-     Google Chrome

·         Helpfulness:-

Google Chrome is the substitute of Internet Explorer and Firefox as well, it has many features starting from themes till the web store and it’s flexible and easy even if you wanted to download a picture from Google all what you have to do is to drag the picture into your desktop that’s all.

·         Ranking:-

Me personally I liked Google Chrome since its flexible and easy to use but I am loyal to Firefox and got used to it and it’s hard to change or adopt a new browser when you’re used to it.

5-     Google Docs

·         Helpfulness:-

Google Docs is really good, if you had group project you may exchange information using the same document it can be controllable by multiple users and you can share Documents with your group as well. People might do Survey in it, it provides the format of the survey all what you have to do is fill it with your information and it’ll automatically gives you the link to share for people in order to fill the survey.

·         Ranking:-

It’s a bit complicated for users to start with; it needs many tutorials to be understandable. People have many online websites which give them the chance to do a survey on it.

6-     Google Maps

·         Helpfulness:-

Google Maps is really great it has many features in it, such as checking the weather, the traffic, your current location and destination to places from different angles.

·         Ranking:-

Google Maps are absolutely 5 stars it’s really helpful and accurate, the best feature is the traffic one because you’ll be able to get information about the busy roads and avoid them to reach on time.

7-     Google Picasa

·         Helpfulness:-

Picasa is really great for people who have no time for Photoshop since it consumes time just to open the program. In contrast, Picasa enable you to edit your pictures using different edits, you may create a poster and a collage.

·         Ranking:-

It helped me personally to do my posters for another project and it has many affects and enables you to write text in the picture I really loved it! Also, it accumulates all the pictures in one place to make it easy on you.

8-    Google Search

·         Helpfulness:-

Google Search is the most well-known search engine worldwide beside being a search engine there are many tricks which make Google look really cool and it has many features which we had lack of information about such as: it can calculate, tell you the weather, population, GDP, you may focus on one word while searching and many more.

·         Ranking:-

Google Search is 6 out of 5 it’s so perfect for use no need for more explanation its Google!

9-     Google Sites

·         Helpfulness:-

Google site helped me a lot to organize my information in one place and present it in a cool way using many themes that they provided and you may create your own theme. It’s professional and you may use it in many things to look creative instead of Power point presentations.

·         Ranking:-

Google sites have couple of disadvantages such as it’s hard at the beginning to adjust the theme and if you like a certain theme that you want to use you can’t pick you own color there is a certain colors that you should choose they don’t provide all the colors. Sometimes when you work on the site something wrong happens to the format! The banner goes in the right side although it was in the middle and the picture sizes are either so big or so small even when it’s actually adjusted to medium so you have to use Irfan view to re-size the picture.

10- Google Reader

·         Helpfulness:-

Google Reader is a type of RSS feeds which we have in our phones I think it’s cool to be tracking and getting the updates of the websites that you like without having to enter each one of them manually it combine all what you like in one place all what you have to do is to subscribe.

·         Ranking:-

I started to use it for the sites that I like such as 9gag and likealaugh instead of checking these sites every minute it automatically shows the update on these sites.

11-  Social Bookmarking

·         Helpfulness:-

Social Bookmarking help people to save what they like in one place to read it later if they were busy or you may share what you like from articles with your friends or if you read an article and thought about one of your friends who will like it and thought to share the like Social Bookmarking make the process goes easy.

·         Ranking:-

In my point view, I think that people started to switch from reading articles online to social networks and other places so mostly users lost interest on it they should update these sites with new features if they wanted to attract more viewers.