Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Google fan.
I have a Blackberry 7100i (see left, mine is a little more beat up than that though) and have a lot of Google stuff on it. Here’s how to use some when you’re mobile.
1 800 GOOG (4664) 411
Not many people know that Google has it’s own 411 directory service. Unlike other 411 services, because it’s Google, it’s free!
Just dial 1800 4664 411 from any phone, follow the voice prompts and you’ll have results in no time.
I’ve used it before and have found it to be very useful.
Google Mobile Search
The typical Google.com search interface works pretty well on a lot of devices but if you go to Google.com/m on your mobile device you’ll find a few differences.
You can customize this page too to show movie times, news, mail, stocks and more by signing into your Google account.
Google Maps Mobile
Google Maps Mobile is a must have download for any mobile user.
Go to google.com/gmm in your phone’s browser and download the application.
Google Maps Mobile, of course, shows you where you are, it can give you directions to where you’re going (a nice step-by-step feature) it has the normal, hybrid and satellite views.
Google is working on a GPS tie-in for this application. (currently the only GPS connectivity is over bluetooth).
gMail
gMail has an excellent mobile interface (m.gmail.com) but they have an even better mobile email application (downloadable at the top of the previous link) .
Though I have as many POP3 accounts as I want – gMail is all I use.
Google Calendar
Google recently created it’s Google Calendar interface (google.com/calendar/m) and it’s still under some development and you can’t input events for other calendars but this function has saved me on more than one occasion. Being able to pull up your calendar on the road is really handy.
You can text events etc into your calendar too (see the post earlier today)
Picasa Mobile
It’s a photo album in your pocket!
You can access your online Google Picasa Web albums from a mobile formatted web site – very user friendly.
News and Reader
Be sure to check out Google Mobile News and Google Mobile Reader too – they’re still in development and aren’t too easy to get around on the 7100i browser so I can’t really say a lot about them.
