#5 More Google

Discovering 'More Google' has been fun.

Google translate is brilliant with translation to about 50 different languages available. Enter your own text or or go to a web page, select the language you want and hey presto! there it is. Quick as a flash. I could have used that back in my uni days when I was studying French and trying to read French novels. Never could quite follow the storyline. But there were no computers then.

In Google books, I clicked on Literature and then limited the results to Full View only. This gave me 708 full text books to choose from, including classics like "Persuasion" by Jane Austen, "The time machine" by H G Wells, and "Around the world in 80 days" by Jules Verne. No need to ever be short of a book to read.

Moving on to i-Google, I now have a customised Google home page with a Beach theme, which presents me with daily inspirational and motivational quotes, the weather report for the Sunshine Coast and a personalised horoscope. That should set me up for the day.

Google Calendar could be a way to send invitations to library events, allowing interested people to reply and make a booking for the event.

Google Maps and My Maps could be used to tag branch library sites, mobile library stops and outside venues for library events.

#4 Web Browsers

I guess I take web browsers for granted really. If they get me to where I want to go I'm happy. I fail to appreciate what they do and how they do it. And I don't go too much into customising. I have used Internet Explorer, Mozilla / Firefox, Safari and Opera. At work, of course, it's Internet Explorer. We are not given a choice and we cannot download software without IT testing and approval. There was, however, a short period of time a few years ago when the IT branch moved us all to Firefox (or was it Mozilla?) as Internet Explorer was considered too great a security risk. But we are back to Internet Explorer again, despite the security issues.

At home, I'm on a Mac (very secure) and I use Safari as my first choice browser. It works well. While doing this exercise, I'm making use of the Tabs feature to move easily between 'Licence @ Test Drive' and my blog. We also have Firefox and Opera installed which I use occasionally. Handy sometimes if a page doesn't open correctly. I am not able to download Google Chrome as the Mac version is still being developed but it looks neat and stylish with speed being it's key selling point.

Firefox has some interesting add-ons. One that caught my attention is called Glue which will give you personalised recommendations for books, movies or music. "Glue helps you find your next favorite movie, book, or music album. As you visit sites like Amazon, IMDB, and Wikipedia, Glue suggest things you'll like." That sounds like a useful reader's advisory tool.