Google, Gmail, Google Book Search
Googleman
Gmail
I've shifted a bunch of my personal e-mail to gmail. It works differently than most e-mail systems, in that it keeps a series of e-mails together in a single thread, rather than as discrete mail items. I like this feature.
Personalized Web Page
Once you have a (free ) g-mail account, you can create a personalized web page, which I have done. I prefer the look and feel of it to the " myyahoo " alternative. And it does work better in that you can create links to both news sources ( ie NY Times ) and blogs ( such as this one ). If you've created such a link, you will see the top three headlines from a news source or in the case of a blog, you will see the three most recent postings.
You can move around news / blog / other modules to other parts of the page by an easy, foolproof, well-designed drag and drop feature.
Google Book Search
Another great Google product is Google Book Search. It's still in beta now, but its well worth checking out. There is an immense library of books that can be found in digital form. Once you find a book, you can search for keywords. This will soon become indispensable to researchers, students, all of us. It blows the mind.
Google's doing a lot of things right. Once they release a google calendar, I'll shift most of my personal stuff to them.
