Google is the undisputed king of the cloud. If you spend any considerable amount of time on the Internet, you probably have made a Google account at some time or another. And if you’re like me, you use your Google account on a daily, scratch that, hourly basis. Whether I’m at home or at work, on my Mac or on my Blackberry, as long as I am connected to the Internet I can access Google search, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Maps (Latitude), Reader, Alerts, Analytics, and much, much more. That’s a boat load of cloud computing.

I can’t begin to tell you how much joy Dropbox brings to my life. So much so that Dropbox is now officially one of the first programs I install on any new computer I use. Here’s how it works — first you download and install Dropbox on all of your computers. This will create a folder on each computer called “My Dropbox”. Now, anything you put into your “My Dropbox” folder gets uploaded to your Dropbox web account and subsequently synced with all of your computers that are linked to that account. For me, this is a dream come true. I’m constantly bouncing back and forth between computers and operating systems. It’s cross platform, so it works with Windows, Linux, and OS X. No more emailing myself files or constantly pulling out my thumbdrive every time I need to move my data around. You can also access all of your files via a web browser, which can be super convenient when you’re on the go and don’t have access to your personal computers.

Lala does music, and they do it well. It’s especially nice if you spend a good chunk of your life in front of a computer. Here’s the scoop; after joining Lala, they will scan your entire computer(s) and upload (or match) all of your songs in your library to your Lala account. From that point on, you have access to all of your music anytime you want, as long as you’re on the cloud. But it gets even better. You can play any song that’s not in your library, once, for free. You can even put entire albums in your queue and listen to them in their entirety before you decide if you want to buy them or not. And here’s the beauty, if you like the song and want to purchase it (or them), you have two choices. You can buy the streaming version for only 10 cents per song, or a DRM free MP3 for 99 cents per song (89 cents if you previously bought the streaming version). This is great on so many levels. For one, 10 cents is cheap, and once you buy a streaming song you can listen to it as many times and as often as you’d like as long as your connected to the internet. You also get 50 free streaming songs just for joining Lala. Secondly, you may not need or want to download an entire album. You could buy an entire streaming album for $1.00, then hand pick the songs you want to download (DRM free) to put on your iPod, or your Zune, or your iPod. Lala has a nice wallet feature too that allows you to store a set amount of money for quick purchases. When your wallet runs dry, just add some more cash. $5.00 = 50 streaming songs. Not bad. If I could improve one feature of Lala, it would be their music discovery. Though it’s not all that bad, it’s still not on par with the likes of Pandora. Oh yes, and a Blackberry app — that would be fantastic.

Xmarks, formerly known as Foxmarks, is a browser plug-in for Firefox, IE, and Safari (hopefully soon for Chrome) that stores all of your bookmarks remotely and then syncs them to all of your browsers. Again, this is only handy if you spend a lot of time in multiple environments — but that’s sort of the whole point of cloud computing, not having to be locked down to one computer, one processor, one hard drive… Once installed, Xmarks does everything in the background — set it and forget it. Xmarks is also taking a stab at social bookmarking, similar to sites like Delicious, Stumble Upon, and Digg. Good luck with that one guys — the social bookmarking scene is getting a bit crowded. Personally, I would just stick with bookmark syncing. This is definitely one area where they know their stuff

Reqall is a virtual extension of my memory. The whole reason I started using Reqall was so that I could get thoughts out of my head quickly (GTD-like) and revisit them at a later time. For example, I always remember things while I’m driving. With Reqall, I can call and leave a message on my account. Reqall then transcribes the message and emails it back to me. Now my idea / thought / task / appointment is nice and safe in my email inbox for review at a more appropriate time. Reqall is also linked to my Google Calendar, so if I were to call and say “Dinner with Meg’s parents Sunday at 5 O’Clock”, Reqall would put that entry right on my calendar on the specified day and time. It can be a life saver. Their website is well designed and offers a variety of ways to organize your To-Dos and notes. However, they could work a bit on improving their lists management system which, according to them, is on their list of things to do — no comment. Voice isn’t the only way to add items to reqall. You can use instant messaging, a Firefox extension, email, text messages, or my personal favorite, their mobile app. I can’t speak for the iPhone app, but Reqall’s Blackberry app is probably the best, most well designed app on my phone. Reqall also offers a pro account for $20.00 a year which unlocks a few neat features. I think the free version is sufficient for most people though. At least until they fix some of the minor quirks and add a few more niceties.

Just installed this. It’s only an early alpha release, but it looks just too promising for me to wait for the beta.

The Victorian Internet — This book was fantastic. My daughter bought it for me at a library book sale for 50 cents. The Victorian Internet chronicles the rise of the telegraph, as well as the astounding effects it had on the world. The most fascinating aspect of the book, to me anyway, was the comparison of the telegraph to the modern day Internet. The cultures surrounding these two technologies were/are eerily similar, each having their own bevy of underground elites. Remember the heyday of IRC? Yeah, like that. This is a must read for any geek.

The Alchemist — First, let me say that I knew nothing about this book, except that it seems to be on every self-help bloggers “favorite books” list. Eventually, after reading about it for the hundredth, I bought the book. I’m really glad I did. The Alchemist is an inspirational (and motivational) book about a young shepherd boy named Santiago and his journey to fulfill his personal legend (aka: his dreams.) And that’s the exact message the story is trying to convey, always follow your dreams! Excellent book if your looking for a good story and a little motivational pick-me-up.

The Dip — Ahh, The Dip. Here we have a well thought out collection of common sense. Yes, common sense. There probably isn’t much in this book that you don’t already know, but it’s good to have a refresher course every now and then. Seth Godin tells us that whatever we do in life, be the best at it. And anything that we can’t be the best at, quit. That’s kind of a crappy summary of the book — Seth actually does give good advice on how and why to live by the aforementioned guidelines. It’s a quick read, less than 100 pages, and could easily be read in one or two sittings. Or in my case, a week. It’s definitely not the best self-improvement book I’ve ever read, but for the money and time invested, it was well worth it.

Zen Habits is a motivational and, I think, inspirational website dedicated to abolishing bad habits and creating good habits. I think what I like most about this site, is the fact that the author, Leo, is just a regular person like you or me. He writes about the different techniques and philosophies he uses to improve various aspects of his life. Specifically, he writes about productivity, organization, finance, family, simplicity, happiness, and health. His two main philosophies seem to be GTD (get things done) and simplification. I’ve always been a big believer in the latter approach toward life, hence the reason why I think I’m so drawn to his website.

If improving your life is subject that interests you, and it should be, then I would highly, highly recommend checking out Zen Habits. It’s extremely well written and I always leave the site with a renewed sense of confidence.

Since my blogroll is comprised mostly of tech sites, it’s sometimes hard to weed out all the other non-tech blogs that I like to read. Here is a list of some other sites that are also dedicated to improving your life in one way or another.

43 Folders
Lifehack
Lifehacker
Pick The Brain
Get Rich Slowly
Dumb Little Man

I’m happy to see that all of the above websites also made it onto Leo’s blogroll. Of course, Leo has quite a few more self-improvement sites in his list than I do in mine. I’ll have to take a closer look at what he’s reading. If they’re even half as good as Zen Habits, then they would be worth a look.

For the last few days I’ve been messing around with a great program for the Mac called Journler. It’s like a journal on steroids. It has all the basic features you would expect from journaling software, but then takes it to a whole other level. You can do things like add audio, video, and photos to your entries with the click of a button, or record them directly using your built-in hardware. You can even publish your entries to your blog (I haven’t actually tried this yet, cross your fingers). The interface is sleek and intuitive, just what you’d expect from a Mac app.

Don’t look at this as a full review of Journler though, since I’m still plummeting head first through the learning curve, but I was impressed enough with what I saw to give it a mention to anyone who has never heard of it.

Journler

I’m still a big time Mac noob. I’ve had this MacBook for about a year now and I just recently discovered what that weird little diagonal line is that all the Mac tutorials refer to. But I do listen. The OS X gurus may not think I’m listening, but I am — and every now and then I pick up on their good habits. I’ve recently been introduced to another little app called Quicksilver. I’m really not the guy to be giving a full review of this app either, or any Mac app for that matter, but from what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s pretty damn incredible. Here’s what I can tell from the little time I’ve spent with it — it’s an extremely powerful search application with a slew of built in macros (is that the right word?) which allow you to do all sorts of things to the items that you’ve just searched for. It uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts (which I love) to accomplish tasks at a lightning fast pace.

I’m really not doing this program any justice, so I’m gonna shut up now. The guys over at the Blacktree Inc. will most likely be sending me a cease and desist letter any day now anyways because of this literary mutilation of their product. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. I think you’ll really like it. If you don’t, blame the gurus.

Quicksilver

The website isn’t the most pleasing website to look at, but don’t let that deter you from trying it out. It’s well worth a look.

There’s tagging, tracking reports, logs, all sorts of goodies.

I had a chance to mess around with it for a couple of minutes. It seems very smooth, considering it’s a web app. I’ve used other online spreadsheets that are clunky by comparison. It also seems to have all of the features you would expect from Google, i.e. sharing capabilities, import/export options, etc…

At first glance, it looks like a nice little spreadsheet for day to day use. It’s definitely a great addition to Google’s ever growing list of web apps. Free web apps at that. I look forward to playing around with it some more.

For the time being I will continue to use HipCal. Which, by the way, is another fabulous calendar program for all you anti-googleites.

//UNDATE// I found the iCal feature. Shame on me for not having faith in my beloved Google. Goodbye HipCal, hello CL2.