9 Google Labs Projects You Must Try Out!

Posted 07/06/2009 at 1:00pm | by Florence Ion

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With its market share-dominating search engine, the eggheads at Google have no doubt made it easier for new users to acclimate to the harsh tangling webs of the Internet. But Google’s not just about search. Within the laboratories of Google’s Mountain View campus, computer science wizards are busy brewing up innovative services that will enhance your Google experience. So far, they’ve given us a spam-killing email service, a collaborative work space for all of our time sensitive documents, and an image search engine that takes the time out of having to search individual pages for something as simple as a company logo. There are also plenty of functional Google Lab projects still in public beta; we pick nine of our favorites that you absolutely must try out.

Get Political with Google In-Quotes

An American’s most sacred right is the right to vote. While we have no intentions of proselytizing any political opinion, we would like to bring your attention to Google lab’s nifty service dubbed In Quotes, which displays a side-by-side comparison of your favorite mainstream politicians and their note worthy quotations on heavy political issues. Type in a search topic or choose a pre-determined political issue, select two politicians, and then choose a year; the generator offers speeches and opinions from Mitt Romney to Bob Barr, beginning from 2003 to present. There’s also a U.K., India, and Canada edition for International transplants.

Quotes are generated automatically depending on what topic you choose, though there are only a limited number of politicians to choose from. In Quotes proves to be a great tool for students preparing papers or debates, or as a resource for future elections. We hope to see that the selection of quotes will grow to include other key political players, as well as those in state and city governments.

Brainstorm Communally with Google Moderator

If you’re ever in need of an objective opinion on what kind of case mod you should attempt next, or you need a bit of advice on how to do something completely out of your sphere of knowledge, Google Moderator offers an open forum for users to pose questions, offer suggestions, and concoct ideas, as well as receive feedback from other anonymous Google users, disguised only by an optional alias. You can scour topics and vote on other people’s opinions, or contribute your own.

Each question has its own list of topics and there are even featured series that offer a lot more, like Take a Tip, Share a Tip, which is an open forum for suggestions on how to be frugal in all areas of your life, from finances to gardening.  Google Moderator is a great alternative for the Internet user who needs to ask a question or wants to waste a little time, without having to deal with silly web Trolls or extensively involved social networking profiles. 

Explore Sunny Sweden with Google City Tours

Traveling is already a pretty pricey endeavor, so why not save some money on travel books and outdated maps and invest some time in printing out your own walking tours with Google Lab’s City Tours. This great new service from Google generates a list of the most important monuments and must-see historical sites in a variety of cities and countries. All you need to do is type in a start address for your tour and indicate how many days you’ll be staying. Then, City Tours will generate various points of interest within the limits of the city that you specified and offer a personal itinerary. Type in Lund, Sweden and Google will suggest you visit Kulturen Lund, stay for an hour, and then walk about 8 minutes to your next sight-seeing point. Additionally, City Tours also lists the hours of operation for the location you’re visiting, so you won’t have to risk showing up right as doors close to visitors.

We should note that there are still a few bugs with City Tours, the most prevalent being that walking tours aren’t supposed to take 53 minutes, or have you walking across freeways and sky scraping buildings. In some instances, you may consider taking public transportation or paying for a taxi ride, or getting creative and using City Tours to map out an incredible road trip and see everything your destination has to offer.

We have to keep in mind that most Google Labs applications are a work in progress.  Regardless, this is one feature we plan on using for all of our future traveling destinations.

Get Organized with Google Sets

Automatically generating a set from just a few examples may not seem like the most useful of applications, but Google Sets somehow makes it an integral and functional part of the Internet. A great way to use this application is to type in associating subjects and then generating a small set. This Is especially helpful for writers who frequently confront writers block.  

Share Spreadsheets with Google Fusion Tables

The issue with placing large sets of data in an Excel or Open Office spreadsheet is that not everyone you wish to share your data with will possess the hardware or software capabilities required to view your tabular data. Thankfully, Google Labs has provided us with Fusion Tables. This is an extension of Google’s already popular Google Docs, which has allowed us to share important documents without the middle-man of memory-hogging office software.

Now, if you need to share an expense report across the board, upload the document from your desktop and it’s ready for review. The added bonus of Fusion Tables is that if you’re working on a project with several other people, they can add comments for each row as you update your data. Even though Fusion Tables is still in the Pre-Alpha stage, it works with both Microsoft Excel and Open Office Calc, and you can share your tabular data with other users.