gLife

As someone who's life is intricately woven in with technology, it's probably not surprising that I use a lot of cutting edge tools to run things. What's making me nervous at this point is that so much of it comes from a single source. One company consistently pulls off what I need - a useful version of a desktop application that I can use online. The issue is that so much of my life is wrapped up in it now, that I'm beginning to fear their power over my.

Google may very well own my life at this point.

Seriously, I use Gmail as my main account (as well as the email for this blog). I use Google Calendar to not only maintain all of my appointments, but monitor my lovely wife's appointments (we share calendars), the Princess's school calendar, a home maintenance calendar, and the typical U.S. holidays. I've used the Google maps customization to map out my neighborhood in an effort to remember the names of those who live around me. I love my iGoogle desktops, and obviously they are the only search engine I bother with whether looking for web pages, images, maps or videos. Throw on top of that that DLOG is on Blogger (also owned and run by Google), and you've got a pretty good swatch of my life wrapped up in free Google technology.

So the other day, I'm setting up the whole counting calories scene, and trying to figure out where to keep track of stuff. Initially, I started out on the family wiki (yes, we have a family wiki). The problem was that I don't like entering data into wiki or HTML format. In looking for another solution, I once again checked out Google Documents, and found, both to my relief and consternation, exactly what I was looking for.

If you have a Google account (or a Gmail account), then you can access Google Documents. There, you can create text documents, Powerpoint like presentations, and even spreadsheets. That's the one that got me. I can enter my calories into a spreadsheet that will calculate totals, and then I can switch to a second page to put the daily totals for calories and exercise. Very cool.

My only concern is that Google's "Do no evil" creed can only last so long. One day, they are going to look at all this awesome free stuff they've been offering up, and decide that it's too good to be free. By then, my life will be so intertwined with these systems, I will be forced to commit to whatever demands they make. They can decide that they are a new religion, and I will have to choice but to bow down to my new Google overlords.

Here's hoping they don't require funny, Hari Krishna haircuts.