Some cool products that'll rock your socks!

I conducted a Google seminar last week Thursday (12th April) at the MIRC (MCA ICT Resource Centre) in Wisma MCA and approximately 100+ people turned up! I had a lot of fun and I hope the participants did too.

Essentially, the topic of the talk was about how SME's and even non-SME's should consider using more online tools and services to enable their businesses to run more productively, efficiently, to be more cost-effective and also from a marketing standpoint, to reach out to more potential users of their product or service. We talked about the emergence of Web2.0; not just as a concept but also some examples of what Web2.0 services differ from previous traditional web services in the late 90's and the early 2000's. I had made references to Tim O'Reilly's first references to Web2.0 here. At the same time, I also presented examples of companies that "live" the Web2.0 principles, such as Wikipedia, BitTorrent as well as, heh, Google. :)

Moving along, I also gave examples of various Google tools that SME's could use to improve their office and business productivity. Those of you who attended the seminar - if you want a quick recap on where you can get the info you need or to signup for the services, here are the links:

GMail: http://www.gmail.com/

Google Chat (within GMail):
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/chat.html

Google Apps for Your Domain: http://www.google.com/a/

Google Talk: http://www.google.com/talk/

Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/calendar

Google Docs & Spreadsheets: http://www.google.com/docs


For more marketing-centric applications:

Blogger: https://www2.blogger.com/start

(Examples of blogs that have commercial relevance)

http://235guys.blogspot.com/ - a blog that promotes clothes and a cool-lifestyle in Singapore, that then links back to their main website which is at http://www.newurbanmale.com/

http://laundrybar.blogspot.com/ - a restaurant-cum-bar that uses a blog to promote their latest events, gigs+concerts, food+beverages and other happenings. Quite cool.


Page Creator: http://pages.google.com/

Froogle: http://froogle.google.com/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/

Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/

Google Earth: http://earth.google.com


And last but not least ----- AdWords: http://adwords.google.com/select/Login
(The scope of this seminar wasn't so much about AdWords, but believe me, there's a lot more that I can talk about on AdWords! More later....)

As I mentioned, there's actually tonnes of other Google services that you should take a look at. Point your browser to here (the main stuff), here (additional search-related features) and here (Google Labs stuff).

That's a pretty long list of services! Once in a while, I will post some interesting services to look out for (mostly Google stuff but I will mention some others if they're cool enuf....), so please do bookmark this page. Oh! If you want an interesting bookmarking service, you can also check out Del.icio.us, which is an online-based, social bookmarking tool that is also very Web2.0 in nature.

Are you all "webbed-up" yet? :-) Drop me a line at hansontoh@google.com if you've got some queries.