Roger’s $0.02 - The Suite Life of Google’s Ecosystem (Patreon)

One of the interesting things about Google’s suite of tools is how thoroughly they insinuate themselves in your life. Search, email, maps, calendar, and photos make for a wonderfully frightening set of tools. On the one hand, they’re free and they’re indispensable tools of modern life and on the other, you feel that it’s part of a larger conspiracy to make you part of the Google collective. And then there are times when they are handy answers to many of life’s problems.

Remote desktop is one of those tools that seems better suited for the office than the personal life. If you shop around the prices for services can range anywhere from $30 all the way up to $200 plus for a team account. But like a tire iron and car jack they’re best acquired before you need them not when you actually need them. Because by then it's a little late and your better off eating the roadside assistance fees than walking two miles to the nearest auto supply store to get what you need. If occasionally need to do some remote desktop support for friends and family and you hadn’t thought ahead and installed TeamViewer or VNC Google Remote Desktop is pretty handy. As long as the person on the other end is reasonably tech-savvy the process is straightforward. The only disadvantage is the lack of sounds some other specific features you get with a commercial remote desktop software and you can’t get unattended access until the remote machine has been logged in. After TeamViewer insisted my attempts at tech supporting my sister’s iMac was a business operation I switched to Google Remote Desktop to complete the task.

Another handy but overlooked tool is the ability to track where your phone is when you’ve misplaced it. It's such a vanishingly small occurrence in my life I don’t really think about it until two weeks ago when I was searching for my phone and was not able to locate it in my car or my person after a morning of grocery shopping. A quick hop to the laptop and I was able to trace its location back to my earlier visit to the CVS. I managed to secure the phone remotely and then call the store to keep my phone on hand while I drove back to retrieve it. A number of apps and tools provide a similar function but there’s something very handy about having all out of the box from the OS provider.

Finally, I had to remember to specific date regarding a previous guest booking for DTNS. Because it was some years ago my memory was a little hazy about the exact date. But because Google Calendar is such an integral tool to the functioning of the show I was able to run a name search and come up with a date and full name for the guest. This allowed me to search my Gmail inbox which has everything I’ve sent and received from non-spammy sources since I started the account in 2003 and pull updated but still working contact info. Sure it’s not the stuff of Dan Brown or James Patterson but in its own way, it's a gripping tale of running a functional search through multiple apps from the same company and having it work.

Google gets criticized for many things. From its somewhat unfortunate habit of letting services die on the vine before being unceremoniously cut, looks at you Google Reader, to its ad search models and black-box algorithms that decide the fate of many a YouTubers careers but when comes to some of the OG stuff I’m happy most of it works like its suppose to.