As the internet has grown so have its uses. These days it’s easy to find cheap flights, book hotels, find hostels, work, local attractions and a myriad of other applications that can aid both the short term and long term wanderer of the world.

Some of the less obvious uses so have grown around Google and its current suite of internet based applications. You just thought Google was a search engine? Then think again.

All you need is an account with Google (which is free as is everything under the Google wing).

Perhaps of most use to any traveller these days is email. Google’s own GMail service has grown from being an invite only service and now anyone who has a Google account can make use of the email service. As postcard sales around the world fall the ease of keeping in touch with friends and family anywhere in the world has risen. A GMail application is now also available for a growing number of compatible mobile phones.

Google also has its own instant messaging system Google Talk – allowing a chat session with anyone you know using Google. The IM can be used straight through the GMail interface as well so there’s not a need to download the chat client.

The rise of the blog has been extraordinary in the last few years. These days it seems that everyone is doing it in one form or another. Blogger is one of the easist to use and having your own blog means being able to keep an online diary of events, places visited, opinions and possible suggestions for others. A blog also tends to negate the need for writing a ton of emails to everyone you know or performing that impersonal of task – the email sent to everyone in your address book. Just pass on your blog’s address and everyone can keep up with you at their own pace.

Create a successful and popular blog then use it to make some money by showing adverts from Google Adsense as well! Help fund that trip!

Tired of paying over the odds for getting your digital photos onto a CD while you’re out on the edges of civilisation? Storing your photos online is now an easy and quick option. Google’s own system – Picasa – gives an easy way to use some basic editing tools and upload photos onto the internet for sharing in Picasa Web Albums (or keeping personal).

It’s also very easy to add a little colour to that blog of yours using photos stored online through Picasa!

Even without Picasa the amount of space in a GMail account means that you can email photos to yourself for safe keeping.

Google Maps has expanded a lot over the last couple of years. Street maps and overhead imagery cover more and more of the world. Finding your way around a new city has never been easier. Plot driving holidays and save route information and points of interest for later retrieval.

The Google Notebook allows anyone to store quick and easy notes about anything. Text and images can also be copied and pasted for future reference creating a very useful online notebook.

Some of the latest tools in the Google armoury provide some extra help for keeping track of your travels, all stored safely for your access at any computer which is connected to the internet.

Google Bookmarks has a simple system that allows you to save all your favourite internet sites in one handy place.

Google Calendar is a fully functional calendar, able to keep track of anything you need to. Filling in location details also provides handy links to Google Maps. Any reminders and alerts can also be emailed to your GMail account.  

Want to keep track of your finances, keep an up-to-date CV to hand or store any multitude of spreadsheets or word processor files? Then use Google Documents. Existing files can be uploaded and converted from the likes of Word and Excel while new documents can also be written.

All your favourite RSS feeds can be stored on Google Reader and read whenever you get chance.

To keep everything together then using the personalised Google Homepage can keep everything together for you for quick and easy access place. Plus with a whole load of extra little widgets the personal homepage can be added to and enhanced. Weather reports, cartoons, clocks, jokes, mySpace and YouTube info and currency converters are all now available.

These days with Google it’s easy to know exactly where you should be, when you should be there and tell everyone what you’re up.

Just please remember to log out of your Google Account when you’re finished in an internet café or someone else will also know everything about you!

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