I have been a GMail user since their early beta days, but three times this week I was reminded of how dead simple and useful their archiving and saving functions can be!
First, a bit of background. My best friend is getting married next week, and so I have been wracking my brain putting together a toast for her and her fiancée. I had some fun anecdotes about her, as well as stories from when the two of them started dating, but I was looking for something more to add. Thinking maybe old emails would help, I typed her name into GMail, and discovered (or, really, re-discovered) that GMail helpfully saves all chat conversations along with email. Within a minute I had a GChat conversation from the early days of their relationship, full of schmoopy “OMG I found someone amazing” type quotes. Perfect for a nice sentiment AND a way to gently tease my friend, which all wedding toasts should do!
GChat came to the rescue again when Sarah was shopping for a dress. She IM’d me about dress that she liked, but when she tried to find the website a few days later she couldn’t. One quick GChat search later, and we had the dress located and ordered. Whew!
Finally, my friend called me last night. She and her fiancée were working on their ceremony, and they had a question about how Sarah and I had phrased something. We couldn’t remember, but then I realized Dan had sent us rough drafts of our ceremony as he worked on it. While we were on the phone, I was able to pull up the ceremony, answer the questions, and help their planning continue rolling along smoothly.
None of this is earth-shattering, I know. But it is easy to forget the little ways cloud-based storage can make life run more smoothly. It also makes me realize that if GMail makes me this efficient almost by accident, I need to buckle down and find ways to consciously tap into all of the other useful tricks I haven’t yet started using.
Have you ever stumbled over a useful GMail trick, or realized how much you rely on a similar piece of technology/cloud computing? Share your tips in the comments, and we’ll aggregate them into a bigger post soon!