I am a huge fan of Google. They have so many great, free tools that are extremely useful to me. I use their Gmail for several different clients as well as myself. I love their Google ‘Docs’ which allows me to collaborate on documents for free. I have Google Alerts set up for my clients and myself along with some other keywords I’m interested in. Do you have Google Alerts set up?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, when you log in to your Google account (with your Gmail address) click on the ‘My Account’ link at the top of the screen. You’ll see the little icon of a bell on the list of available tools - that’s Google Alerts. You type in keywords that you want to be notified of coming on the internet. Example. If you’re a real estate agent, you could type in the street name of one of your listings and you’ll receive an email notification the next time that street name appears online.

You can set up Google Alerts for anything. I have alerts set up for my name, my business name, my clients’ names, virtual assistance, etc.

I read my blog feeds in Google Reader, and I check my web stats with Google Analytics…and the list goes on.

But Google just outdid themselves….er…outdid itself? I don’t know…but in any case…they have just done something wonderful.

I am now able to sync my Microsoft Outlook calendar with my Google Calendar. I kid you not. I can do two way syncs between Outlook’s calendar and Google’s. That is the most exciting thing to happen to me this week.

It was super easy to set up, all you do is click the bold red link above your Google Calendar that says ‘New! Outlook sync” or something obvious like that. After that, I had to download something very, very small, then type in my Gmail account info. I chose two way sync instead of one way, then clicked on the neat little calendar icon in my little Systray thingy. When I click that, my calendars magically sync.

While this might not seem like a big deal to some people, consider the scenario in which you are managing someone’s calendar in Google, without an easy sync feature. Or someone is managing your calendar and counting on you to keep them in sync.

In my case, I have someone checking my email for me. She will sometimes take things from my email (Gmail) and enter them in my Google calendar for me. Outlook really distracts me, so I try to keep it closed during the day. My VA forwards my urgent and important messages to a secret Gmail account so I don’t have to open Outlook and end up losing my focus! Now, I won’t have to open up my Outlook account at all during the day if I don’t want to.

Thanks, Google. Great feature!

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