I Do Love Google. . .

This post has been haunting me for awhile but it is true. I love Google. And it is very much in relation to this site. The Feastofnoise just would not be the site it is without Google.

This Blog is published using Google’s Blogger site. It is an easy way to to write the longer updates, and it can be done from anywhere. I just need to have access to a computer and the web. And yes it is a computer for me. It is not happening with a cell phone or iTouch as of yet.

The calendar I use is Google Calendar for the listing of shows (Who is Playing Where) on the left side of the site. Blog on the right and calendar on the left. I know there are tons of calendars out there, but still Google is the one I arrived at. And I have to say I was impressed with the email it sends out weekly highlighting upcoming shows. An email I did not initiate. I post the gigs and once or week or show it will send out an email. Anything that is automated and works – I like.

Now there are multiple ways to get the Blog and the Calendar on the site. In my case I again turn to Google to publish Who is Playing Where and the Western Front Blog published on the FeastOfNoise.com, I get them up using Google’s Feedburner.com, which basically provides a publishable RSS feeds and the associated HTML code for websites. I probably could do this myself with Dreamweaver, but Feedburner is nice in that it allows people to post the content other places. You like what I write here and you can share it on your blog, put it up on your Facebook page, or send it over to Digg. Again, like the automated emails for the calendar, it is the little things like this that impress me!

Not only do I take my content, and post it on the site, but as you hopeully know, I have a few other live updates from other rock news sites on FeastOfNoise. Again customized with Feedburner, and Feedburn is Google.

I know Myspace offers blogs and calendar but my take is that they are just for Myspace. The same is true of Facebook. Both are parts of the web, large parts but still just parts. For me Google offers the the potential of the web as opposed to just a gated community, granted big ones but still gated.

And the amazing thing is that it is all for free. Here is Google, an amazingly profitable company, which makes its money via to its web and search ads, and it has all these various pieces which I have adopted and latched onto, and they offer them for free. Of course, part of it is that they are in the process facilitating more sites, more content, and more places to post their ads. Regardless, some pretty neat stuff.