Recently I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the pros and cons of living in the cloud, so to speak. If you’re not familiar with this term, living in the cloud basically means that you keep most of your important documents, email, etc. with online access so you can access it from any computer and you’re not tied to one desktop.

I’ve moved my email into the cloud for the most part instead of using MS Outlook so heavily at home, and I’m digging it so far. Gmail makes it really easy to do, although, I can’t do it 100% because you’re only allowed 5 additional email accounts coming through Gmail. I’ve begun updating a to-do document in Google Documents, but that’s about my only moves into the cloud so far.

So, to outline it for anyone considering making this move, here’s what I’ve discerned:

Pros:

1. Access from anywhere, any computer.
2. Centralized services through Google.
3. If something happens to one of your computers you don’t have to worry about data stored in the cloud.
4. Easier to share documents or data with other people via the internet.

Cons:

1. You don’t have control over the technology the data is stored on, so if their servers go down you’re toast.
2. There’s always the potential threat (albeit very low) of hacking.
3. Some firewalls may prevent access to this data depending on the connection you’re attempting to access it from (slim chance, but there).
4. Business and pleasure are intertwined to an extent.

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Today’s highlighted free tool is perhaps an obvious one. One of the easiest things you can do to keep up to date on changes within your industry is to subscribe to news feeds and blog feeds. One of the best free readers out there is Google Reader.

The three column format is pretty clean and easy to navigate. On the left column is the main navigation with all your feeds. As seen, the ones that are bold are the ones with new content. From the home page you also get a summary of all the new content from all your feeds, so you can read from there to catch up on the latest news.I like Google Reader because it has a lot of potential to also be a social tool. There are sharing capabilities. Just click the “Share” icon underneath a blog post and anyone on your Google friends list can see the blog posts. It’s a brilliant and unobtrusive way to share. Since it’s Google as well, when you want to email a blog post to someone it opens an integrated Gmail window right there… which since I use Gmail personally I love.

Google Reader also has the ability to group feeds, which is a great asset to have. I use Reader for both work related feeds that I keep up on and some fun feeds, so having different folders helps me focus on the work ones while at work and leave the fun ones aside to check on my break or when I get home. You can also alter the order in which the folders are displayed in the left column, so you can easily prioritize which feeds are the most important to check on.

This is another great feature… there doesn’t necessarily need to be a feed for you to subscribe to! Bookmarklets seem to be all the rage lately, but I’m pretty sure that Google was among the first to bring this out. It’s a great tool when you find yourself checking websites like a mad woman.All in all, a great, and best of all, FREE tool to use to keep your ear to the ground within your industry!

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I finally signed up for Google Analytics. I know… I know… there’s no excuse in taking so long to sign up for such a great tool when it’s free. But I’d been using another stat counting site and didn’t see any reason to switch.

Okay you drug it out of me with that look… I didn’t know it was free either.

Of course, this has highly elevated Google in my mind. Despite my abandonment of AdSense from this blog, I really do love Google and all the great services they’ve offered me. Gmail is my best friend and confidant. Blogger has replaced the little keyed notebook I kept under my pillow. And Reader is my daily paper… with news, comics, and human interest.

So far the interface is a breeze to navigate. Everything is very big and represented visually, which is great for a person like me. I only have to click around and see exactly what I want – visitors, where they come from, what they’re doing. Since this is a blog, mostly reserved to the home page and not a lot of pages to navigate through, some of the more advanced features (like bounce rate) are lost on my use.

My favorite feature so far has got to be the Traffic Sources. Basically it’s a little bit of reassurance that all this time I’ve been spending on Entrecard, Digg, and StumbleUpon isn’t all for not. I’m not getting staggering numbers of people visiting the blog, but it’s super helpful to know where those people are coming from. I could easily redirect my efforts or try something new, and that helps a lot. I love to make the best use of my time possible (maybe I’m weird that way) so this helps me to weed out activities that are a total waste of time (like Furl & Reddit, I see…).

I’m not usually a super analytical person. I never have been. But Gooogle Analytics presents it in a way that is really easy for me to see the cause & effect relationships of what I’ve been doing to promote this little monkey here. Because honestly it’s not that fun writing when you don’t think anyone is reading .

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