So I finally got around to that whole GMail thing. You might have heard of it. I mean, it’s not huge or anything, they only have approximately a billion users.

Anyways.

I was a skeptic. Especially with the cell phone invite method they used. But when it went open to everyone, I decided to jump in. I admit it, I’m hooked. I funnel most of my e-mails in through it and it makes my life a lot easier. Of course Google now controls nearly all of my personal, electronic communication but I trust them more than most of the other services I was using and they control nearly everything else, so why not. I doubt that my secret Magic the Gathering deck ideas are of much interest to them anyways.

Besides that neat toy, I’m hooked on the calendar and being able to share it with my friends. I’m sure they have other cool services as well that I have yet to unearth. One I did find, and that I wanted to share, was Google Analytics.

This is a free service, with a Google account, that allows you to have tracking on your personal site. And for (cheap) fiscally responsible people like myself who don’t feel the need for hosting and instead host their site on free space offered by their ISP it allows you to see lots of good information about your users. Enabling you to make your site better for the people that visit it.

I still haven’t figured out all the bells and whistles yet, but I definitely recommend it.

Random Tidbit: I’m really starting to like TechCrunch. I was talking about mash-ups the other day and they have a neat article on several cool tools. Check it out.