Google Dashboard Gives You a Bird's-Eye View of Your Cloud

If the size of your Google cloud is starting to look like Act IV of A Perfect Storm, you'll probably be interested in the company's latest feature, Google Dashboard--a one-stop shopping overview of all your Google cloud services, with links to preferences and privacy settings for each. (The Dashboard link is somewhat buried on your account settings page, so you might want to bookmark google.com/dashboard.)

By Jeff Porten
Thu, November 05, 2009

Macworld — If the size of your Google cloud is starting to look like Act IV of A Perfect Storm, you'll probably be interested in the company's latest feature, Google Dashboard--a one-stop shopping overview of all your Google cloud services, with links to preferences and privacy settings for each. (The Dashboard link is somewhat buried on your account settings page, so you might want to bookmark google.com/dashboard.)

Slideshow: 10 Great Google Apps Add-Ons for the Enterprise
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Dashboard requires you to log in even if your browser is already logged into your Google account--a thoughtful security precaution considering how many services are collated here. On my Dashboard, I have an overview of my usage of twelve different Google services, ranging from Gmail to YouTube, with nine more services helpfully collected at the bottom of the page as "not yet available" in Google Dashboard. Seeing how much data you have stashed on Google servers in one go can be somewhat mesmerizing--and if you're so inclined, you might want to go back into moribund services and either clean them out and make them useful. (Somehow, I don't think I'll ever need immediate Web access to my calendar from July 2006.)

I'm a fairly early adopter of most things coming out of Google Labs, so while I don't know that this is a canonical list, here's what I currently see in Dashboard: Account, Alerts, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Reader, Talk, Voice, Web History, and YouTube. (No, I don't have a Wave account yet. Hint, hint.) Services not included: Analytics, AdSense, FeedBurner, Google Base, Google Groups, Maps, News, Page Creator, and Subscribed Links.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go look up a few of those and remind myself just what the heck they do.

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