MacMost: Google

When you add a Google Gmail account to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you can get email, calendar and notes syncing, but not contacts. To add contacts, you need to add the Google account a second time, as a CardDAV account. Then you can see your Google contacts in your Contacts app.

Episode 833 contained some useful Google search tricks. Here are 10 more. Learn how to translate a word, graph a formula, get the time in another city, lookup stock information, pronounce a word, list recent earthquakes and more. Also see some Google easter eggs and how to list all Google Doodles.

The Chrome browser is a good free alternative to Safari for Mac that is very similar in many respects. But it does offer some interesting features such as the incognito window, task manager, site information menu and Flash encapsulation. It is a good idea to have multiple browsers on your Mac and familiarize yourself with the features of each.

Google Maps has been around for a while and there are many advanced techniques that users may no know about. For instance, you can adjust routes to include more locations by simply dragging. You can show someone a map location by sending them a short URL. You can also get directions for public transportation, walking and biking.

You can use the Google app to perform voice searches that return similar results to using Siri. Google voice searches can often be faster because your voice is interpreted on the phone, rather than being processed by a remote server. But Google voice search isn't integrated with iOS like Siri, so using both is your best option.

You can use a Google Calendar on Mac or your iOS device just as easily as you can use an iCloud calendar. There is no need to 'sync' between them as using one or the other is all that is needed. Google Calendars can be shared between your Mac, iOS, Android and Windows devices.

Google Drive spreadsheets is a good alternative to using desktop apps like Excel and Numbers. It is a fairly sophisticated number crunching program that has all of the major features seen in those others. All you need is to use your web browser and a free Google account.

Today's Google Maps app provides the basic functionality of the old Google Maps app. But you have to add this free app yourself as it no longer comes pre-installed on iOS. You can use both Apple Maps and Google Maps on your device, and it is worth having it as an alternative.

You can do much more with a Google search than just enter plain search terms. You can use modifiers like quotes, dashes and asterisks to search for more specific things. You can also search on a particular web site or for specific terms in a page title. There are also many bits of information that you can find without having to leave Google, such as definitions, weather, movie times, flight times and conversions.

It is quick and easy to create an online survey using Google Drive. You can simply add some questions to a form and then publish it, sending the link to the people you wish to take the survey. You can then get the results in a spreadsheet. It is so easy to create one of these that you can use them to help with all sorts of work, school or personal tasks.

iOS 6 removes the old Google Maps app and replaces it with the new Apple Maps app. While this new app features flyover and spoken turn-by-turn directions, people miss Google Maps features like Street View and biking directions. You can get those back, plus the familiar Google Maps look by simply going to the Google Maps web site in Safari. You will get a iPhone-specific version of the maps site, and be able to access Street View and more.

With RSS reading functionality being removed from Safari and Mail in Mountain Lion, it is a good time to come up with an alternative. Google offers a free, easy-to-use and powerful RSS reader web site. It also works with several different apps so you can read your news on different devices and keep your data in sync.

Google Drive is a new cloud storage system that is tied into Google Docs and your Gmail account. It is similar to DropBox and also offers a reasonable amount of storage space for free. You can use it to sync documents between your Macs or simply keep backup copies. You can also share Google Drive files with others.

Another alternative to using iWeb and MobileMe hosting is the free Google Sites product. You can create a simple web page or seers of pages and let Google host it for free. There are tons of templates to choose from and the pages are highly customizable. You can even make files available for download.

A great alternative to iWeb and MobileMe web hosting the Google's free Blogger service. You can use your Google or Gmail ID and create blogs using various templates and features. It many ways it is more advanced than iWeb. You can even assign a custom domain, track statistics and post articles via email.

Google's Chrome browser is an interesting alternative to the pre-installed Safari browser. The address field and tabs behave differently and you can extend the browser using Google's web store. Take a look at Chrome and then check it out for yourself.

Carriers charge a premium for text messaging bandwidth. But you can send and receive text messages for free using some apps. With a Google Voice account and the Google Voice app, you can send, receive and get notifications of incoming messages even when the app isn't running.