I'm not a gizmo savy person. I use gadgets very minimally. Till now I haven't used the two most popular gadgets of the recent times - iPod and iPhone!! For the past few years I've got used to using a few things so extensively that I can't think anything without those. I consider these as indispensible gadgets.
Picasa
The first and foremost thing that I can't be without is Google, with its various products. I was never addicted to orkut or gmail. The first google product that I got addicted to was Picasa. For quite some time I was having serious problems with managing my photos and Picasa gave me just the features that I needed. The Picasa tool has a very simple and user friendly GUI for downloading pictures from digital cameras or from any folder in hard disk. It automatically scans your computer and creates albums chronologically. It comes very handy when you change your computer/laptop and would like to transfer all your photos. It helps you create slick photo CDs for gifting. But the most important aspect of Picasa is the picasaweb for uploading your photos to the web. It's very fast and very user friendly. It's the only means by which I remain apprised of the latest developments with my parents, relatives and friends with everyone staying at a different place.
Google Maps
When I saw my own house in Bangalore in Google Maps, that was just a fantastic experience. I believe everyone was stuck with awe when they identified their houses, schools, colleges, work places and not only that, but also their favourite spots like some particular vista spot in Grand Canyon or Niagra Falls. Even after the initial awe died down, still Google Maps remained a very useful thing. It's now a must to check out for a place before going for a vacation. It gives you a very good idea about the sorroundings, locales, terrains etc, everything that you might need to know. Google Maps also has an application for mobile phones which uses GPRS to identify your rough location on map. This can be used as a very approximate GPS.
Google Apps
I'm just in love with Google Apps. I was planning to create my own home page. I was somehow convinced that Google would be having, for sure, something or the other to help me and yes, they had everything I needed starting from buying a portal for me and providing me with all the applications to create and publish web-pages. It's almost free of cost. It takes just US $10 a year to maintain your own site through Google Apps. It's also very useful for startups. You can get a domain name (say sudiptofdas.com), a complete email system (names@sudiptodas.com) for 200 users with all facilities of gmail, all applications to host your official home page (www.sudiptodas.com in my case), a provision to create, update and maintain all your MS documents (doc, ppt & excel) online and also all applications to make your intra-net - all for $10 a year. I think any startup can make full use of this till they grow beyond 200 people!!
Youtube
Well, though I'm a late entrant to this, still this has become quite indispensible because that's the only way to keep in touch with family members and friends scattered all over the world. I made the best use of it in Feb 2008 during the marriage of my niece. I was regularly uploading videos of the entire marriage ceremony in youtube and my brother was seeing every now and then from US!! Now I don't think I can do without it.
Google Chrome Browser
I've started using this. It's good though some of the websites don't open properly with it. But it's surey more user friendly than IE. If the initial glitches are fixed Chrome will give tough competition to IE and Firefox.
Nero
This is really the first hi-tech application that I've used and now it's a very important part of my life!! It all started when I bought my DVD camcorder. The video editing software that came with the camcorder was of no use. One of my friends suggested using Nero and henceforth I just got addicted to it. It's perhaps the most universal media application. You can read in any media file (audio or video) in any damn format and convert to anything. You can edit/create your own DVDs/VCDs from camcorder recordings and do a hell lot of things with Nero. You have to just get used to it!!
Sony Ericsson K850i
I've been always a loyal Sony Ericsson customer. I never used any other phone in my life. But I really like my latest possession - K850i. Perhaps the reason I never used Blackberry or iPhone is that I never found it neccessary. I can do everything in the world that I can think about doing with a phone or laptop. First of all it has a 5Mega Pixel Sony CyberShot Digital Camera capable of recording pretty decent quality videos in MP4 format. Lately I've been using my phone almost everywhere as a full fledged digital camera. People just can't believe that all my pictures are taken with a phone!! It has Edge & 3G, which means that when 3G is launched in India I don't have to change my set. It has a modem which means that I can use it to connect to my laptop and have mobile broadband. The browsing speed is quite decent both in laptop and phone which has a pretty decent internet browser. I get close to 50-60kbps speed in phone and laptop. (I heard that iPhone still doesn't connect to laptop as a modem). It supports POP3/IMAP/ exchange mails. Which means that I can see my gmail and office mails in Outlook exchange server. I feel it's much better than Blackberry service because it's much more cheaper and simpler and also unlike Blackberry if you delete any mail from your phone the same gets deleted from your gmail server and also excahnge server thus keeping your phone and laptop always in synch. It also has a synchronizer which keeps your Outlook contacts, calendars, notes etc in synch with the same in your phone. This means that you always have access to all your contacts and appointments where ever you go, even if you are not carrying your laptop with you. There are plenty of other features which are all very 'cool' but not as useful as what I've mentioned.
Violin
Well, though I won't call it a gadget, but it's something that's the most indispensible for me. I even carried it with me to US a few times. It's something that's more important than any other gadget - that's my violin!!
