I survived just that harrowing experience, despite being a very heavy user of the wide breath of Google services and products. I was happy to be joined in this crazy little experiment by Nitesh Arora, a relatively light Google user; the contrast in our experiences by the end of the week was very surprising indeed.

Here is our story, in tweets:

So, was that better or worse than you would’ve thought? Up for trying the #GoogleFree experiment yourself, for a week or maybe even longer?

Off the top of my head, here’s a quick list of the Google products I frequently use (and you probably do too):

• Google Search
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs
• Google Maps
• Google Reader
• Google Voice
• Google Chrome
• Google Image Search
• Google News
• Blogger
• YouTube
• FeedBurner
• Picasa
• Google Adsense
• Google Analytics
• Google Checkout
• Google Buzz
• Google Talk
• Google Latitude
• Google Alerts
• Google Groups
• Google Translate
• Google DNS

These are just the ones I personally use; more of you probably use things like Android, Buzz, or Latitude, not to mention all the different Google services hidden in the code of millions of websites across the Internet. The full list of Google products is downright scary (click here if you dare to take a look).

So What’s the Problem?

Other than potentially Facebook, there is no company we trust with more of our personal data. As benevolent as Google may be (their unofficial motto is “don’t be evil“), they are still in the business of harvesting data and finding ways to profit from it.

Even if you don’t trust Google with your mail or calendar, many of their services (Analytics, AdSense, FeedBurner, etc.) are embedded on websites you visit. If you want to view web videos, Google-owned YouTube has become the de facto standard.

Today, it is almost downright impossible to surf the Internet without encountering Google. The privacy implications are astounding.  Heck, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has even suggested everyone be entitled to a name change to avoid the all-seeing eye of Google.

Google isn’t content on resting its laurels on its web services, either…they’re rapidly expanding into operating systems. Google’s Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system, is looming.  It will launch on netbooks, but how long until it is refined enough to run on full laptops and tablets?

Google’s Android operating system for smartphones is also seeing incredible adoption; it’s gone from an iPhone also-ran to doing more than 200,000 activations every day (the iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units in the 3 frenzied days following its launch; Google’s regular pace is now matching that in little over a week year-round).

One Man’s Bold Experiment

Today, I face a dilemma: I willingly use and love many Google services but I am increasingly concerned about the privacy implications. So what am I going to do about it?

Very simple; I’m going to try and go for an entire week without using a single Google service.

My goal isn’t to make this permanent; I think Google provides many great best-of-breed services. What I do hope to do is raise awareness of the pervasiveness of Google and identify some good (and hopefully a few better) alternatives to many Google products.

Effective immediately, I’m blocking all Google services from my computer (with one small caveat; more details tomorrow!). If I click through to a Google-owned website (for instance, shortened YouTube links on Twitter), I will not view the content. I will not use programs that exclusively sync with Google services (for example, desktop RSS readers that sync with Google Reader).

Will this be hard? Honestly, I have no idea. Google has been a major part of my life ever since I started using a computer. Using the Internet without Google is as incredulous an idea to me as using a computer without Internet access.

Could You Go #GoogleFree too?

Think I’m crazy? Think you could you do it too, even if only for a day? Join me on Twitter (I’m @rkudeshi), where I’ll be using the hashtag #GoogleFree to chronicle my journey!

How do you think I will do? Any suggestions on Google alternatives? Chime in below in the comments and let me know what you think about my crazy idea!

More than 2 years. 120-plus weeks. 843 DAYS.  Has it really been that long since I last posted anything to this site?  I honestly can’t believe that much time has elapsed. Where has the time gone, you might ask? Since I last posted:

• Barack Obama, predicted Presidential also-ran, became a Nobel Peace Prize winner,
• Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals at the Olympics and became the new Jared,
• Britney Spears released a terrible album and was on suicide watch,
• Britney Spears released a great album and became the new Miley Cyrus,
• The country faced the worst recession in a century,
• People actually started using Twitter,
• The Writers’ Guild Strike of 2007-2008 nearly ruined an entire season of TV, and
• iPhone hype has become iPad hype.

Those are just some of the things that have happened during my hiatus. But fear not, I’ve been keeping busy myself during this time too. In fact, over the past 2 years, I:

• didn’t do anything too crazy with my hair (except a mohawk for a few days!)
• organized a debate conference,
• gave up optical media,
• fell in love with Alaska,
• watched every episode of Friends,
• learned how to shoot a gun,
• became an Unclutterer,
• met amazing people at LeaderShape,
• bought and sold too much stuff on Craigslist (five figures!),
• created a business,
• started shaving with a straight razor, and
• started a terrible food blog that didn’t work.

The Itch

If the world has been moving along just fine these past few years, why return? I’ll tell you why…the itch.  It’s the itch you get when you hear something interesting on the news and turn to the person next to you to share your opinion.  It’s the itch you get when you’re asked to explain how to do something.  It’s the itch you get when you want to share something with the world.

Well, I’ve been feeling the itch for some time.  In fact, I felt it more than 2 years ago, when I first announced I’d be returning to my blog.  Unfortunately, for a litany of reasons, that didn’t pan out (it was, quite frankly, the worst relaunch of a blog in the history of the world).  But even then, I knew what had to happen for someone who’d felt the itch to get back into blogging:

“But wait…How Do You Get Back Into Really Writing Again?
That’s very simple…you just start writing. You have to find your own personal motivator, and JUST DO IT. It’s not an easy pill to swallow, but trust me, it comes out easier on the other side.”
-How to Call Yourself a Blogger and Never Write Anything

I can safely say that I’m now taking my own advice.  My inspiration has been the great writing of some of my favorite blogs, like Rational Ignorants, Baekdal, Seth Godin, Unclutterer, PaulStmatiou.com, and others.  More than anything, I’ve wanted to be able to have a forum with more than 140 characters to respond and elaborate upon the ideas presented.  For too long, I put off updating this site because I wasn’t happy with the design of it; until I could finish it, I wasn’t ready to start writing again.

“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. I had pieces that were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.”
– Erica Jong

But as we all know, nothing is ever truly finished.  Blogs, more than anything, are the embodiment of this principle.  A blog should be a living, thriving being, a reflection of its imperfect author.  In this vein, I’m going to focus on the writing from here on out and let the other pieces fall into place.

Going Forward

I’d be remiss to believe that anyone still reads this blog right now except for myself and my mother (and even her maternal curiosity has its limits!).  I can’t promise that I’ll post regularly (heck, based on past history, you can’t even be sure I’ll ever post again), but I am aiming to start slowly and build from there.

Last time around, I wanted to talk about “personal productivity and development.”  So much for being a productive blogger, eh?  This time, I’m going to just start writing and let the direction of the blog evolve over time.

I hope you’ll stick around and be a part of the conversation.  It’s a brave new (media) world out there, and I’m just itching to get back into the fray of it!

Do you think I’m crazy to return or coming back just at the right time? Let me know what you think by commenting below or tweeting me on Twitter (@rkudeshi)!

That’s right, RaviUdeshi.com is proud to announce its relaunch today, the second anniversary of its original launch, as hinted at previously. RaviUdeshi.com v3.1 features a brand-new look and is streamlined to present valuable content first and foremost.

In the past, this site has focused on personal narratives that were only interesting to friends and family; that will no longer be the focus from here on out. All such posts have been deleted to make room for brand new content…

A look back at the previous version of this site…

Beginning today, RaviUdeshi.com will feature articles that aim to help people with personal productivity and development, injected with that trademark “non-humor” we’re so famous for. You know, like writing in the 3rd-person like this.

In the near future, you can expect topics to include things like…

• How To Help A Charity Without Spending Time or Money
• Going Bald Might Be the Best Thing You Do Today
• How to Legally Watch TV Shows Online for Free
• How to Legally Listen to Music Online for Free
• How to Change Your Google/Gmail Username
• I Get No Spam and Can Teach You How To Do the Same
• The Best New TV Shows of the Fall 2007 Season
• Why Students Should Get Their Own Domain Name When Starting College
• How RSS Feeds Save You Time and Money
• How to Read Hundreds of RSS Feeds in Less Than 1 Hour A Day
• How to Become a Teenage Media Mogul
• and plenty more!

As you can see, I’m excited to teach you everything I know about becoming more productive and living happier in the coming days. Also, starting next week, we’ll have weekly videos to show off the more “creative” side of how to live happy. And who knows, you might even see a new song on here every once in a while, too!

But how will you know when I update the site with all this awesome stuff? You can subscribe to our RSS feed (click here to learn more about what RSS is and how it can save you time every day) or sign up for an email update whenever there is new content!

I hope you return when the new content starts trickling on out…until then, what do you think of the new direction for RaviUdeshi.com ?

5 Ways to Keep “Blogging” Without Actually Writing Posts

1. Keep Up With Blogging News

To call yourself a professional blogger, you have to keep up with news in the blogosphere. There’s no better way to do that than reading some of the best blogs about blogging out there. From tips about maintaining simplicity in your content and design to writing content that’s fresh and eye-catching, there is a veritable smorgasboard of information out there. Tap into this wealth of content and you will have the knowledge to be ready at a moment’s notice to write the perfect article that attracts millions of visitors and crashes your site from the Digg effect.

2. Keep Working On Your Site’s Design

Most professional bloggers will tell you that content is king — worry about writing your best material first, and the visitors will come no matter how ugly your site. I’ve taken the opposite approach for the better part of 2 years; I’ve constantly tweaked the design of this site while hardly writing anything. Lucrative it may not be, but when the random Google visitor drops by, at least they think they’re looking at a work of art. From tweaking sidebars to have eye-catching RSS chicklets to rotating beautiful photos in your header, its vital to ensure that the presentation of your blog is evolving…especially if your content has been left to extinction.

3. Work On Your Supporting Content

If you don’t write new content, it means that people will gravitate to your old standbys — those static pages that WordPress users love to create and forget about it. It is incredibly important to make sure that this supporting cast is updated and presentable because when you get a reader who likes your site and doesn’t find anything else to read, they’re going to start looking around. Make sure to keep content like your About page fresh and create new things like a Legal Policy that features a robust Privacy Policy and intended-to-be-boring Terms of Service (both copied and modified from Auttomatic, Inc’s excellent examples, under proper attribution of a Creative Commons license).

4. Take On Other Projects

If you’re not going to write for your own blog, you might as well work on some others. I’ve personally undertaken responsibility for the site of a school organization in which I’m heavily involved (gmuMUN.org), while you might be more interested in writing for group blogs or creating site designs for bloggers who actually write. If properly monetized, this can be one of the more financially-rewarding ways to “not blog” while still retaining that prestigious title of “Blogger.”

5. Always Set a Date for Your Return

You can’t call yourself a blogger unless you intend to write again in the future. Thus, you need to set a date that readers can expect your next piece of amazing content to arrive…it keeps them coming back to your site, even if the rest of your content is stale. For example, this blog will be back and better than ever on October 25th…have you marked your calendars yet?

But wait…How Do You Get Back Into Really Writing Again?

That’s very simple…you just start writing. You have to find your own personal motivator, and JUST DO IT. It’s not an easy pill to swallow, but trust me, it comes out easier on the other side. This post was precipitated in the hopes of winning a theme song for this site’s videoblogs, a great prize availabe from an amazing contest that Problogger is running. That’s all there was to it…find something that incentivizes your next post (a prize, maybe AdSense money, possibly increasing your RSS subscribers), and just start writing again. Its like riding a bike again, without the possibility of falling and cracking open your skull (Always wear a helmet!).

That’s all for today, folks. As mentioned before, I highly encourage you to return for this site’s relaunch on October 25th (*cough*October 25th*October 25th*October 25th*cough*). I’ve gotten back to writing for this site…what’s stopping you from doing the same?

This Exclusive Preview sponsored by Problogger and the desire for a theme song; Don’t forget to come back on October 25th, this blog’s official relaunch date!

When I do something, I do it right. Of course I have the standard MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc…but do I actually use them? Of course not. I felt that I needed to have control over my own web identity, and thus this site was born. Is this funny yet? I doubt it, but hopefully future posts will be (in fact, they’ll be funny like a stick of butter on a monkey’s head…this makes no sense, but you laughed, right? exactly :-D).

I was going to tell you a bunch of stuff about myself, but I figured that information would be relevant to any visitor to this site. As such, I’ve posted (probably way too much) information about me in the section, appropriately titled, “About Me.” You’ll find an abundance of interesting and informational, uhm, information about me there. Have fun reading it.

I figure I should outline my goals for this site as well in my first “real” post here. I’m hoping to use this site as not only a repository for information about me, but to use it as a source of therapeutic healing — uhm, yeah. I’ve heard posting to a blog can relieve stress, and believe me I could use it in that case. In all seriousness, I hope that this site will cater to three purposes specifically: (1) an online presence for myself in case anyone is ever interested, (2) a way of telling you amusing anecdotes that I dont necessarily have to repeat to anyone curious and (3) a depository of media for, about, by, and of myself. Without being too vague, I’ll just say that you will hopefully see some interesting things posted here now and way into the future (like way into the future when Jenna Bush and Chelsea Clinton have a runoff for Empress of the World).

Noting what I want to do with this site, its important to mention the other half of this blog — you. I’ll be posting as often as necessary, but it just wont be the same without comments and discussion. I wont censor comments, negative or not (so long as they aren’t profane), so feel free to tell me what you want through this site. Seriously, please post…pretty please with an inevitably rotten by the time you read this cherry on top — it is appreciated in advance.

With all that said, I just have one last thing to say:
“Thank you, please come again.”

:-D

UPDATE: This site was relaunched on June 30, 2007 (one year after its former incarnation ceased posting).� Content previously available was since removed, although you may see some references peppered throughout the site.