Like many people I use Outlook professionally and Gmail personally. For those of us who have adopted Gmail and the full service of Google applications, we long for more integration between our various email accounts and calendars. I know one person who goes so far as to double up her professional calendar on Lotus Notes with her personal Google calendar. I’m personally not willing to do that much double work so when I heard about the Outlook gadget for iGoogle I knew I had to check it out.

Basically, this gadget (not to be confused with a “widget” which is the same thing though Apple has cornered the verbiage on that word so companies like Microsoft and Google have adopted “gadget” to say the same thing) brings your Outlook email, calendar, tasks, and contacts right into your iGoogle page. It’s really pretty handy. If there’s any drawback to this gadget it’s that you have to open the tab in Internet Explorer if you’re a Firefox user. The instructions give you a step by step process for how to do that and it’s easily done in about two minutes.

I’ve been using this gadget for a week now and have been happy with it for the most part. If there’s anything I dislike most it’s just the fact that I have a tab in Explorer and anything I click within iGoogle now opens up as a new Explorer tab. It’s not a big deal most of the time but I use the Del.icio.us extension in Firefox and it’s not compatible with the Explorer tabs. Like I said, it’s not usually a big deal but it has been a speed bump a couple of times. All in all, the benefits have outweighed the drawbacks so I plan to stick with it.

[HT to Ray for the link with other great iGoogle gadgets.]

The culture that surrounds technology is an interesting thing. There are dividing lines between the people who are “in” and everybody else. A little over a year ago I learned that the people who are “in” don’t use Microsoft Explorer for their browser…they use Firefox. Firefox introduced (or at least popularized) the tab browsing function which means you don’t have to use numerous individual windows running anymore but just his Ctrl+T (Apple+T for the Mac folks) and BOOM…a new window is ready to go in the original window you opened.

The Firefox guys really got it right when they started letting people create add-ons that let you do all kinds of stuff to customize your browser. Its popularity has soared and the Firefox users became evangelists for the browser.

Firefox just recently released version 2.0 and it seems very sweet as usual. Interestingly enough, there’s a new Microsoft Explorer now that strangely Firefoxish.

In the tech culture, there are a few products or services that elicit emotional responses from the user base. Apple computers tend to fall in this elite category. So does Firefox. I recommend Firefox because it’s a great browser…the coolness is just gravy.