I’ve recently changed my mobile phone to the ‘snazzy’ HTC Hero.

As the phone’s OS is built on the Google Android platform, many Google doors have opened up and I have duly stepped into them. One of these doors is Google mail, or Gmail depending on how early you have signed up to this excellent FREE service from the guys at Google.

What attracted me intially was the ability for me to store all my phone contacts as Google contacts. This means that they are stored in ‘the clouds’ as oppose to on my SIM card. This contacts list is also my address book in Google Mail. So when I make any edits to my contacts list via the web in Google Mail, my phone’s contact list will update itself. I know, amazing!

The same goes for Goole Calendar. Any event added to the calendar via my phone, will appear within Google Calendar on the web within seconds.

I am now completely ‘cloud based’, although I still have my POP3 account also collecting mails as a backup. I’m sure it won’t be long until I’ve completely fazed this out however.

It seems I’m not alone in embracing cloud based personal organisation. In a recent poll published on CSS Tricks. 53% of people asked, used cloud based email systems compared to 18% local machine based.

Go to CSS Tricks to read more about this poll.