Before it is too late, save your Google data locally ......

Google is taking a new approach to China. This is a big deal!

For my friends in China who are heavy Google products users. It is a time to save all your Google data locally.

Fortunately, Google is in the Data Liberation Front, and it is relative easy to move your data in and out of Google products.

For Gmail, enable POP or IMAP in your Gmail account and download all emails locally. If you still want to use Gmail after the potential ban, enable the auto-forwarding. Google Labs has "Filter Import/Export" tool to take care the email filters in your account.

For Google Contacts, export them to the format you prefer.

For Google Calendar, exporting is easy.

For Google Chrome Bookmarks, export the bookmarks as a HTML file.

For Google Voice, you need to download voice messages one-by-one.

For Google Sites, please use an open-source tool google-sites-liberation.

Once the tool has been downloaded, double-click on the JAR file to launch the application. You will be presented with the following screen.

Enter the required information and click "Export" to download your site as XHTML. The downloaded site will not be styled and will not include the chrome and is completely unstyled, but will contain all of the content included in the site.

For Google Analytics, follow this instruction.

For Google Reader, export your feeds as an OPML file.

By the way, I am completely neutral on this event. Both parties have their own reasons. For users like me, keep my data in a safe and accessible place is the only thing I care about.