Social BUZZ in Gmail

Yesterday I got this all new Buzz in my Gmail.

You can follow me in buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/aritra.slg

This is the third product from Google in a row after New Orkut and Google Wave.Recently Google also integrated real time Twitter updates in its search engine.So after Twitter integration,Google wave and now with Buzz you can say that Google trying hard to get into this real time business.

So what is this Buzz is all about?

  • Its a real time section which is integrated into you Gmail and it is mainly to share your status updates also your favorite links,images,videos with your friends.
  • Connected sites: Shared contents from Google Reader,Twitter updates,Image sharing sites like:Picasa and Flickr,Updates from your Blogger and You Tube accounts.

  • Following:Comes with same Twitter concept like you get the updates from people whom you are following.But here Buzz comes with auto following and also suggests you users to follow.

  • Private and Public sharing: You can share contents with either everybody or with your few selected friends i.e a group.You can create several Groups in your Google contacts.I prefer private settings for my Picasa and flickr accounts.
  • Comments and Like:You can comment under status updates and also can like any status update by pressing the like button.
  • @Reply or Tagging: Another concept from Twitter like you want to mention or tag any user or multiple users in status update area or in the comment section area.Just put @ then start typing the name you would get a drop down  for the list of users.

Mention users in status updates or in comment section

  • Inbox integration:Buzz just does not want you to miss any comments that is why it will give you notifications in form of mails in your Gmail inbox itself.I would have liked a different section for this notifications because cleaning up inbox every now and then is not my favorite work.
  • Mobile Support: iPhone users and Android users can access Buzz in their in their mobile handsets through Buzz.Google.com.Still no other handset supports Buzz.This is where buzz lacks.The main reason for Twitter’s popularity was that at first Twitter targeted mobile users and it also allows you to update status through SMS which is still not available in Buzz.You can also post Geo tag enabled Buzz from Google Maps.

My verdict is that I like Buzz because I love sharing my status update,Links etc and Buzz looks to be a great sharing platform for us.

So do you like Buzz,Would you use it more regularly?Share your views in comments and do share with us which feature you like the most or what are the features you want to see in Buzz?

Thanks.

Google Buzz
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All about iPad

On January 27th Apple launched it’s much awaited tablet iPad.It came after one year long speculations.It will be available in market from March(Still I don’t have any idea when iPad would be available in India).Well that night when I was tweeting my timeline was only(almost) with Apple events live tweets and out of the top 10 trending topics there were seven related to iPad and ongoing Apple event.Later I came to know that there were 177,000 tweets in the first hour during the event.

Well Steve Jobs describes it as “Our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price”.They says that its 9.7″ touch screen tablet which is here to fill up the gap between Macbook and iPhone.

Let me first discuss about the price.There are 6 models like:

16GB:- $499(wifi) and $629(wifi+3G)

32GB:-$599(wifi) and $729(wifi+3G)

64GB:-$699(wifi) and $829(wifi+3G)

Here are features that you will get in iPad:

  • 9.7″ LCD touch screen.
  • 10 hours battery life(If you are playing video) and 1 month standby time.
  • Bluetooth.
  • In built web browser
  • Email client.
  • You tube client.
  • The screen has IPS(in plan switching) which helps to give better visual effects when you are not looking at it as a flat screen.
  • Model comes with 3G and Wifi facilities.
  • Photo viewer with geotagging and slide show features.
  • Inbuilt music player which is more likely to iTunes and also iTunes store.
  • Maps,Calender, Address book.
  • Movie plays with an aspect ration of 4:3.
  • Supports all iPhone applications and also you can synchronize iPhone and iPod with this iPad.
  • A paint application.
  • iBooks: Apples own ebook application.
  • iWork: Too build presentation and spreadsheets etc.
  • iPad can also be synchronized with projector and desktop.

Here are few features which are missing in iPad:

  • You can not do multitasking.
  • iPad does not have any USB port or SD slots.
  • No drag and drop of files.
  • No flash support.
  • No camera which is the most disappointing thing for me because it discards video chat/conferencing and you can’t take pictures and upload it to facebook/flickr.
  • Wifi version doesn’t have GPS and 3G is not with full GPS.

Though they says its to fill up the gap between Macbook and iPhone but I don’t see its use if you have both a laptop and a smart phone.

Thanks

Google Buzz
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Orkut vs Facebook

I had to put it like Orkut vs Facebook.It was about Orkut and Facebook but at last it turned into Orkut vs Facebook.Well this is coming from a series of discussion which took place in my facebook profile after I putted a status update as shown in the below image.

Facebook Status

After that It got 62 comments and amount of information about social networking came from those comments are immense.So I thought that I should not waste those information in facebook and I should blog it here.I am sharing that not to run down anybody who participated there in that healthy discussion.Now I am putting all the informative comments(skipping which are not that informative) one by one:-

Kuntal Gupta:1 Fact i know is that facebook and myspace were way before orkut.

Bibhas Ch Debnath: Actually FB launched 13 days after Orkut launched. So, I dont think it took the ideas from Orkut(it ’s not possible for someone to build FB in 13days). Anyone thinking that is thinking crap. And I’d also really protest on the point that Orkut’s UI is better..

Aritra Sen:This is info- facebooks 1st named was facemash which was invented by mark zuckerberg on 28th oct 2003,then facebook named as thefacebook after that the final name is facebook and orkut launched on 22nd jan 2004.

Suman Paul: good info then u must have known that facemash was initially only for harvard university students and officially it was launched on feb 2004,,, actually he didn’t know how to create a centralized website untill jan 2004, soon after orkut was launched

Bibhas: Tell SUMAN, that they of course knew how to create a centralized website. FaceMash was a college project. They perfected it into Facebook.

Aritra Sen: and speaking about UI do we get this b-e-a-utifull dropdown comment section in that New orkut which tried to copy facebook but forgot to copy the like button thingy? :-p

Nikhil Wad: I have used Orkut before but as my most of contacts use Facebook, am on FB now. Orkut I feel is used by max students also but on FB I feel its social and business networking too. My side FB gets +1

Bibhas: Actually FB is more Pro than Orkut. if I were to compare, I’d do FB to a Community hall and Orkut to a Open Street. And Not To Forget, Twitter is more like a Classroom.. :)

Jayeeta Sil:for me orkut +1………photo album privacy much better….. most of da time it fails….sum weird thng…it fails to work….i hv myself seen pics frm albums who claim to hv kept under locked settings…it dsn’t happen wid orkut….

Aritra: opsiii in facebook you can do friend specific updates and i hope u know the recent facebook privacy policy and activated that.
for me orkut also +1 for photo sharing as i say orkut is just a photo sharing album for me nothing else to do there :-P

Aritra: Btw its not about facebook vs orkut (in that case facebook will anyday n always) its about is it true- facebook came later after getting the idea from orkut? and whose UI is better?

Nishant Vora: UI is always supposed to be judged by the simplicity and elegancy of it. That’s why MySpace fails at times, because of all that bloated HTML on user’s profile. Orkut maybe better at ‘looks’ with all those themes. Facebook has better features. Right now, if I favorite a video on Youtube, Digg a page, add something to delicious, update my blog, …upload new photos to flickr/photobucket, rate something on my last.fm, start using a new application on my PC (tracked via Wakoopa), and several other instances… All this is automatically shown on my FB profile. Also, I update my Twitter from anywhere.. my PC, mobile web, txt and the updates go to FB. There’s an app on Orkut ‘twitkut’ but afaik it does not automatically update on its own. Nothing of that sort on Orkut. Orkut is simply.. 1 scrapbook. Fill ‘er up with absolutely no thread facility to keep different conversations separately grouped. All Orkut could do to improve is allow comments on status updates in the ‘new Orkut’. That still sucks, if you compare it to Facebook.

Nishant: But then again it goes down to how you use them. In my opinion, I do prefer the communities on Orkut better than FB, or maybe because I don’t even visit any groups here. Or if people do not wish to keep this complexity of threaded messages, they can stick to Orkut for an all-in-one scrapbook.
At this point, there are 3 reasons a person might rant about FB, like whoever you mention in your status:
1) Narrow mindedness. Refusing to migrate to something new. It takes time to adjust, but it will only work out for you if you actively take interest in it….

2) They’re ok with the simple features of Orkut as I said above.. Photos, 1 Scrapbook (to boast of that uber scrapcount which you can’t on FB), and Communities.
3) They’re dumb at everything Facebook has got to offer, they’re an average Internet user, with no need of collaboration or resource sharing, what is easily done via Twitter and FB now, and not really feasible on Orkut. And since they don’t get all this ‘complicated stuff’, they start to rant and complain at how it sucks and cloned and blah blah.

Suman:  hello to all, thats me whom aritra is referring to…
this all started when i said “ orkut ir better
anyways thanx for all of ur useful opinions…..everyone shared all pros & cons..but now u r diverting frm the topic..
now i would like to add a few things..
1 well as we all know that facebook was launched 13 days later than orkut,,but facebook was started on oct 13 2008 as facemash…then dont u think that orkut also must have taken some time to develope which i dont know, hence i’m considering at the launching date……
2 about the like button i didn’t like it though
3 how a college student is supposed to know about how to create a centralized website.. that too 7 years back…

Nishant: I don’t understand as to why you’re adamant on sticking to arguing over who copied whom (even though it’s pointless). Every service tries to implement some or the other trend from it’s rivals, to keep going. If it doesn’t, the users themselves will start complaining how a certain feature is available on one site, and not on the other. An example is…how Facebook copied tagging users in a post from Twitter. No one’s going to rant over it being copied, rather welcome it for raising the communication bar on Facebook by collaborating via posts with upto 6 friends in a status (tag limit).

Tamoghno Karmokar: I agree that orkut have better interace.but facebook have better support with 3rd party apps and specially mobile.so using facebook is much easier. Just think about it , i upload a picture using flickr2twitter service using my phone’s email client , it automatically appears on my friends twitter timeline and also appear on my facebook. Beat that orkut.

Aritra: @Tamoghno can you explain in what way Orkut has better interface?I know you are not a average Internet user and yes 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck/Hootsuite and we should not forgot about facebook’s notification support for everything (now even you can reply from email notifications)

Tamoghno: by better interface i mean easier to understand. i still need to make people understand the concept of “wall” insted of “scrap”. also more custimization option means its more confusing for average indian people. before customization , facebook looks somewhat blank and confusing to me.

Bibhas: According to the latest Source, The number of active FB user is more than 350 million, whereas Orkut has around 100 million users.. It seems to me that There are some reasons behind this, dont u think? or those extra 250million people are so Stupid that they cant understand User friendliness.. Sigh..

And also Twitter has only around 45 million users but the worldwide traffic in Twitter(14) faaaar more than Orkut(79).
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Thanks.

Google Buzz
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How to Share Google Reader Contents in Twitter

Previously I wrote How to share in Orkut and recently I was thinking how to share my Google reader contents with my Twitter Followers as I love sharing with my friends what I know.Most of us use Google reader for feed reader.There may be so many ways you can share you reader contents in Twitter,But I got this Reader2Tweet technique which is a quite simple one so I am sharing this technique with you.

1.Open this Reader2Tweet page.

2.Sign in with your Twitter account(Oauth Authentication)

3.Then they will ask you for your Google Reader Number Id.Now how to get it?click the shared items button in reader.Then check your browser address bar,from there you can get the Id-as shown below.

Reader Id(discard %2F)

Or you can get the Id in sharing setting in shared items.

Showing Reader Id

4.You can also set the shared items format in your Tweets,now submit and share your reader contents in Twitter.Now when you wouldl share contents with your followers in reader(by pressing the share button)also a tweet would be sent to your Twitter account.

If you know better way than this then do share with us in comment section.

Thanks.

Google Buzz
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Well let me tell you first that this blog post is just because of my facebook status update and all the credit goes to Nishant and I am just sharing with you.This post is dedicated to the lazy people like me and Nishant :P

Picasa is an awesome software from Google to manage pictures in your system and also to edit them.Facebook is the most popular social network to connect and share everything with your friends and Flickr as they say “Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world”

Well if you are lazy like me you can upload the photos from Picasa to facebook and in flickr.For this you need go through few steps:

1.Acess Picasa in your system if you don’t have Picasa then download Picasa here.

2.Scan your system with Picasa for images.

3.In Picasa download and install facebook plugin and flickr plugin.

4.After installation you will get facebook and flickr button in Picasa

Showing Buttons in Picasa

5.Now select the photos and and press facebook/flickre buttons to upload.First they would ask you to login and the to select album or create new album.

Twitterholic tweeps check this flickr2twitter so that you upload photos to flickr from Picasa and it would redirect to your Twitter profile.

What is disappointing is that though Orkut is from Google there are no plugins to upload photos in your orkut profile from Picasa.You can upload photos in orkut scraps the photos which you have uploaded in your Picasa web profile.

Thanks.

Google Buzz
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How to Share in Orkut

As its saying below “sharing is caring”.It really is.Sharing your favorite web contents in a social network is a cool thing.It spreads the knowledge among your friends also makes you a constant source of knowledge to your friends in social networks like Twitter,Facebook,Orkut.If you are sharing contents of your friends blog then you are also helping your friend,giving his/her blog/site a good traffic.So do share your favorite web contents with your friends.

Well this sharing thing is mainly associated with social sites like Facebook,Twitter etc and not with Orkut.But with New Orkut now you can easily share web contents with your Orkut friends.To share easily you need to put a bookmark in your bookmark toolbar.To get the link for bookmark open this link and you will get the code for different browsers.Just drag and drop the icon(showing below) to your bookmark toolbar.

after this go to the page you want to share in Orkut then press the Orkut share button in your bookmark toolbar it will redirect to the to the share conformation page like below.After that check your profile.

Here are some Plug in for wordpress users to enable orkut share in their blog Orkut Share and SexyBookmarks

Thanks.

Google Buzz
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How to make TweetDeck fast

Well my favorite Twitter/Facebook desktop application is TweetDeck.To me this is the best desktop application mainly for Twitter because of its simple interface and also it is faster than any other desktop Twitter applications.The version 0.32.1 comes with so many extra features like its integrated the new retweet feature,LinkedIn account etc.You can also add your other accounts as shown below.

Add accounts

Actually when I recommendTweetdeck to my friends they ask why it is so slow so this post this post is just for them and mainly who are using slow internet connection.You can easily make TweetDeck fast with some manipulation in settings.Here are few techniques:-

1.Always try to login in Tweetdeck with less columns like I login with two columns-Twitter home timeline and Twitter mentions after loading these columns I add other columns like Twitter list,facebook columns etc.This technique assures faster login into TweetDeck.

Adding Columns after login

Adding Columns after login

2.Hide the previously loaded updates/direct messages this also assures faster login after restart.

Settings

Settings

3.If you enable the use auto-complete for user names you don’t have to remember the user handles.When you will press @ then the search list for users will come out.

Autocomplete Username

Autocomplete Username

4.For faster loading at the start you need minimize the max no of updates per API call and in a column as your requirements.

TweetDeck Settings1

5.Before logout or closing the application press the mark all as seen button.

TweetDeck Settings4

Mark all as seen button

6.When you will paste a huge link in update area it would be shortened automatically.You can also share pictures just by uploading the pictures with drag and drop in the updates status area.

I hope this would help you.Please add your suggestions and your doubts in comments.

Thanks.

Share/Bookmark

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My feedback about RT feature

Twitter Recently added the retweet button to the most the tweeps profile.I got it also and yesterday I have given my feedback to Twitter.This retweet project from Twitter is all about making the RT thing official from there side.In this feature you got two new things in your profile a retweet button and retweet section just below the favorites section.When you will click this retweet section u will get three sections-Retweets by others,Retweets by you and Your tweets retweeted.The good thing is that you will get to see who many tweets have retweeted a tweet.

Another thing is that they ask you before you are retweeting a tweet.To me its just a extra step.
My feedback was upon three points:

1.It is so disappointing that we can’t edit the original tweet.We can’t even add our own comment to that tweet.

2.Retweets done from the official site does not appear in the other Twitter applications like Tweetdeck,Seesmic,Snaptu etc.So if you are using this applications you wont be able to see retweets coming from the site.

3.To me its a bit hectic to check the retweet section.Previously RT’s which I got,used to appear in my @aritrasen which was a simpler thing to me.

I hope that we will get to see some manipulations in this retweet project to make it perfect.

Thanks.

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