As Google has temporally suspended the invitation process due to ‘insane’ demand,I am feeling alone in Google+ and thought about writing this post and letting you all know about the features of Google+ as long as you are not getting the Google+.

Here are the few features you will have in Google+:

Google+ Circles: Circles are like Twitter List or Facebook friend-list.But it’s far easier to use than Twitter List or Friend list of Facebook.It’s attractive and clean drag and drop feature to select people and drop in Circles makes it easier to deal with.Circles in a way helps you to share your updates according to the people you want to share and also helps you to filter you timeline i.e Stream.While updating your status you can select the Circle with which you want to share your Status updates/photos/videos or you make the Status Update public through which all the circles can see your updates

Stream+Sparks

Google + Stream: Google+ having a Facebook like Timeline,good thing about Stream is you can filter your Stream in accordance with the Circles you have created.By selecting one particular circle you would only see updates from the users belonging to that particular circle only.By selecting the Incoming section you will get to updates from group of people not belonging to any circles.

Google+ Sparks:Now a days we mainly consider Twitter from social media as a big source of news.Well Google has done a great job to let you track your interests from Google+,you can search,select and add your interests here to get the recommended links here.

After adding your interests later you click on the sparks and it will redirect to a page which will exclusively feed you news and links according to what you have selected.

Google+ Profile: Your Google+ profile is nothing but your old Google profile with linked profiles and with a new feature +1.Well they say +1 is the new like button.The +1 section shows the links which you recommend by clicking the +1 button during your browsing.Now most of the sites,blogs have started incorporating the +1 button.+1 button also comes up during Google search.Your Picasa albums also can be shared in your Google+ profile.

Google+ Profile navigation bar

Google+ Hangout: It’s specially a Google+ web oriented killer feature.You can start a hangout and can have a  group video chat with 10 people at one go.For this you just need to download the plugin for Video chat.

instant upload

Google+ huddle and Instant uploads: These two features are mainly mobile application oriented.Through huddle you can chat with a group of people or with individual people on the go.Google will send you push notifications to your mobile when you will receive text in huddle.

Google+ mobile application is available in Android market.Instant Upload in mobile application uploads photos/videos you take with your phone to a private album on Google+, where it’s easy for you to share them later from your phone or the web.There is a section in photos tab of web version to select photos from your phone.

Google+ Tagging: You can tag your friends in status updates or in comment section by putting + sign then the name the person you want to tag.

Here are few features of Google+ which Facebook needs to incorporate:

1.There are no 420 letters limit in Google+ like Facebook.You can write as much as you want to write.

2.For the typo masters like me there is a option Edit this post.To correct your typos after posting your update you can edit the post and make the required corrections.You don’t need to delete the post to make changes.

Edit this Post

3.In Google+ you have the power to approve/disapprove photo tags when somebody tags you in photos,this is the much needed feature which is missing in Facebook.You can also select default circles/people whose tags would be automatically approved.

Photo Tagging

Few things I personally miss in Google+ is custom URLs for user profile like we have for our Twitter/Facebook accounts,Google apps are not integrated to Google+.Apart from these Google+ so far looks so good but yes its too early to comment and judge the future of Google+.Do leave your comments about Google+ here.

Isn’t this an interesting reading ?Yes It is.Well there are so many things right about me in these stats like  I daily check my Facebook,I check Facebook right when I wake up,I check Facebook on my my smart phone before getting of bed,Facebook is one of the source of new for me.What about you?

Just for your info this social networking giant is now worth at $50 billion  and now you can access Facebook by only typing fb.com.

Thanks.

1.First of all my recent fav foursquare,Well we do CHECKIN in foursquare.But I would also like to have CHECKOUT option in foursquare.So that we can keep track when a person is checking out from that particular place.

2.Few modification in Twitter:new style RT like in TweetDeck,they are integrating the new style RT in the mention column likewise if Twitter scrap the “Your Tweets,Retweeted” section from Retweet and integrate to @mention section then can easily keep track of the RTs that we are getting(by only checking the mention section).

3.As Twitter incorporated the new style RT button to web,it would be better if they also include the old style RT button to the web.Because for me most of the time I use old style RT.

4.Few things we don’t have as an Indian User:

a)In US foursquare mayors get special discount in the respective restaurants.Yet to come in India.

b)Geo Tagging still not available for Indian Twitter web users.

c)Local trending topic still not available for India(Available for countries like: Brazil,Canada,Ireland,Mexico,UK,US)

5.Do you know one good example of one way travel? Its facebook text service in recent times.Facebook text delivering the notifications alright in mobile but we are not allowed to post through text.Its a very important service for me because may I am not having GPRS all the time.

6.Well for Orkut,As I seldom visit Okrut,so apart from Scrap notifications in mail I would like to have facebook type of notifications in Orkut so that I don’t have to miss anything.As we simply can’t ignore orkut totally as most of our friends are in Orkut.

Do you have any other Wishes then please share with me in the comments.Would love to read your opinions.

Thanks.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.