Google Buzz
When a huge company like Apple or Google unleashes a new beast into the wild, the interwebs blows up. The tubes just can’t contain all the peanut butter being stuffed in from every angle – Twitter, Facebook, et al. And in this internet day and age, people are always looking for the Next Big Thing. It is my opinion that Google Buzz could be that thing. The following is my Why.
People have been asking really good questions about Buzz. Firstly, why a new product? Wave sucked. Hard. Why do we need a new G-app? Gmail and Gtalk work just fine. Don’t screw it up. Second, if we do get a new product, shouldn’t it at least be remotely intuitive to first-time users? And third, will Buzz be the Next Big Thing for which we’ve all been waiting and looking?
So, (1) Why a new (Google) product? This is two questions in one. The first is, why do we need a new web app to add to the internet chaos? And the follow-up is, why should it be a Google app? The first question almost answers itself. We need a new web app because there is internet chaos. If you’re like me, you use Facebook, Twitter, several media apps (Flickr, Youtube, etc.), a chat client of some kind (Facebook chat counts here), and everybody except Joe Paterno has an email address. Wouldn’t it be great if all these services worked together? Google answers affirmatively. Hence, we have Google Buzz. The second part of the question is, why do we need a new Google app? The fact that so many people use Google already makes it a prime candidate for this kind of service, not to mention they have the funds to partake in massive expenditures and undertakings. And they kind of own the internet, anyway. This last reason is actually why people may not want Google to be the King Aggregator. I, for one, disagree. I would love for Google, the one service that I’ve been using since high school, to be the hub for all things social on the internet.
The second question concerns the usability and functionality of the product. I would first like to say that Buzz is not Wave. Wave was a nightmare, and Buzz is no such thing. Also, was Twitter intuitive for everyone? Nope. Facebook? Nope. In fact, I know several people who had no idea how to use Twitter when they first started toying with it, telling me they kept trying to “write on my Wall,” to little avail, as you might expect if you’re a regular Twitter user. There is no universally intuitive product, web app or otherwise. Wave was a complete waste of time and energy, but Buzz, I think, is different.
Lastly: will Buzz be the next big thing? I think it has the potential to be the next big thing. I won’t say positively that it will be, but I do think it stands more than a snowball’s chance in hell. Whatever the next big thing is, it needs to have several aspectual features:
- localized content aggregation — Users need the ability to access all media without leaving the site on which they find the content.
- combinatorial email/chat modality — Everybody emails. A lot of people use instant message. Combine the two. Put them in the same place.
- blogosphere integration — Nearly everybody and their mother has a blog now. And most self-respecting companies do. Integrate all of those.
That’s what I think anyway. If it has those features, it will be able to fulfill what I think is possibly another, final requirement: it needs to work more or less seamlessly with any new web apps. If it has the first three aspectual features and is capable of fulfilling the final one when it becomes necessary, this mythical product will be the Next Big Thing. Google Buzz is dangerously close. Here’s to hoping for the best. And the Buzz.
Talk soon,
Neal
Posterous
Can a website be too easy to use? I don’t know if I would have said yes before today. And I’m still not sure I’m going to. But Posterous is a serious contender if ever there was one.
Essentially, a race (not involving Ashton Kutcher or Ted Turner) has been going on since Twitter gained so much market share of the social web, which you can read about here, over at TechCrunch. If you didn’t click that, here’s the lowdown: people post links and pictures and videos and blog-posts to a handful of different sites all over the internet. If there was an easy way to do that from wherever you are (which is key, here), that website’s service would win out. Ping.fm is a very serious contender, as is HootSuite, but even these don’t create the most usable content available for every person to view and use your content, or others’ content that you are posting, etc. But even these won’t let you (at least not super easily) post a blog-post or a full image gallery from wherever you are.
The point is this: if a service can provide you with a way to post to every site (social or otherwise) from anywhere in the world, then they will 
win. And for good reason. People are connected to social sites all over the place, and if you want to keep everyone up to date, you need to update all your sites. That’s where Posterous, Ping.fm, and HootSuite, etc., come in to play: they help you do just that. But Ping.fm and HootSuite, as I mentioned above, still won’t (easily) let you blog directly from their services, web or mobile-web. Posterous, however, does. And it does it via something virtually everyone has access to: email.
If you have an email account, they say, you can use Posterous. I have an email account, so I’m giving Posterous a shot. I regularly use Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, instant messagers (AIM and GTalk), and WordPress, among others. The question is, do I regularly want to post to these via mobile-web, “on-the-go?” My personal answer is yes. So, how do I this as painlessly as possible? Well, personally, I 
use Ping.fm to update all my statuses, including my instant messaging accounts. But how do I easily post pictures and blog-posts? For me, that’s the kicker. So, something like Posterous should be perfect.
Is it? I have no idea, since I started using it today. I’d heard of it, but I just didn’t know what it was. And far be it from me to not investigate a Web 2.0 site/service/whathaveyou. So I did today. And I’m going to give a shot. I’ll let you know if it helps out. My concerns, among others, are these: how will I format a blog post with pictures according to size and text-alignment, and how long will it take to upload mulitple pictures? Will people click it if they don’t see TwitPic? I’m not sure. Tim will tell. And so will Time.
Talk Soon,
Neal
Gmail is the new Santa. Apparently.
So now Google has done it again. They have taken their Gmail Labs and become a furry man in a red suit. Google now knows when you’re sleeping. Kinda sorta. It actually guesses when you’re sleeping. It looks at when most of your emails are sent, then it tells those people to whom the emails were sent that you might be asleep in your Time Zone. Or something similar. Again, though, it’s still just a Gmail Lab, so you can turn it off. It’s really more beneficial to people doing business internationally, for blindingly obvious reasons.
I won’t lie to you right now: I love Gmail. I don’t know what I would do without it. Some of the Labs features are incredible and have saved me some serious frustation. Two in particular:
1) Holds your email for 5 seconds after you press SEND in case you catch something you need to change, so you can just click UNDO, change it, then send it on its merry way
2) The attachment reminder: if you write the word “attach” or any form of it, Gmail takes note, and if you try to send the email without an attachment, Gmail slams your head into the keyboard, rendering both you and your computer useless. But seriously, it just gives you a little reminder, asking you if you meant to attach something. Pretty sweet.
If you have Gmail and haven’t looked through the Labs feature (little green vial at top right of your screen), you really should. It’s got lots of little goodies, and they’re adding more all the time. In the meantime, I’ll be sleeping.
Talk soon,
Neal
TweetDeck
It’s actually kind of funny. I started out using Twitter online and via text message, mostly just to update my Facebook status. Then I went away from that by severing the connection between Twitter and Facebook. Then, being a child of web 2.0, I had to find a ‘cool’ way of using Twitter, a kind of mash-up that would let me use Twitter without going to twitter.com. How faux pas.
I discovered a few. I remembered recently that I had actually tried Twhirl a long time ago, but didn’t use Twitter enough to justify it. Recently, I tried Twhirl again. I’ve stopped using it…again. But this time it’s actually because I like TweetDeck that much better. I’ve also tried Seesmic Desktop, but let’s be honest here, TweetDeck is just head and shoulders above all the others. The features, the look, the legibility of everything on the screen (something Twhirl could take note of), it’s all so much better than the competitors.
Now: granted: I have a little beef with TweetDeck because they won’t @ me when I @ them! No spite. There’s just a feature I want added (namely, the ability to see an “in reply to…” tweet linked inside of TweetDeck, instead of opening up in another browser tab). If you still use windows instead of tabs…welcome to the 21st century. You can leave your Windows ME at the door.
And here’s one more app you should be using if you’re a social website whore like myself. Ping.fm is an incredible site. It allows you to update all of your social websites with one click. You just tell it which websites and what to say, and presto! You’re done. I do it on my cell phone mostly, but if you want a desktop app for it, SocialAddict is the way to go. There’s one called Social Thingy or something, but it’s not nearly as good, just stay away.
In closing: I’ll just say this: I am kind of amazed at the growth of Twitter recently. I mean, yes, it’s popular, but we’re talking exponential growth for the month of March alone. We’re talking up 76% in a single month, and it’s growing at over 1300% annually, according to Mashable.com. That’s ridiculous. On a similar note, Facebook doubled its size in a mere 8 months from 100 million to 200 million. Social websites get made fun of a lot, and sometimes it’s pretty funny, but clearly, a lot of people are using them and enjoying using them enough to tell others who do the same, ad infinitum. I don’t know what the next big thing will be online, but it’ll have to be massive to compete with the likes of Twitter and Facebook now. We’ll just wait and see, I guess.
Talk soon,
Neal
Feed Burner
I now have a new way for you to follow my blog, if you’re at all interested. If you have a news reader, you can go here: 
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/NealTucker. Feed Burner is a way of syndicating and spreading the good word of your blog simply, easily, and quickly. You can post a quick link or an image pretty much anywhere, and it keeps track of your stats, too, if you want it too. Two other great things about it: it’s free, and Google owns it now, so it’s integrated. When I went to the page, shortly after I had been to my Gmail, it said something like, “Welcome, nealtucker@gmail.com!” In any event, it looks neat, so I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s also a really fast way to find the Atom or XML feeds, or whatever you wanna call it, without too much hassle. Okay, off to dinner and then rehearsal.
Talk soon,
Neal
iTweet
I tweet. A pretty good bit. So I thought it appropriate to suggest a few of the ways I like to experience Twitter. These are all really good sites/applications/etc. that I highly recommend if you tweet.
The first site is called Twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com/). It keeps track of what is being tweeted most in the Twitterverse. If you just twote about jambalaya, and you want to know if other people are doing that, too, then Twitscoop will tell you. Not only can you search, just like in Twitter, but it keeps a running tag cloud of the most tweeted twitterings.
The second site is called TweetStats (http://www.tweetstats.com/). If you have ever wondered how often you tweet, how many times you twote about your hernia in the past 6 months, or who you @tweet the most to, TweetStats will keep you in the know. About you. Or, about anyone else you might want to know about. Yup. It 
doesn’t require any password, just the username, so you can Twitterstalk all you want. That’s actually a good name for a website. TwitterStalk. I’m going to make millions on this, so don’t steal it.
The first app is called TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/). As a desktop Twitter app, it’s the best out there. Digsby is great, but TweetDeck is dedicated to Twitter. There are apparently plans to expand TweetDeck to include Facebook, too, but I don’t know how soon that will be, or if it will come to fruition. It includes Twitscoop in the app window when it’s maximized, which is updated in real time. 
Not to be confused with the fake kind. It will check your Follows all day long, and it refreshes the API (basically meaning: how many times you can update without going overboard) whenever it can, which is nice.
The second app is called TwitterFon (http://www.twitterfon.net/). This one is, right now, only for the iPhone/iTouch. I have used another one (maybe two), but this one has been the most stable and reliable for me, personally. It has a very simple, easy to use GUI, with only 4 buttons along the bottom: Friends, @, DMs, and Search. Additionally, it has its own web browser, so you can open links right inside the app. One problem I have noticed, though, has to do with the @ feature. If you click the Reply button, then decide not to, when you come back to tweet again, your @ info is still there. I don’t know if you will be bothered by this, but I am on occassion. Still a fantastic app, though!
So, there’s my two cents on a few Twitter applications/websites. I tried to use as many Twitterized verbs, nouns, and adjectives as possible, because I think they’re hilarious. My favorite is “twote,” the obviously past tense verb. Point is, these are great ways to experience Twitter, a great soical website.
Talk soon,
A-Rod
Speaking of Newser…
I just did a search for A-Rod on Newser.com, and I got 286 current results. I was watching my daily 6 hour dose of SportsCenter yesterday (and the day before that), so I got to see the A-Rod interview with Peter Gammons about three different times. It makes me really sad that A-Rod did what he did, but, as so many people have said in the media, it somehow redeems him because of his admission of his use. I don’t really feel sorry for him, any more than I feel sorry for Bonds, McGuire, Clemons, or any of the other users. But it does take him off of at least one list that the others are apart of: blatant lying.
I love sports, and I played baseball for most of my childhood, watching Braves games, etc., and now that this steroid endemic has struck, it brings back all of the memories of the innocence of sport in general, of the love of playing it, watching it, competitiveness and winning, losing with style. All of the things that make “sport” great.
As I’ve blogged before, an NPR reporter said that the best moments in sports are when the athlete is able to make the human spirit ascend. I agree 100%.
It is for all of these reasons, the little league, watching the games on TV, going to the Major League stadiums, the love of sports, that we feel so badly when we see the greatest players succumb to steroid use, I think. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, takes on new meaning. I can’t wait for the day when performance-enhancing drugs are specials on ESPN Classics, not on SportsCenter. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.
Web Life
Occasionally, I will read an article or hear someone say something along the lines of how the tech-social-networking revolution or craze that has taken the world by storm is a bad thing, that it engenders a kind of impersonal communication which then wraps its nasty tenticles on everything within its eight-legged reach, then having done so, squirts its black ink of disunity and impersonability.
I’m not sure I could disagree any more with this line of thought. I have been able, through online communication of several different varieties, to keep up with more people than I ever thought imaginable. I live in a city far away from where I grew up, where most of my family lives, and from the nucleus of where I met most of my closest friends. Because of that, I can’t possibly keep up with them all in a meaningful way, unless I have many different ways to get in touch with them all, a way that hopefully suits theirs and my own lifestyle. Man can not live by cell phone alone. (Though we are getting close.)
I am a member of two major social networking sites, both of which have allowed me to communicate with more people than I would ever be able to just with my phone. Those sites are Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, and blogging.
With those, I am able to maintain contact with people I haven’t seen in months (in some cases, years). I was able to video chat with my entire family and my parents-in-law on Christmas day this year! Not to mention that with the same program, international calling is free! Pre-social-networking, that wouldn’t have been possible, at least not for most people. Additionally, if I wanted to call all the people I wanted to get in touch with (assuming they haven’t changed their number…again), it would take quite some time. My point is simple: if you are the type of person that likes to keep in touch and stay in touch, then without some help from Hermione Granger and God’s cell phone plan, you aren’t going to be able to do it in this modern age, without the help of the trusty old internet. My suggestion is to accept that and use it. Just a suggestion, though. Take it or leave it.
I would like to add, though, in closing, that I have been enthralled with techie things for a very long time, so this breakthrough for me is like a toy store made out of 1′s and 0′s. If you aren’t tech-savvy, or just don’t like it, that’s fine, too; just don’t harp on others because they find it both enjoyable and useful.
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As an addition to this post, here are several instant messaging programs that I have found to be extremely helpful with keeping in touch:
World::Internet
The internet, like the world for which it is a microcosm (a misnomer if there ever was one), can be a great place. It can bring out the best in people. It can also be an awful, horrible, disgusting, evil place, and it bring out the worst, as well. Sometimes, we aren’t sure where exactly the situation lies on the line from good to evil, but we understand that something has gone very awry.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/21/webcam.suicide/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#cnnSTCVideo