Google Buzz

Another Google product! Grrr....

Wait, only this time, its about...hold your breath Social Networking! Erm...do we need any more social networking sites? Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, Stumble Upon, MySpace, the list goes on and on. Hasnt the networking bubble already burst? I mean, havent we 'networked' enough already?

Apparently Google thinks we havent. And so it endeavours to set foot on the only territory on the web which it hasnt been able to conquer so far. If you are from India, or from Brazil, you probably have used something called Orkut. For millions of others, Orkut is a social networking site created many years ago by Google. It became quite a huge hit in India and at some point, almost every net surfer had an Orkut account. It all changed when we discovered Facebook. Facebook, the most popular social networking site on the planet had so far remained completely oblivious to us, Indians (Or is it the other way round?).

Until recently, when all of a sudden Facebook and Twitter seemed to be the latest buzz word around. Everyone started shifting to facebook, partly because it offered more security, better features etc. and even more because it was a matter of keeping up with the Jones, although in India its more like keeping up with the Rams and the Shyams.

Okay, I'm getting completely lost here. Back to the point. So you see, Google really had to come up with something very unique in order to hold on to its subscriber base. Renovating Orkut didnt work, actually it backfired; for most Orkut users dont like the new Orkut (or lets say the facebook-wannabe-Orkut).

So now, Google reinvents Orkut in a way (which I'm sure many of you might've noticed) very intelligent indeed. Google integrates Google Buzz to their most popular offering, Gmail. Smart thinking, Google! Now every Gmail user logging in, will be asked the question, 'do you want to try out Google Buzz?'. 9/10 times a user will think, why not? And hence one gets to explore the 'buzz'.

So what is it? Its basically a 'sharing' web app (if I may categorise it as such) which allows you to share your favourite links, photos and videos, and share it with the world. I'm quite surprised as to how much it resembles Google Wave. Google Buzz in my opinion is Google Wave with more options.

It has no separate interface since it integrates with your Gmail account, which makes it quite boring to be honest. As of now its not exactly lightning fast, which really doesnt contribute to the wow-factor anyway. It allows you to comment on anything and everything posted and even 'Like' a post (No 'Un-like' option here, unfortunately, as Google has vowed to copy facebook feature by feature and not add anything else)!

However Buzz automatically adds all your Gmail contacts (who have signed up for Buzz) to your Buzz followers (have I heard that word somewhere else?). Hence you are not exactly alone (like most of us who have used Google Wave when it launched were).

Its neither facebook, its not twitter and its not anything relevant. To me, its just another failed attempt at replicating the magic of facebook.

Save Our Tigers

Image via WikipediaIts inspiring to see people taking the initiative and joining a movement. Save Our Tigers is an attempt to create awareness about the critical situation of tigers in this country.

According to the monitoring exercise by Wildlife Institute of India in association with NTCA, Government of India in 2008, 1411 is average estimate of India's wild tigers.

There are various ways you can support the initiative (some of them as simple as simply joining a facebook group), check out the website for more details.

Save our tigers...its our national animal.

My picks of 2009

These are my picks for the best 'revolutionary' softwares/OSes/web apps of 2009:



1. Google Chrome - This is without doubt the most interesting product of 2009. Although it was released in September 2008, Chrome really came of age in 2009. There's now a Windows, Mac as well as a Linux version of Chrome and the usability and feature set of Chrome has virtually doubled in the past few months. Its looking like a much more complete browser now than it ever did! And well here's the thing, I was an ardent fan of Firefox (maybe I still am) but seriously, Firefox doesnt really have the 'nifty-ness' of Chrome and frankly speaking, the development of Firefox isnt really headed in that direction! And now Chrome has a really good set of "Extensions" (aka the "add-ons"), so you wont really miss Firefox!



2. icloud - Cloud computing is the future, there's no debate about that. The thin line between desktop and online computing has been blurred forever thanks to cloud computing. Now you can access your favourite desktop apps and files no matter where in the world you are. And among all the other cloud computing 'sites', icloud is without any doubt the sleeker and the most popular one. This surely was one of the most awesome stuff we've seen in 2009 and we're surely gonna see more of cloud in the years to come.



3. Ubuntu - Linux also came of age in 2009. This year saw the release of one of the most user-friendly Linux OSes ever, Ubuntu 9.10 (codenamed Karmic Koala). It shattered the myth that Linux was all about terminals, kernels and everything geeky. Linux as of now is as user-friendly (and in some instances, even more) than its Windows counterpart. The sheer fact that everything is customisable is the plus point of Ubuntu. Also, the impenetrable security of Ubuntu has also been the talking point. Ubuntu is coming up with its LTS (Long Term Support) release next year 10.04 codenamed Lucid Lynx which promises to be another revolutionary step in Linux.



4. Twitter - Who'd have thought a 140 character stupid social networking concept would turn out to be one of the most most important path breaking achievements in the social networking scene! Twitter has used 2009 to usher into a social networking giant, competing with the likes of Facebook and Myspace. Sure Twitter has teething problems and annoying outages but the fact is for millions around the globe (and that includes celebs as well), Twitter has become a way of life.



5. DivX 7 - An unlikely candidate you might say? Erm...no. Infact I might venture to say, the release of DivX 7 was perhaps the most important landmark achievement of 2009. What does that mean? Well in the words of Wikipedia, "On the 6th of January 2009, DivX 7 was released, which added H.264 video, AAC audio and Matroska container support, surpassing the restrictions of their previous formats." So now, you can convert your favourite high definition videos to a format which will compress them to a large extent (much larger extent than Xvid or DivX) without apparent loss in quality! If you have a video which you want to share with the world, size is now no at all a barrier. (Some might say H264 and Matroska existed way before DivX 7 released, but the fact is because DivX 7 has integrated these codecs, it will now receive a worldwide recognition and acceptance from users. What this also means is that come 2010, and we might see products aka Blu Ray Disc Players which will play videos which use the H264 codec! Should suffice to say, this is music to millions of videophiles across the planet)

That was my pick of 2009.

Google Wave...boring but brilliant!

Image by marketingfacts via FlickrIf you're one of the lucky ones to have gotten an invite to google wave, you probably know that what you're using is something revolutionary. Okay, I admit I had my doubts over Wave. For starters it came from Google (a company I HATE with a passion). Second its in beta (oh well cant complain about that really. Orkut, Google's social networking cum Facebook copying wing has been in beta since I was a kid! :P). And third, I had the same old privacy concerns Google apps are renowned for gifting its users.

Anyway, all concerns aside, I had to have a go at it! (After all everyone's talking about Wave these days!) And for once, I was pleasantly surprised. Google wave is really a novel concept. You communicate with your 'friends' (who also must have received a Google Wave invite) via 'waves' which are sort of notes/ideas. The best part of it is, you can chat here in 'real-time' and I mean 'real-time'! You can see the other person type the words as the chat goes on! Should suffice to say that this is bloody brilliant! I dont think there's anything like this anywhere on the web, and I firmly believe this is what net chats in the future will look like.

However, apart from the brilliance comes the reality of it all. At the moment Google Wave isnt for everyone. You can only log in if you are invited by Google or if you've been sent an invite (which are pretty hard to come by! These invites were selling for 70 bucks each on ebay the last time I checked! And thats $$$!). As a result you wont find many users to 'wave' with. Now that could basically spoil your experience. Fortunately I have found some buddies to chat with on wave! But still it isnt as exciting as facebook or twitter simply coz I cant see any of my friends here! :( Also it can be pretty buggy at times, I was repeatedly asked to refresh my Google Wave page for apparently no reason whatsoever. In other words its more of concept right now than a real web application.

But I firmly believe Google Wave is here to stay. The concept is likely to be replicated by many other social networking sites.

If you have received an invite, dont waste it, give Wave a try! As they say...RIDE THE WAVE!

Flock, the "social browser"

Flock, a new Mozilla Firefox based browser has caught the attention of many coz of its innovative features, especially the ones for social networking sites.

I decided to give the Flock a try. Well, firefox was getting a bit boring. :P Anyway, so after googling "flock", I was directed to the official site which had the download link. The file size is around 12.6MB for the latest version, and have to say, compared to firefox, this was almost double the size of any standard browser. After downloading, the installation was a breeze. No stupid customization questions, simple express setup and youre done.

Next came the task of figuring out how the thing worked. First up, the interface looks damn cool! But to be frank, its not really simple. One needs time to get accustomed to it. If you're a newbie, chances are you wont really like this stuff much. Anyway, once you've got the "adaptation" thing sorted out, the next part is about signing in to various sites. Easy enough? Wrong! No matter how many times I signed in, the Flock would show that I wasnt actually signed in. This is really a pain in the arse!

Now the best part of flock is that you can acess all the social networking sites and various other sites, just by cling on the "people sidebar". And you're logged in to all those sites simultaneously, which is really really cool! The other awesome feature of flock is the fact that no matter what site you visit and even if you havent logged in to facebook, you will be able to see and edit your status as well as chat with your friends in the status bar of the browser itself! Also, the fact you can post on your blogs right from the browser itself is another innovative feature. Now if that isnt mind blowing, I dont know what is! :)

However I do miss some customisation options of firefox. Say for example, the fact that you could add a keyword to every bookmark of yours (unavailabe in flock) is something you wont find in many browsers.

To sum it all up, flock is a cool browser which introduces a completely new genre of "social browsing", something which I hope the rival companies like IE or Opera will pick up soon. But the program as of now is very much in beta and isnt really something which I would call "error free". However its a start and thats what's important.

Facebook username

Image via CrunchBase

Everyone's excited about it. At last I noticed the notification on my facebook page informing me that I could now get a username.

Cool enough. I had a dilemma however. My twitter username was vacant_heart and not using the same on facebook would dilute the very essence of using a username.
But damn! I wanted to keep it real. After all, most real people on twitter use real usernames. Also, as someone most eloquently put it, you can change your real name via affidavit, but you cant change your facebook username! So, I kept it plain and simple "arnab_das", my real name. But again another problem crept up, I couldnt use an "_". Dont know why, but for some strange reason, facebook doesnt allow usernames to have an "_". Now an underscore is the very essence of a twitter username isnt it? Again, I had no option but to go for a silly looking "arnab.das".

Again, twitter doesnt allow "." in usernames! Now I was well and truly screwed!

What to do? Had no option but to go for "arnab_das". :(

Also, I did something interesting. I removed all traces of vacant heart from all my blogs and stuff. So from now on everywhere I post, I'll be using my real name. As they say, lets keep things real!

How lame are facebook quizzes?

I know many have pretty strong views about this, but since this is MY blog, you have no option but to read MY views about it. Now get yourself a seat.

To answer this question my friend let us delve in to the deep thought as to why facebook was created in the first place.

CRAP!

For whatever reasons facebook was created, as of now, its become a playing ground for some morons who think of themselves as the know-it-all so-called motivational gurus.

Why on Earth (why does earth have an "E" in caps? Am I gay or something? oh well let me try out a facebook quiz to check!) do we need some stupid quizzes (mostly created by ******* idiots) to tell us what we are, how we should be and if we're gay!

As far as quizzes go, I have seen some pretty lame ones like how fat are you or how lazy are you. Man, if I were lazy or something, I would know that myself! I dont need a bloody quiz to tell me how lazy or fat I am! And these quizzes actually tell you the percentage of your laziness (like one of them told me that I was like 93% lazy). Dude what does that even mean? Whats the difference between 70% lazy and 97% lazy? And who the hell gives a damn!

(oh btw, I just tried out that facebook quiz "how gay are you" and the answer is 11%)

And the worst of all quizzes? Well you really wanna know? Okay, the worst of facebook quizzes are the ones which tell you which movies describes your life. Believe me this one is the worst worst worst quiz you'll find on planet Earth (I'm really gay, aint I? "E" in caps again). And you dont wanna know what the result was in my case! No you dont...dont you dare bother me. STOP IT!!!

Okay..okay, it said the movie which best describes my life is...Jurassic Park!!!
I mean how lame is that? Do you get lamer than that? I mean in what aspect is my life like that movie? Am I those gay dinosaurs? (btw, some of those dinos were gay, oh not gay but hermaphrodites, now if you dont know what that means...you aren't straight!) Or am I the metrosexual Dr. Grant? Phew, I have spent sleepless days and sleepless nights (hang on, you dont sleep during daytime do you? who cares? I do) pondering what deep philosophical thought may have provoked this disastrous outcome of the silly facebook quiz...

Finally, I gave up! I found absolutely no answer to the fact as to why Jurassic Park was the movie which best described my life and why I was exactly 11% gay.

After intense research with some of the greatest thinkers in the world I came to the conclusion that the gay community doesnt like facebook quizzes. And that some of them are indeed...very inaccurate. What if I'm 12% gay and not 11%? What if someone gets to know that he's 90% gay (simply because he likes Coldplay; yeah according to some quizzes, liking Coldplay is a gay trait. I'm pretty sure Chris Martin wont be too happy to hear that) and does something foolish to himself or to others? What about if he has a family? What if he's weak hearted? Look its not wrong to be gay, but who gives anyone the right to tag someone as gay? What does a person gain by creating such quizzes which analyse others when they themselves are nothing but...whatever! This sense of judging others is really really irritating.

And the worst part? Well, the worst part is, these quizzes come up with these stupid notifications informing you that some or other friend of yours has "recommended" you a quiz, which he/she has taken (doesnt say that its a complete waste of your time).

Anyway, enough of beating around the bush. All I meant by all this is that facebook quizzes suck! And its really a shame that facebook is tolerating and encouraging these stupid applications. Well what can you do? Facebook is on a myspace takeover spree (at least in terms of number of users) and has no intention of doing anything that would dampen its curiosity factor. At the end of the day lets face it, facebook quizzes (no matter how lame they are) is a hot favourite thing across all ages of users, and yeah, no matter how lame this may sound its true: facebook quizzes gave me an opportunity to write something on my blog. :)