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Social Networking Comes to Gmail

So, I logged on to my Gmail account this morning and instead of going directly to my inbox, I landed on a new page introducing me to Buzz. Buzz is a set of social networking features added to Gmail. Google is hoping that instead of sharing information on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace users will take to this new offering. Google has ventured in to the social networking realm with Orkut, but for some strange reason Orkut has only been successful in Brazil. This time around Google is banking on its captive audience to gain a larger foot hold in the burgeoning social networking arena. Other than the service being tied to Gmail, the service offerings are the same as other social networking sites. You can follow other Buzz users, add status updates, share videos and photos, and integrate it with other sites like Picassa, Flickr, Twitter, and Google Reader. You can make posts public or private. Buzz can even be loaded on your mobile phone. I like the move, but are folks ready to switch to yet another social networking "flavor of the day"? As usual, time will tell.

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Facebook Goes Vanity

Beginning at 11:01pm CDT Friday Facebook will allow its users to claim a name as part of their profile page’s Web Address i.e. http://facebook.com/johndoe. This will allow users to replace the randomly selected string of numbers currently assigned to each profile. Businesses and Fan pages will be able to adopt such names as well, but they will have had to have been on the site by May 31st with at least 1,000 fans at that time. It’s all first come first served. To avoid squatting only users who have joined before 3pm Tuesday will be able to sign up for usernames initially. All else will have to wait until June 28th. By the by, MySpace has provided this since their launch.

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Google Rides the Wave

A few days ago Google announced the upcoming release of its latest application called "Wave". Google Wave is a new communication and collaboration tool. It’s meant to answer the question, "What would email look like if it had been invented today?". It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. The result is an offering that may revolutionize how we communicate via the Internet.

According to the company:

"a wave is equal parts conversation and document where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more."

An exciting aspect of Google Wave is that the company is releasing it as an open-source platform with an extremely rich set of APIs that will allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to also build extensions. Individuals and organizations will be able to set-up and run their own Wave servers. This is similar to how email servers are built and managed. Communications can be limited internally or opened up to other Wave servers as communication and work flow dictate.

If you’re curious for more view the video below:

Secondly, hit Google Wave a Complete Guide over at Mashable.com. After that ponder the possibilities of unified communication!

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Gmail Goes Offline

Google has announced that it will be rolling out offline functionality for Gmail. The company is calling the feature experimental. The functionality is facilitated by Gears, the same web application used to provide offline functionality in other Google web applications. Once the feature is enabled, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. Synchronization occurs as long as you are connected to the internet. Once the connection closes, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode and uses the cache stored on your hard drive. While offline you can compose, search, and label messages. There is even a "flaky connection mode" for weak or unreliable network connections. Early reports are that working with Gmail offline is indistinguishable from working with the application online. You can check to see if your account has access to this feature by clicking on the Labs tab under Settings within Gmail.

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Speed Up Windows with CCleaner

Windows has a knack for slowing down over time. As you surf, open and close applications, copy and move files, Windows leaves traces of all of these activities in the form of cookies and recent document links. Browsers tend to store cached information which, in theory, speeds up web browsing with pre-loaded graphics, portions of web pages, and surfing history. The simple act of installing and uninstalling applications also leaves orphaned files on your hard drive. Over time, all of these small files can add up to a large chunk of disk space, slowing the operation of your PC, especially the boot process. CCleaner, which stands for Crap Cleaner, is a freeware utility which optimizes Windows systems by removing unused files. This allows Windows to run faster and free up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of online activities such as internet history. CCleaner also cleans the Windows registry, the directory which stores settings and options for the operating system. This directory can grow huge over time with references to long gone applications and files. I recently ran CCleaner and removed one gigabyte of useless crude stored on my hard drive. CCleaner is free, fast, and contains no Spyware or Adware. They boast over 200 million downloads, and also per their website, donations large and small are appreciated.

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