[BREAKING] Buzz layer is gone in Google Maps for Android 5.7?

Do not waaaaaant

Do not waaaaaant

[BREAKING] Buzz layer is gone in Google Maps for Android 5.7?

[NEWS] BuzzOne for Google Chrome updated to Beta 4

ATTENTION: THE EXTENSION IS CURRENTLY BROKEN!
AS IT SEEMS, THE LOADED PLUS ONE CODE IN PROFILES IS BUGGY/INCOMPATIBLE.
ROLLBACK, WON'T FIX (for now) Poo.



I'll tell you a story now... About my extension and Google's secret codeimplementation.

Not so long ago, BuzzOne stopped working for unknown reasons on the new profiles.

Turns out: Google has already implemented the +1 source, but isn't using it yet. hehe.

Ok, I modified my extension so that it uses the existing, hidden +1 code that officially doesn't exist.

If you encounter issues, you might still have an older version of the New Profiles, but that should fix itself soon.

The update is currently rolling out worldwide and it should be available in the next couple of minutes/hours!

Changelog:

#UPDATE BETA 4:
Uses now Googles unofficial +1 code hidden in New Profiles
SPEED IMPROVEMENTS! should now be easier on the resources (a little)
Various fixes. Now with 50% more awesome.

get it here if you don't have it yet.

cheers!

ATTENTION: THE EXTENSION IS CURRENTLY BROKEN!
AS IT SEEMS, THE LOADED PLUS ONE CODE IN PROFILES IS BUGGY/INCOMPATIBLE.
ROLLBACK, WON'T FIX (for now) Poo.



I'll tell you a story now... About my extension and Google's secret codeimplementation.

Not so long ago, BuzzOne stopped working for unknown reasons on the new profiles.

Turns out: Google has already implemented the +1 source, but isn't using it yet. hehe.

Ok, I modified my extension so that it uses the existing, hidden +1 code that officially doesn't exist.

If you encounter issues, you might still have an older version of the New Profiles, but that should fix itself soon.

The update is currently rolling out worldwide and it should be available in the next couple of minutes/hours!

Changelog:

#UPDATE BETA 4:
Uses now Googles unofficial +1 code hidden in New Profiles
SPEED IMPROVEMENTS! should now be easier on the resources (a little)
Various fixes. Now with 50% more awesome.

get it here if you don't have it yet.

cheers!

[NEWS] BuzzOne for Google Chrome updated to Beta 4

[NEWS] Discuss on Buzz Button-Generator for Chrome goes public

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand another one.

With this extension you can easily generate a pretty neat "Discuss on Buzz" button.
You simply right-click on the post-time of a Buzz and select "Generate Discuss on Buzz"
You will also be able to directly launch the extension from the toolbar and manually change the permalink it should refer to.

Copy&Paste the generated HTML code anywhere you want. Preferably there, where it works. In the HTML Tab of your Blogger Post-Editor for example.

This is not extensively tested software and the icon isn't as pretty as others.

Even if it looks like Google's stuff, it is not official Google's stuff. I just imitated the Google-style so it doesn't look like me after a night of coding.
(not like sh*t)

I bet there are a million bugs in there, but I try to patch them. Some time. I don't know when.

Yeah. If the extension nom noms your dinner, that's probably a bug. If it starts insulting you, that's probably a feature.
It might happen that this extension, due to it's messy code, becomes self aware and tries to kill you.

Don't panic. Remain calm and use a sticker to cover the extension in your toolbar.
If it launches nuclear weapons and wants to wipe out humanity, it is always a good idea to Duck&Cover.

Cheers.

Ah... you can get it HERE on the Chrome Webstore
It might take a few minutes until it is live!

Discuss on Buzz

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand another one.

With this extension you can easily generate a pretty neat "Discuss on Buzz" button.
You simply right-click on the post-time of a Buzz and select "Generate Discuss on Buzz"
You will also be able to directly launch the extension from the toolbar and manually change the permalink it should refer to.

Copy&Paste the generated HTML code anywhere you want. Preferably there, where it works. In the HTML Tab of your Blogger Post-Editor for example.

This is not extensively tested software and the icon isn't as pretty as others.

Even if it looks like Google's stuff, it is not official Google's stuff. I just imitated the Google-style so it doesn't look like me after a night of coding.
(not like sh*t)

I bet there are a million bugs in there, but I try to patch them. Some time. I don't know when.

Yeah. If the extension nom noms your dinner, that's probably a bug. If it starts insulting you, that's probably a feature.
It might happen that this extension, due to it's messy code, becomes self aware and tries to kill you.

Don't panic. Remain calm and use a sticker to cover the extension in your toolbar.
If it launches nuclear weapons and wants to wipe out humanity, it is always a good idea to Duck&Cover.

Cheers.

Ah... you can get it HERE on the Chrome Webstore
It might take a few minutes until it is live!

Discuss on Buzz

[NEWS] Discuss on Buzz Button-Generator for Chrome goes public

[HOW TO] Add a Discuss on Buzz Button to... wherever you want.

Ok, sorry my dear Google Buzz Team for abusing your scripts and stuff, but I think, this is AWESOME and people should totally use that!

It is simple, yet you have to do it (for now) manually...
First:

Write an article and share it on Buzz.

Go to Buzz and get the permalink of the Buzz.

Use this code and replace the code ##OMGFHEREISMYPERMALINK## with your Buzz permalink.

<a class="google-buzz-button" data-button-style="follow" href="##OMGFHEREISMYPERMALINK##" target="_blank" title="Discuss on Google Buzz">Discuss on Buzz</a>

<script src="http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Switch to the HTML Tab in Blogger (for example) and paste the code at the end of the article.

Save and....

DONE!

Discuss on Buzz

Ok, sorry my dear Google Buzz Team for abusing your scripts and stuff, but I think, this is AWESOME and people should totally use that!

It is simple, yet you have to do it (for now) manually...
First:

Write an article and share it on Buzz.

Go to Buzz and get the permalink of the Buzz.

Use this code and replace the code ##OMGFHEREISMYPERMALINK## with your Buzz permalink.

<a class="google-buzz-button" data-button-style="follow" href="##OMGFHEREISMYPERMALINK##" target="_blank" title="Discuss on Google Buzz">Discuss on Buzz</a>

<script src="http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Switch to the HTML Tab in Blogger (for example) and paste the code at the end of the article.

Save and....

DONE!

Discuss on Buzz

[HOW TO] Add a Discuss on Buzz Button to... wherever you want.

[UPDATED][COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS SPECULATION] Uhm let's brainstorm Photovine

OBSOLETE ARTICLE

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this to twitter, a account named @vine_me started following me.

http://twitter.com/vine_me/status/83563939266437121
http://www.vineme.com/

Dude. You can't be serious. LOL. Ok, moving on.

As we all (probably not all [probably just a minority]) of us might already have heard, Google is about to launch (probably not today or tomorrow) a new service called "Photovine".
Ok, we all are excited and all that stuff, and want to know what that is, but... there is no evidence out there except a few little hints that are about as distinct as a politician's speech before elections, but "a man can dream", can't he?

The clues:
Domainname and Trademark

• photovine.com
• photovine

The Trademark Application [here]:

• Communication services, namely, transmission of visual images and data by telecommunications networks, wireless communication networks, the Internet, information services networks and data networks
• Non-downloadable computer software
• On-line social networking services

That's all that we know.

Interpretation:

Context and competitors:

• Apple starts some kind of web-based text-messaging service (some crazy people think to replace text-messages) and teams up with twitter.
• Facebook starts the project Spartan, an app(lication) store for HTML5 based webapps on iOS.
• Apple has facetime.
• Group-messaging apps and platforms are currently hyped.

Google's current strategy:

• is under full steam working on it's social services (no classic social network!)
• pushes location based services with latitude and places on desktop & mobile
• offers checkin's via latitude on mobile
• brings gTalk's video-chatting capability to Android smartphones and tablets (showing Apple's facetime the stinky finger)
• extends the support of Google Buzz's activity stream
• playtested something called Typhoon in the context of Video or Pictures
• playtested Circles and pulled the hints (probably unrelated)

Ok, here is a total shot in the dark:

Photovine will be a photo-microblogging service for both desktop and mobile-phones that combines location based services like Places and Latitude with mms-like messaging (but with group-support).

Most likely it will be push-capable and support either a user to wall (without any special addressee) or a user to group messaging service.

Google might try to offer an alternative (no, Google won't replace anything) to classic MMS messaging, that works over data-connection both from desktop/chromebook/notebook via webcam or from smartphones via camera (frontfacing or back).

This service will most likely also include the OPT-IN (yeah OPT-IN, don't be scared, you have to explicitly say you want to be found) facial recognition service to add all snapped pictures to the "photos of you" section on Google Profiles. That includes also if you make a group photo with other Google Profile users that might have OPT-ed in to facial recognition. Everyone who wants get's autotagged.

And, as I assume, it will also be the possibility to answer to a snapped picture with another one. (kinda dailybooth style).

The pictures might be tied to Google Places and Latitude Checkins, so you can check out if a Place a friend of yours visited is... awesome.

There might also be an option to post the pictures public (probably without tags for non-friends... People who don't follow you can't see who's linked) on the Google Places site of a Club or whatsoever.

Privacy settings will be rather high initially, due to recent media coverage about the "issues" of some major blue social net.

You might be able to add a picture to your review in Places.

Hopefully you'll be able (would make sense) to connect Photovine to Google Buzz.

Photovine might be the new name for Typhoon.

Most speculative: The option to post a picture public on the places page. Probably won't happen for now.

Summary:

It is maybe a photo-microblogging-group messaging service that is heavily focused on Smartphone usage but is also available for desktops. Might offer a fully featured HTML5 interface (to offer initial support for a lot of mobile platforms), hopefully a native App for Android first. Pics probably will be, Geotagged, autotagged (if you wish) and automatically added to the Pictures of me section of Profiles. (depends on your privacy settings). Might be strongly tied to latitude and Places (though the connection might be optional).

Probably everything I wrote is complete crap. But maybe not. The future will show!

Discuss on Buzz

OBSOLETE ARTICLE

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this to twitter, a account named @vine_me started following me.

http://twitter.com/vine_me/status/83563939266437121
http://www.vineme.com/

Dude. You can't be serious. LOL. Ok, moving on.

As we all (probably not all [probably just a minority]) of us might already have heard, Google is about to launch (probably not today or tomorrow) a new service called "Photovine".
Ok, we all are excited and all that stuff, and want to know what that is, but... there is no evidence out there except a few little hints that are about as distinct as a politician's speech before elections, but "a man can dream", can't he?

The clues:
Domainname and Trademark

• photovine.com
• photovine

The Trademark Application [here]:

• Communication services, namely, transmission of visual images and data by telecommunications networks, wireless communication networks, the Internet, information services networks and data networks
• Non-downloadable computer software
• On-line social networking services

That's all that we know.

Interpretation:

Context and competitors:

• Apple starts some kind of web-based text-messaging service (some crazy people think to replace text-messages) and teams up with twitter.
• Facebook starts the project Spartan, an app(lication) store for HTML5 based webapps on iOS.
• Apple has facetime.
• Group-messaging apps and platforms are currently hyped.

Google's current strategy:

• is under full steam working on it's social services (no classic social network!)
• pushes location based services with latitude and places on desktop & mobile
• offers checkin's via latitude on mobile
• brings gTalk's video-chatting capability to Android smartphones and tablets (showing Apple's facetime the stinky finger)
• extends the support of Google Buzz's activity stream
• playtested something called Typhoon in the context of Video or Pictures
• playtested Circles and pulled the hints (probably unrelated)

Ok, here is a total shot in the dark:

Photovine will be a photo-microblogging service for both desktop and mobile-phones that combines location based services like Places and Latitude with mms-like messaging (but with group-support).

Most likely it will be push-capable and support either a user to wall (without any special addressee) or a user to group messaging service.

Google might try to offer an alternative (no, Google won't replace anything) to classic MMS messaging, that works over data-connection both from desktop/chromebook/notebook via webcam or from smartphones via camera (frontfacing or back).

This service will most likely also include the OPT-IN (yeah OPT-IN, don't be scared, you have to explicitly say you want to be found) facial recognition service to add all snapped pictures to the "photos of you" section on Google Profiles. That includes also if you make a group photo with other Google Profile users that might have OPT-ed in to facial recognition. Everyone who wants get's autotagged.

And, as I assume, it will also be the possibility to answer to a snapped picture with another one. (kinda dailybooth style).

The pictures might be tied to Google Places and Latitude Checkins, so you can check out if a Place a friend of yours visited is... awesome.

There might also be an option to post the pictures public (probably without tags for non-friends... People who don't follow you can't see who's linked) on the Google Places site of a Club or whatsoever.

Privacy settings will be rather high initially, due to recent media coverage about the "issues" of some major blue social net.

You might be able to add a picture to your review in Places.

Hopefully you'll be able (would make sense) to connect Photovine to Google Buzz.

Photovine might be the new name for Typhoon.

Most speculative: The option to post a picture public on the places page. Probably won't happen for now.

Summary:

It is maybe a photo-microblogging-group messaging service that is heavily focused on Smartphone usage but is also available for desktops. Might offer a fully featured HTML5 interface (to offer initial support for a lot of mobile platforms), hopefully a native App for Android first. Pics probably will be, Geotagged, autotagged (if you wish) and automatically added to the Pictures of me section of Profiles. (depends on your privacy settings). Might be strongly tied to latitude and Places (though the connection might be optional).

Probably everything I wrote is complete crap. But maybe not. The future will show!

Discuss on Buzz

[UPDATED][COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS SPECULATION] Uhm let's brainstorm Photovine

[STATING THE OBVIOUS] What the Social Web needs (or: why Google will succeed)

WARNING:
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS A LOT OF CURSE WORDS,  VERY PERSONAL RANTS (they are really not THAT bad) AND IT SHOULDN'T BE READ BY ANYONE.  IN CASE OF CONTACT WITH THE EYE, RINSE IMMEDIATELY.

No, seriously.. if you expect something very well written.. you should wait for a blog or something to cover it and bring it into a consumable form... and yeah I used CAPS LOCK while writing that. (damn, is my kind of humor really so complicated?) :P

Not so long ago, we were the pioneers that faced the digital frontier, the invisible, raw continent that we would shape using 0's and 1's. Everything that we could dream of was possible.
As long as it was possible to squeeze it through 56k modem.

The years have passed and the internet users got spoiled (most of them). They don't have to go on coffee-break while a website is loading anymore. The web got faster and it got harder to keep the attention of users who just consume mini-portions of information and throw up share their wisdom in shortened version with the rest of the internet.

Read this to be prepared for the next part:

[STATING THE OBVIOUS] The current state of the Social Web (or: why the bubble is about to pop)

...Have you read it? Great! If not... don't complain if you can't follow

The social web has reached it's critical mass and now we know for sure, that social 1.0 has a due date.

But what will come after social 1.0?  Social 2.0. Ok, that was a really lame joke.

But seriously, what can we do to ensure that the next bubble won't pop again? Every business is (at least to a limited amount) dependent of growth. That's what he said.

Lets recapitulate the main issues of the social bubble:

• The rate at which content is produced is way too high. Users can't follow the stream of information anymore.
• The inflationary use of socialization made it impossible and/or very difficult to control if a post might "cause trouble". (yeah, sort your 4000 friends into groups, have fun.)
• Communicating  with everyone basically caused you to communicate with almost no one anymore.
• You spend more time filtering or skipping content than actually consume content. (kinda like turning off your email-spamfilter for a week)
• There is almost zero valuable information anymore. The faster the content is consumed, the less quality it has, the less content is produced. 
• Interaction has been reduced to a "lol" or "dislike" in the comments or a click on the like button.
• Quality content is hardly ever created anymore. Quality content just gets reshared.

What Google Social won't be

First, let me clarify something: Google will build a Social Layer, something that has a lot of characteristics of a social network, but it is not the same. Not at all. NOT AT ALL. (see, I even used caps to clarify that. Using CAPS LOCK. That's how I upset I am. And if you say "but does the world need another social network?", I would, after taking a loooooooooooong deep breath, kindly explain, that it is too different to be just "another social network".

If you still expect Google Social to be like any other social network: you seriously won't get happy here. Why? It isn't meant for anything like that. There are too little other users that you might want to join or interact with. If you expect Google Social to be fun for everyone, you might reconsider your choice. It might sound harsh, but it simply is like that. It is not that you wouldn't be welcome, it's just that you will not find many people there that use Google Social like facebook or twitter or myspace. It is not designed for that (see the Section what Google Buzz was designed for) so it will never provide a satisfying environment if you fit in one of the following schemes

(ATTENTION IT IS OBVIOUSLY OFFENSIVE and it is NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY).
Even god has some kind of cruel humor. Just look at the platypus and think about how it feels. If you are not laughing now, you are probably not human.

• This won't be a facebook killer. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the next twitter. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be a replacement for farmville. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the place where you post a 140 char update about the stage of you toe-fungi infection. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be the place for your "OMG, Sassy sue has totally made out with Brandon" posts. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be the place for snowball fight game requests in the middle of summer. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be a place where you post chain posts like:
  "Post this if you are aware of the suffering of dyslexic beavers. If you are a dyslexic beaver, know a dyslexic beaver or are married to a dyslexic beaver copy this to your status. I know that 99.9% of my friends won't post this, but maybe you are one of the 0.1% <3<3<3<3" 
  (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the place where you post what you are eating. (except it is hilarious, gross, witty or in some other form remarkable) (stay on twitter... or facebook)
• This won't be the place for seizure inducing hyperactive blinking hello kitty glitter gifs with lots of roses but also with blood and a pentagram and oversized nerdglasses because you are a Skatepunkgothemoglittergirlymetalhipstress (hipstress= female hipster. Yeah, I just made that up.) (stay on myspace.)

A short long History of Time.

Orkut, Google's first ambition towards social networks, follows a classic approach to social networks. Even though Orkut isn't very popular in Europe, it still has a very loyal and active userbase in India and South America. (of course some American/European Techbloggers scream "failure" over this. Because it isn't successful where THEY are living.). Orkut is too successful (yeah it is. Don't argue with me, show me some numbers or fudge off. And "referrers from links" aren't worth much, the don't proof the actual USAGE of the network, it just proofs that no one wants to read your stuff.) to shut it down, yet it is too mainstream to be a game-changer.

Google started a interesting new approach to social interaction called "Google Buzz". The media... of course... took exactly 6 minutes to investigate the capabilities of Buzz and screamed (once again) mindlessly that Google Buzz WILL DEFINITELY replace e-Mails and all that stuff (basically they just copy-pasted the Google Wave predictions here) and that it will kill twitter and it is a possible facebook killer and whatnot.

Bullpoo.

It never wanted to be that. It wasn't made for stupid, meaningless gossip with no sense or meaning or value for others. So after the media got it's initial hype (and clicks and ad impressions), people (once again) realized that Google Buzz wasn't quite that what the media promised (of course they assumed Google promised something that wasn't there).. So the usage stalled. And then something happened that let the techbloggers and media scream "FAILURE". The referrals from Buzz and the usage of the "post to Google Buzz" Buttons dropped to zero.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm proud to introduce you to:

The most crazy Bullpoo Method to Measure Usage of Social Networks.

(WARNING SARCASTIC/IRONIC RANT INCOMING. IT IS ALSO WRITTEN TO BE FUNNY, NOT JUST CYNICAL, PLEASE KEEP THAT IN MIND.)

Lets assume, that you heard of Google Buzz from a certain site. This site promises you loads of naked women, booze and cheeseburgers if you join Google Buzz, because it is awesome and it will even answer the e-Mails for you and whatnot, and you go to Google Buzz... And there are no naked chicks. No booze. No cheeseburgers... Wouldn't you be disappointed? And then you go back to what you usually do all day long: Read this website that promised you something completely wrong... Would you, after you left Buzz disappointed, still use the "Post to Buzz" button on that site? Would you continue using Buzz after trying for days, but no naked chicks showed up? Wouldn't you give up?
So, the referrals and shares drop to zero. (for that certain site) That means: No ad impressions, no money.
Of course Google Buzz is obviously a failure.
Obviously NO ONE uses Google Buzz.

Lets jump a year into the future: This certain site just keeps on bashing Google Buzz for not producing Buzz-Button and/or referral clicks (What basically means: Huh, no one who uses Buzz reshares the articles on Buzz that no one uses Buzz and how bad it is...) I reeeeeally wonder why that might be.

This certain site also has a Buzz account, but all they do is just dump their stuff there and expect Buzz users to follow them and cherish the gods that maintain this certain sites without expecting any reaction. Yeah, that's how social media works. ONE WAY. Clever. Someone fully understood the concept.

And after removing the ability to comment on articles of this site without being user of a big blue player in the old-school classic social networking scene and bashing Buzz all the time, this certain site really wonders why there is no love coming from Google Buzz users? Seriously?

What Google Buzz really was designed for

Unlike classic approaches to social networking, Google Buzz was designed for active collaboration on generating high quality content. It was designed for rich social interaction.

It is more or less tied to several other Google services:

• YouTube
• Picasaweb
• Latitude
• Google Talk
• Google Reader
• Blogger
• Docs

Every single one of these Services are opt-in, that means, they are not mandatory for the usage of Buzz, but they can enrich the experience.
You can connect several Google services directly to Buzz, so that the Activities are streamlined (? correct expression? I don't know, I don't care.) into Buzz's consumption stream. (not recommended, produces too much clutter)
You can attach several different media types from several sources (which usually are auto-detected and embedded) and you can attach location information that provide additional context to the content you post.
For me personally, the ability to go to Google Maps, switch on the Buzz layer and check on the public Buzzposts of people... for example from London, was a major motivator to join Buzz at first. What are people thinking in other parts of this world? I loved to discover Buzzes around the world, but that is not what really kept me here.

There are four basic features that make Buzz unique and show what it was meant for:

• The length of the content you can post is virtually unlimited and the Textfield is compared to facebook or twitter huge.
• The length of a comment is virtually unlimited.
• You can feed complete articles including HTML formatting, links and pictures into Buzz.
• You can edit your posts (Buzzes and comments) at all times to add new content or correct content

If you read my previous post:
[STATING THE OBVIOUS] The current state of the Social Web (or: why the bubble is about to pop)
You will realize that Buzz is, in fact, of more social value than any other big social network out there.
The huge amount of Friends/Followers, the inflationary socialization, the reduced lifespan, quality and high output-rate of the produced content has lead to a drastic loss of human/social interaction.

By reducing the interaction to "likes"/"favs" and occasional "reshares"/"retweets" of cropped/linked external content, the (real) social factor has vanished.

Google Buzz rewards every minute you put into a thoughtful post. Once you found the right people to follow, you will have a whole new world waiting for you. I NEVER had anywhere a comparable experience of information exchange or passion than here on Google Buzz.

The Problems you'll encounter

Of course, initially you encounter some... difficult people. Buzz is often a refuge for highly intelligent, but complicated people, so you might have a lot of arguments there, that are... well... exhausting.
But when everyone got to know each other (and you blocked one or two... ok 10 or 20 people), when you accept that on Buzz other opinions than your own exist, you'll find Friends here. My Buzz circle has become my second family and I never had such overwhelming positive feedback somewhere else.

But I won't just mention the good sides of Buzz... When you start using Buzz, you are basically lost. Who should you follow? Where can I find people who use Buzz? That was a real issue and it is still a real issue. Usually you instantly generate a social circle on a popular social network, because someone you know said: Woah, check this out, this is cool!
I had no one. Basically it just started in America and everyone was still hyped by Facebook and Twitter. So...
Who to follow?
There are some good starting points I wish I had known earlier like: Going Buzz
But the "Vanilla" experience of Buzz can be harsh and frustrating, because you start with zero and... unlike on other social networks, behavior, manners and respect weight more than anything else.
Buzz is a mature Social Network, meant to be a source of inspiration and productivity.

It is no facebook
It is no twitter
It is something way more rewarding.

Like Buzzer Pablo Chuken said:

Google Buzz has the potential to be the world's biggest forum with a social network approach....

Why Buzz matters for Google's Social Experience
(and why it is way more than that)

Congrats if you made it that far, I'm impressed!

Now you know the basics behind Buzz and that's a key element to understand Google's social strategy.
It isn't really easy to understand the principles behind the social layer Google is building, because it is a completely different approach than anything else you might have seen before. Some key elements might be something that isn't that quite new, but the way Google (probably) will put it together is quite remarkable.

I'll try to explain how it works... (yeah you can bet your ass that it isn't easy... I have no Idea how to put that in words. And don't ask me to draw something...)

There are two basic epicenters Google Social is built around:

• Management of your real life and your real social circles.
• The obtaining and sharing of knowledge.

Let's have a look at what I discovered over the last weeks:

Google will provide a social layer that serves as an infrastructure for social interaction.
There are 3 types of services Google will provide

• a neutral service (Basically storage of personal Data in the cloud that is NOT PUBLIC)
• an active social service (active collaboration and interaction)
• an passive social service (no direct interaction but indirectly beneficial)

The neutral service
(Storage of Data)

The neutral service is largely based on existing Google products like:

• Google Docs
• Picasa
• YouTube (somewhat)

It provides the infrastructure to store all data in the cloud. These services (don't know about YouTube though) will get upgrades to seamlessly integrate with Google's ChromeOS.

So, let's say you plug in your Camera and ChromeOS asks you, if you want to sync the Pictures and Videos with Picasa. Yep, Picasa has Video-support. And recently they announced, that videos with less than 15 minutes won't be counted into the free quota, so basically you have unlimited storage for 15 minute clips there.

Google Docs gains HTML5 offline support and... like some of you noticed, there is already a very mature collaboration and discussion system (realtime!!!) part of Google docs. (Social anyone?)

YouTube will still be YouTube.

The Active Social Service
(Chat, mail, call, discuss, share)

Here we have the interesting part... The critical  part that makes the difference..

Google Circles (if they haven't changed the name)
Google Circles is not so much (AFAIK) a social network. Google Circles is a meta-tool built around your contact management in gMail and around your Followers/the people you follow on Buzz.

You can take your existing contacts (that you might have already separated in groups) and split them up in different circles like:
Friends, Family, Colleagues, Interesting People on Buzz, Ex'es and Trolls.
Now you have SEPARATED Social networks, that can overlap for some contacts (Ex'es and Trolls for example) where YOU can easily decide which circle you want to share information with and how you want to interact with them. No one outside one circle will gain access to information specifically published for this certain group of people.
Furthermore: Information can not accidently re-shared into another circle.
Google Circles is (if you don't completely mess up the setup putting every contact in every circle)
Google Circles is together with Google Me the ultimate privacy tool (if you don't screw it up!!)
(I'll explain Google Me later)

The infrastructure of the active social service consists of:

• Google Buzz
• Google Talk
• Blogger (2nd grade)
• Picasaweb (2nd grade)
• Latitude (2nd grade)
• YouTube (not so much)
• Google Docs (discussion & collaboration)
• gMail (using People Widget)
• Google Voice (speculation, maybe as contact option via gTalk in gMail)
• something I've forgotten (for sure)

Active social interaction via gMail.... Yeah, I'm talking about eMail. I bet you remember that...
Take a look at the people widget:

You can see that it offers a number of interaction possibilities:
You can call, email, chat and see the latest Buzz-post.
Hmmm? Slowly getting the Idea of how social Google Social really is?

Google Buzz will combine the Activity stream of all Google Products that offer a push to Google Buzz (see the chart)

All these Services are OPT-IN! So: not enabled by default.
For sharing your latitude checkins, you'll have to join Latitude first and then you share your location info just with SPECIFIC PEOPLE unless you explicitly demand that you Latitude check-ins will be public for everyone in your stream.
Same applies to Picasa-Picture uploads, Video uploads and so on.

So, basically the following changes to the Buzz-Experience will occur:

You won't start from scratch.

Everyone with a gMail account and who opted in to Buzz can conveniently start interacting. Thanks to the people widget, the usage of Buzz is more inviting.

You won't have to fight off Trolls

You can either chose to rely on existing social circles or, if you are adventurous, you can discover new people to follow in the wild (only point to solve is.. the who to follow problem, but I bet Google comes up with something.

You don't have to be clever all the time (but it wouldn't be bad)

You don't have necessarily to write very witty thoughtful Buzz-posts inside your social circles.. but it would help humanity if you show a little effort.

Privacy really means privacy not facebook-privacy

You can control every single bit of information including: Disabling resharing of posts entirely, selectively block or admit people/circles to comment. Private data remains private.

The +1 social recommendation engine is coming to Buzz

You will gain the ability to +1 comments and/or posts. These recommendations will highlight the content for other people in your social circles during searches, so they are able to find valuable content (and therefore interesting people to follow) more quickly and vice versa.

The Passive Social Service

The passive social service is not Action/Reaction driven like a "like" or a "reshare" or a Post. There is no immediate reaction. Passive social services are more a source of information on demand.

Passive social services are:

• Google Latitude
• Google Places
• Google Profiles
• Google PlusOne (+1)
• Google Books? (speculation, won't cover that here -> no evidence)

Google Latitude enables you to offer passive context information in form of a location for people that you specifically choose.
For example: I've all my Friends in my Latitude list, so when they see that I'm in town, or they happen to pass through my hometown, they can check where I'm currently at and give me a call. (and go for a beer or two or three or four or ... 99 Bottles of beer on the wall)
It is NO privacy nightmare. If you don't put a public latitude badge on your blog, like me (and you get reminders every 2 weeks that there is an public latitude badge and that you shouldn't forget that other people can see it), your location data is perfectly safe, so are your check-ins via latitude (except you explicitly select "post public to the web")

Google Places (former Google Hotpot) is a rating service that is very versatile. You can rate every awesome or terrible experience with whatever you encounter as long as the biz has a places page.
This information is also just on demand available... Either way you check in on a friends Places profile, or you get the places recommendations +1'd in the places search on Google Search. (Maybe even starred on Google Maps in the future, that'd be cool)
Google Places will probably get a +1 button or... maybe a explanation that if you star a place and rate it "best time evar" you +1'd it in the Google search (yeah, it's easy as 1-2-3... just kidding)
On my personal wishlist, there'd also be a places tab on the profiles page...

Google Profiles is practically your official business card. It is currently like buzz and gMail under heavy construction and has a lot of hiccups, but that is where a huge load of the magic will happen. Besides the fact that there is already a plusOne and a Buzz Tab, there'll be a split-up of the Picasaweb tab that will result in a "Photos" and a "Videos" section. Every content there is also under the same restrictions as you set them in Picasa or Buzz... So there will be just the information visible to whom you want to share it with.
Of course you are able to hide every tab and/or unwanted information just the way you want.
Code hints that Google Profiles will gain the same options for publishing content as Google Buzz and maybe Picasa. That doesn't mean that the original Google Products will vanish and get absorbed, no they just get a second hotspot, where content can be generated.

Google +1 is one of the most misunderstood and trolled awesome feature evar. Most people don't get what it is.. they assume it is some kind of second like button. But it isn't that at all. It is a social recommendation engine that visually aids the determination of valuable content in Google search results.
So far, there are not so many Google Services supporting plusOne, but this chart shows the code where I found proof for +1 integration or where I assume that plusOne will be integrated (dotted, speculation)

I have to admit that the +1 management for each individual user are a little rudimentary, but I bet Google is on it and there was already announced that powerful tools like +1 for analytics are incoming!
For all those who doubt the value of the +1 Tab on profiles:
I ALWAYS check the +1 Tab on Profiles before I follow someone. Is the content he +1'd valuable, it is definitively for me a reason to follow him/her.

For a more extensive explanation what +1 is and why the fudge it isn't a like, read this article:
[PROTIPS] Why Google's +1 and likes aren't the same.


Last but not least: Google Me (on the web)

Google Me is nothing magical. It won't save the hunger problem of third-world countries... It is a safetybelt for the average user (needs a little revamp though) to ensure that he doesn't accidently leak unwanted data to the web. So every time Google indexes a new website containing the user's name or email address, a eMail is sent to the user, asking him to check the content. So, if there is unwanted data, there are also instructions provided how the user can request a removal from Google's index. Handy, huh?
So it is just a failsafe mode just in case the user screws up his privacy data.


A few notes on the side:

The Google Social experience is not a social network like any existing social network. It offers new ways of interacting and cooperating with your existing contacts. There is NO NEED to use Buzz to enjoy it's advantages, but Buzz is definitively an enrichment of the experience.

And if the effin icon bothers you so much in gMail, use a sticker to cover it and stop whining that you have to use thunderbird again because the icon hurts your eyes.

The Google Social experience basically puts a social layer on the web, bringing all Google Services closer together.

Unlike other social networks, the Google Social Experience is built around you and your real life.

=====================the real article ends here :P=======================


Various stuff:


Evolution of the Cloudpicker

The cloudpicker will probably gain some photo/(maybe even video) editing functions and whatnot... check my older articles for information.

Layout adaptions

I've too little information to provide an extensive overview about what will change and where we will see the real epicenter of Google Social (gMail? iGoogle? Profiles? Something new?)  All I can tell is, that Google Talk will get it's place in the top gBar and maybe notifications (emails, comments?) will also be available in the gBar... Probably on all Google Products and services that use the new gBar.
Profiles will also get some changes (see above)
When I get more information, I'll post it on my blog. For more information (like info on orkut etc..) browse my archive for all my discoveries.

Google Typhoon & Photovine

I've no idea what both is. Maybe it's the same and they just renamed it. Probably the codename "pixy" has something to do with it.

Google Social is built for Business & Leisure

It provides features that enriches you professional and your private life. (but allows you to keep it real separate)

It is NOT a replacement for facebook or twitter!

Due to it's completely different nature, you can't even REMOTELY compare those services.
If you want Justin Bieber 140 Char's trashtalk or be up to date when Weiners get tweeted, if you want to play farmville... Stay classic and stick with facebook and Twitter.
You can use Google social on the side... Or if you are sick of it all and want some mature social interaction, you can join us too.

Discuss on Buzz

WARNING:
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS A LOT OF CURSE WORDS,  VERY PERSONAL RANTS (they are really not THAT bad) AND IT SHOULDN'T BE READ BY ANYONE.  IN CASE OF CONTACT WITH THE EYE, RINSE IMMEDIATELY.

No, seriously.. if you expect something very well written.. you should wait for a blog or something to cover it and bring it into a consumable form... and yeah I used CAPS LOCK while writing that. (damn, is my kind of humor really so complicated?) :P

Not so long ago, we were the pioneers that faced the digital frontier, the invisible, raw continent that we would shape using 0's and 1's. Everything that we could dream of was possible.
As long as it was possible to squeeze it through 56k modem.

The years have passed and the internet users got spoiled (most of them). They don't have to go on coffee-break while a website is loading anymore. The web got faster and it got harder to keep the attention of users who just consume mini-portions of information and throw up share their wisdom in shortened version with the rest of the internet.

Read this to be prepared for the next part:

[STATING THE OBVIOUS] The current state of the Social Web (or: why the bubble is about to pop)

...Have you read it? Great! If not... don't complain if you can't follow

The social web has reached it's critical mass and now we know for sure, that social 1.0 has a due date.

But what will come after social 1.0?  Social 2.0. Ok, that was a really lame joke.

But seriously, what can we do to ensure that the next bubble won't pop again? Every business is (at least to a limited amount) dependent of growth. That's what he said.

Lets recapitulate the main issues of the social bubble:

• The rate at which content is produced is way too high. Users can't follow the stream of information anymore.
• The inflationary use of socialization made it impossible and/or very difficult to control if a post might "cause trouble". (yeah, sort your 4000 friends into groups, have fun.)
• Communicating  with everyone basically caused you to communicate with almost no one anymore.
• You spend more time filtering or skipping content than actually consume content. (kinda like turning off your email-spamfilter for a week)
• There is almost zero valuable information anymore. The faster the content is consumed, the less quality it has, the less content is produced. 
• Interaction has been reduced to a "lol" or "dislike" in the comments or a click on the like button.
• Quality content is hardly ever created anymore. Quality content just gets reshared.

What Google Social won't be

First, let me clarify something: Google will build a Social Layer, something that has a lot of characteristics of a social network, but it is not the same. Not at all. NOT AT ALL. (see, I even used caps to clarify that. Using CAPS LOCK. That's how I upset I am. And if you say "but does the world need another social network?", I would, after taking a loooooooooooong deep breath, kindly explain, that it is too different to be just "another social network".

If you still expect Google Social to be like any other social network: you seriously won't get happy here. Why? It isn't meant for anything like that. There are too little other users that you might want to join or interact with. If you expect Google Social to be fun for everyone, you might reconsider your choice. It might sound harsh, but it simply is like that. It is not that you wouldn't be welcome, it's just that you will not find many people there that use Google Social like facebook or twitter or myspace. It is not designed for that (see the Section what Google Buzz was designed for) so it will never provide a satisfying environment if you fit in one of the following schemes

(ATTENTION IT IS OBVIOUSLY OFFENSIVE and it is NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY).
Even god has some kind of cruel humor. Just look at the platypus and think about how it feels. If you are not laughing now, you are probably not human.

• This won't be a facebook killer. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the next twitter. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be a replacement for farmville. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the place where you post a 140 char update about the stage of you toe-fungi infection. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be the place for your "OMG, Sassy sue has totally made out with Brandon" posts. (stay on twitter)
• This won't be the place for snowball fight game requests in the middle of summer. (stay on facebook)
• This won't be a place where you post chain posts like:
  "Post this if you are aware of the suffering of dyslexic beavers. If you are a dyslexic beaver, know a dyslexic beaver or are married to a dyslexic beaver copy this to your status. I know that 99.9% of my friends won't post this, but maybe you are one of the 0.1% <3<3<3<3" 
  (stay on facebook)
• This won't be the place where you post what you are eating. (except it is hilarious, gross, witty or in some other form remarkable) (stay on twitter... or facebook)
• This won't be the place for seizure inducing hyperactive blinking hello kitty glitter gifs with lots of roses but also with blood and a pentagram and oversized nerdglasses because you are a Skatepunkgothemoglittergirlymetalhipstress (hipstress= female hipster. Yeah, I just made that up.) (stay on myspace.)

A short long History of Time.

Orkut, Google's first ambition towards social networks, follows a classic approach to social networks. Even though Orkut isn't very popular in Europe, it still has a very loyal and active userbase in India and South America. (of course some American/European Techbloggers scream "failure" over this. Because it isn't successful where THEY are living.). Orkut is too successful (yeah it is. Don't argue with me, show me some numbers or fudge off. And "referrers from links" aren't worth much, the don't proof the actual USAGE of the network, it just proofs that no one wants to read your stuff.) to shut it down, yet it is too mainstream to be a game-changer.

Google started a interesting new approach to social interaction called "Google Buzz". The media... of course... took exactly 6 minutes to investigate the capabilities of Buzz and screamed (once again) mindlessly that Google Buzz WILL DEFINITELY replace e-Mails and all that stuff (basically they just copy-pasted the Google Wave predictions here) and that it will kill twitter and it is a possible facebook killer and whatnot.

Bullpoo.

It never wanted to be that. It wasn't made for stupid, meaningless gossip with no sense or meaning or value for others. So after the media got it's initial hype (and clicks and ad impressions), people (once again) realized that Google Buzz wasn't quite that what the media promised (of course they assumed Google promised something that wasn't there).. So the usage stalled. And then something happened that let the techbloggers and media scream "FAILURE". The referrals from Buzz and the usage of the "post to Google Buzz" Buttons dropped to zero.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm proud to introduce you to:

The most crazy Bullpoo Method to Measure Usage of Social Networks.

(WARNING SARCASTIC/IRONIC RANT INCOMING. IT IS ALSO WRITTEN TO BE FUNNY, NOT JUST CYNICAL, PLEASE KEEP THAT IN MIND.)

Lets assume, that you heard of Google Buzz from a certain site. This site promises you loads of naked women, booze and cheeseburgers if you join Google Buzz, because it is awesome and it will even answer the e-Mails for you and whatnot, and you go to Google Buzz... And there are no naked chicks. No booze. No cheeseburgers... Wouldn't you be disappointed? And then you go back to what you usually do all day long: Read this website that promised you something completely wrong... Would you, after you left Buzz disappointed, still use the "Post to Buzz" button on that site? Would you continue using Buzz after trying for days, but no naked chicks showed up? Wouldn't you give up?
So, the referrals and shares drop to zero. (for that certain site) That means: No ad impressions, no money.
Of course Google Buzz is obviously a failure.
Obviously NO ONE uses Google Buzz.

Lets jump a year into the future: This certain site just keeps on bashing Google Buzz for not producing Buzz-Button and/or referral clicks (What basically means: Huh, no one who uses Buzz reshares the articles on Buzz that no one uses Buzz and how bad it is...) I reeeeeally wonder why that might be.

This certain site also has a Buzz account, but all they do is just dump their stuff there and expect Buzz users to follow them and cherish the gods that maintain this certain sites without expecting any reaction. Yeah, that's how social media works. ONE WAY. Clever. Someone fully understood the concept.

And after removing the ability to comment on articles of this site without being user of a big blue player in the old-school classic social networking scene and bashing Buzz all the time, this certain site really wonders why there is no love coming from Google Buzz users? Seriously?

What Google Buzz really was designed for

Unlike classic approaches to social networking, Google Buzz was designed for active collaboration on generating high quality content. It was designed for rich social interaction.

It is more or less tied to several other Google services:

• YouTube
• Picasaweb
• Latitude
• Google Talk
• Google Reader
• Blogger
• Docs

Every single one of these Services are opt-in, that means, they are not mandatory for the usage of Buzz, but they can enrich the experience.
You can connect several Google services directly to Buzz, so that the Activities are streamlined (? correct expression? I don't know, I don't care.) into Buzz's consumption stream. (not recommended, produces too much clutter)
You can attach several different media types from several sources (which usually are auto-detected and embedded) and you can attach location information that provide additional context to the content you post.
For me personally, the ability to go to Google Maps, switch on the Buzz layer and check on the public Buzzposts of people... for example from London, was a major motivator to join Buzz at first. What are people thinking in other parts of this world? I loved to discover Buzzes around the world, but that is not what really kept me here.

There are four basic features that make Buzz unique and show what it was meant for:

• The length of the content you can post is virtually unlimited and the Textfield is compared to facebook or twitter huge.
• The length of a comment is virtually unlimited.
• You can feed complete articles including HTML formatting, links and pictures into Buzz.
• You can edit your posts (Buzzes and comments) at all times to add new content or correct content

If you read my previous post:
[STATING THE OBVIOUS] The current state of the Social Web (or: why the bubble is about to pop)
You will realize that Buzz is, in fact, of more social value than any other big social network out there.
The huge amount of Friends/Followers, the inflationary socialization, the reduced lifespan, quality and high output-rate of the produced content has lead to a drastic loss of human/social interaction.

By reducing the interaction to "likes"/"favs" and occasional "reshares"/"retweets" of cropped/linked external content, the (real) social factor has vanished.

Google Buzz rewards every minute you put into a thoughtful post. Once you found the right people to follow, you will have a whole new world waiting for you. I NEVER had anywhere a comparable experience of information exchange or passion than here on Google Buzz.

The Problems you'll encounter

Of course, initially you encounter some... difficult people. Buzz is often a refuge for highly intelligent, but complicated people, so you might have a lot of arguments there, that are... well... exhausting.
But when everyone got to know each other (and you blocked one or two... ok 10 or 20 people), when you accept that on Buzz other opinions than your own exist, you'll find Friends here. My Buzz circle has become my second family and I never had such overwhelming positive feedback somewhere else.

But I won't just mention the good sides of Buzz... When you start using Buzz, you are basically lost. Who should you follow? Where can I find people who use Buzz? That was a real issue and it is still a real issue. Usually you instantly generate a social circle on a popular social network, because someone you know said: Woah, check this out, this is cool!
I had no one. Basically it just started in America and everyone was still hyped by Facebook and Twitter. So...
Who to follow?
There are some good starting points I wish I had known earlier like: Going Buzz
But the "Vanilla" experience of Buzz can be harsh and frustrating, because you start with zero and... unlike on other social networks, behavior, manners and respect weight more than anything else.
Buzz is a mature Social Network, meant to be a source of inspiration and productivity.

It is no facebook
It is no twitter
It is something way more rewarding.

Like Buzzer Pablo Chuken said:

Google Buzz has the potential to be the world's biggest forum with a social network approach....

Why Buzz matters for Google's Social Experience
(and why it is way more than that)

Congrats if you made it that far, I'm impressed!

Now you know the basics behind Buzz and that's a key element to understand Google's social strategy.
It isn't really easy to understand the principles behind the social layer Google is building, because it is a completely different approach than anything else you might have seen before. Some key elements might be something that isn't that quite new, but the way Google (probably) will put it together is quite remarkable.

I'll try to explain how it works... (yeah you can bet your ass that it isn't easy... I have no Idea how to put that in words. And don't ask me to draw something...)

There are two basic epicenters Google Social is built around:

• Management of your real life and your real social circles.
• The obtaining and sharing of knowledge.

Let's have a look at what I discovered over the last weeks:

Google will provide a social layer that serves as an infrastructure for social interaction.
There are 3 types of services Google will provide

• a neutral service (Basically storage of personal Data in the cloud that is NOT PUBLIC)
• an active social service (active collaboration and interaction)
• an passive social service (no direct interaction but indirectly beneficial)

The neutral service
(Storage of Data)

The neutral service is largely based on existing Google products like:

• Google Docs
• Picasa
• YouTube (somewhat)

It provides the infrastructure to store all data in the cloud. These services (don't know about YouTube though) will get upgrades to seamlessly integrate with Google's ChromeOS.

So, let's say you plug in your Camera and ChromeOS asks you, if you want to sync the Pictures and Videos with Picasa. Yep, Picasa has Video-support. And recently they announced, that videos with less than 15 minutes won't be counted into the free quota, so basically you have unlimited storage for 15 minute clips there.

Google Docs gains HTML5 offline support and... like some of you noticed, there is already a very mature collaboration and discussion system (realtime!!!) part of Google docs. (Social anyone?)

YouTube will still be YouTube.

The Active Social Service
(Chat, mail, call, discuss, share)

Here we have the interesting part... The critical  part that makes the difference..

Google Circles (if they haven't changed the name)
Google Circles is not so much (AFAIK) a social network. Google Circles is a meta-tool built around your contact management in gMail and around your Followers/the people you follow on Buzz.

You can take your existing contacts (that you might have already separated in groups) and split them up in different circles like:
Friends, Family, Colleagues, Interesting People on Buzz, Ex'es and Trolls.
Now you have SEPARATED Social networks, that can overlap for some contacts (Ex'es and Trolls for example) where YOU can easily decide which circle you want to share information with and how you want to interact with them. No one outside one circle will gain access to information specifically published for this certain group of people.
Furthermore: Information can not accidently re-shared into another circle.
Google Circles is (if you don't completely mess up the setup putting every contact in every circle)
Google Circles is together with Google Me the ultimate privacy tool (if you don't screw it up!!)
(I'll explain Google Me later)

The infrastructure of the active social service consists of:

• Google Buzz
• Google Talk
• Blogger (2nd grade)
• Picasaweb (2nd grade)
• Latitude (2nd grade)
• YouTube (not so much)
• Google Docs (discussion & collaboration)
• gMail (using People Widget)
• Google Voice (speculation, maybe as contact option via gTalk in gMail)
• something I've forgotten (for sure)

Active social interaction via gMail.... Yeah, I'm talking about eMail. I bet you remember that...
Take a look at the people widget:

You can see that it offers a number of interaction possibilities:
You can call, email, chat and see the latest Buzz-post.
Hmmm? Slowly getting the Idea of how social Google Social really is?

Google Buzz will combine the Activity stream of all Google Products that offer a push to Google Buzz (see the chart)

All these Services are OPT-IN! So: not enabled by default.
For sharing your latitude checkins, you'll have to join Latitude first and then you share your location info just with SPECIFIC PEOPLE unless you explicitly demand that you Latitude check-ins will be public for everyone in your stream.
Same applies to Picasa-Picture uploads, Video uploads and so on.

So, basically the following changes to the Buzz-Experience will occur:

You won't start from scratch.

Everyone with a gMail account and who opted in to Buzz can conveniently start interacting. Thanks to the people widget, the usage of Buzz is more inviting.

You won't have to fight off Trolls

You can either chose to rely on existing social circles or, if you are adventurous, you can discover new people to follow in the wild (only point to solve is.. the who to follow problem, but I bet Google comes up with something.

You don't have to be clever all the time (but it wouldn't be bad)

You don't have necessarily to write very witty thoughtful Buzz-posts inside your social circles.. but it would help humanity if you show a little effort.

Privacy really means privacy not facebook-privacy

You can control every single bit of information including: Disabling resharing of posts entirely, selectively block or admit people/circles to comment. Private data remains private.

The +1 social recommendation engine is coming to Buzz

You will gain the ability to +1 comments and/or posts. These recommendations will highlight the content for other people in your social circles during searches, so they are able to find valuable content (and therefore interesting people to follow) more quickly and vice versa.

The Passive Social Service

The passive social service is not Action/Reaction driven like a "like" or a "reshare" or a Post. There is no immediate reaction. Passive social services are more a source of information on demand.

Passive social services are:

• Google Latitude
• Google Places
• Google Profiles
• Google PlusOne (+1)
• Google Books? (speculation, won't cover that here -> no evidence)

Google Latitude enables you to offer passive context information in form of a location for people that you specifically choose.
For example: I've all my Friends in my Latitude list, so when they see that I'm in town, or they happen to pass through my hometown, they can check where I'm currently at and give me a call. (and go for a beer or two or three or four or ... 99 Bottles of beer on the wall)
It is NO privacy nightmare. If you don't put a public latitude badge on your blog, like me (and you get reminders every 2 weeks that there is an public latitude badge and that you shouldn't forget that other people can see it), your location data is perfectly safe, so are your check-ins via latitude (except you explicitly select "post public to the web")

Google Places (former Google Hotpot) is a rating service that is very versatile. You can rate every awesome or terrible experience with whatever you encounter as long as the biz has a places page.
This information is also just on demand available... Either way you check in on a friends Places profile, or you get the places recommendations +1'd in the places search on Google Search. (Maybe even starred on Google Maps in the future, that'd be cool)
Google Places will probably get a +1 button or... maybe a explanation that if you star a place and rate it "best time evar" you +1'd it in the Google search (yeah, it's easy as 1-2-3... just kidding)
On my personal wishlist, there'd also be a places tab on the profiles page...

Google Profiles is practically your official business card. It is currently like buzz and gMail under heavy construction and has a lot of hiccups, but that is where a huge load of the magic will happen. Besides the fact that there is already a plusOne and a Buzz Tab, there'll be a split-up of the Picasaweb tab that will result in a "Photos" and a "Videos" section. Every content there is also under the same restrictions as you set them in Picasa or Buzz... So there will be just the information visible to whom you want to share it with.
Of course you are able to hide every tab and/or unwanted information just the way you want.
Code hints that Google Profiles will gain the same options for publishing content as Google Buzz and maybe Picasa. That doesn't mean that the original Google Products will vanish and get absorbed, no they just get a second hotspot, where content can be generated.

Google +1 is one of the most misunderstood and trolled awesome feature evar. Most people don't get what it is.. they assume it is some kind of second like button. But it isn't that at all. It is a social recommendation engine that visually aids the determination of valuable content in Google search results.
So far, there are not so many Google Services supporting plusOne, but this chart shows the code where I found proof for +1 integration or where I assume that plusOne will be integrated (dotted, speculation)

I have to admit that the +1 management for each individual user are a little rudimentary, but I bet Google is on it and there was already announced that powerful tools like +1 for analytics are incoming!
For all those who doubt the value of the +1 Tab on profiles:
I ALWAYS check the +1 Tab on Profiles before I follow someone. Is the content he +1'd valuable, it is definitively for me a reason to follow him/her.

For a more extensive explanation what +1 is and why the fudge it isn't a like, read this article:
[PROTIPS] Why Google's +1 and likes aren't the same.


Last but not least: Google Me (on the web)

Google Me is nothing magical. It won't save the hunger problem of third-world countries... It is a safetybelt for the average user (needs a little revamp though) to ensure that he doesn't accidently leak unwanted data to the web. So every time Google indexes a new website containing the user's name or email address, a eMail is sent to the user, asking him to check the content. So, if there is unwanted data, there are also instructions provided how the user can request a removal from Google's index. Handy, huh?
So it is just a failsafe mode just in case the user screws up his privacy data.


A few notes on the side:

The Google Social experience is not a social network like any existing social network. It offers new ways of interacting and cooperating with your existing contacts. There is NO NEED to use Buzz to enjoy it's advantages, but Buzz is definitively an enrichment of the experience.

And if the effin icon bothers you so much in gMail, use a sticker to cover it and stop whining that you have to use thunderbird again because the icon hurts your eyes.

The Google Social experience basically puts a social layer on the web, bringing all Google Services closer together.

Unlike other social networks, the Google Social Experience is built around you and your real life.

=====================the real article ends here :P=======================


Various stuff:


Evolution of the Cloudpicker

The cloudpicker will probably gain some photo/(maybe even video) editing functions and whatnot... check my older articles for information.

Layout adaptions

I've too little information to provide an extensive overview about what will change and where we will see the real epicenter of Google Social (gMail? iGoogle? Profiles? Something new?)  All I can tell is, that Google Talk will get it's place in the top gBar and maybe notifications (emails, comments?) will also be available in the gBar... Probably on all Google Products and services that use the new gBar.
Profiles will also get some changes (see above)
When I get more information, I'll post it on my blog. For more information (like info on orkut etc..) browse my archive for all my discoveries.

Google Typhoon & Photovine

I've no idea what both is. Maybe it's the same and they just renamed it. Probably the codename "pixy" has something to do with it.

Google Social is built for Business & Leisure

It provides features that enriches you professional and your private life. (but allows you to keep it real separate)

It is NOT a replacement for facebook or twitter!

Due to it's completely different nature, you can't even REMOTELY compare those services.
If you want Justin Bieber 140 Char's trashtalk or be up to date when Weiners get tweeted, if you want to play farmville... Stay classic and stick with facebook and Twitter.
You can use Google social on the side... Or if you are sick of it all and want some mature social interaction, you can join us too.

Discuss on Buzz

[STATING THE OBVIOUS] What the Social Web needs (or: why Google will succeed)

[CHART] Upcoming activity sources for Google Buzz

Here is a small chart I quickly hacked together to showcase what might be combined in the Google Buzz activity stream in the near future. This is speculative and might change soon, but there is a good chance that it will manifest in that way. I found evidence for all the things I listed, except the ones with the dotted border, that's just my speculation. EDIT: The ones in red here are, opposed to my other chart, not speculation, this is confirmed.

Most interesting are: Questions and Gadgets
Questions could be a link to Google Moderator, or it could hint to a poll-feature...
But it is indeed a good possibility to start a very fruitful and productive discussion.

Gadgets could refer to plusOne for example... or maybe it is a interface for 3rd party plugins/widgets that can be added to the userinterface iGoogle style (hopefully prettier and more professional than the old 3rd party stuff..)

friendview is probably Latitude.. maybe they'll rebrand it, or it was the old codename for latitude.

Maybe Orkut will also feed activity in there... or it might get the same Activity-stream... ooooor the will keep it completely separate for now.

cheers.

Discuss on Buzz

Here is a small chart I quickly hacked together to showcase what might be combined in the Google Buzz activity stream in the near future. This is speculative and might change soon, but there is a good chance that it will manifest in that way. I found evidence for all the things I listed, except the ones with the dotted border, that's just my speculation. EDIT: The ones in red here are, opposed to my other chart, not speculation, this is confirmed.

Most interesting are: Questions and Gadgets
Questions could be a link to Google Moderator, or it could hint to a poll-feature...
But it is indeed a good possibility to start a very fruitful and productive discussion.

Gadgets could refer to plusOne for example... or maybe it is a interface for 3rd party plugins/widgets that can be added to the userinterface iGoogle style (hopefully prettier and more professional than the old 3rd party stuff..)

friendview is probably Latitude.. maybe they'll rebrand it, or it was the old codename for latitude.

Maybe Orkut will also feed activity in there... or it might get the same Activity-stream... ooooor the will keep it completely separate for now.

cheers.

Discuss on Buzz

[CHART] Upcoming activity sources for Google Buzz

Want to find your first (public) Buzz evar? There's a tool for that

Buzzer Gerwin Sturm has crafted a neat little tool to find your first-ever (public) buzz. Just enter your username, click the button and wait a little. When the date stopped changing, you know when you got your cherry popped and if you follow the link you can also see, how it happened :D

https://www.foldedsoft.at/myfirstbuzz/ <- find it here

Buzzer Gerwin Sturm has crafted a neat little tool to find your first-ever (public) buzz. Just enter your username, click the button and wait a little. When the date stopped changing, you know when you got your cherry popped and if you follow the link you can also see, how it happened :D

https://www.foldedsoft.at/myfirstbuzz/ <- find it here

Want to find your first (public) Buzz evar? There's a tool for that

[ANNOUNCEMENT] BuzzOne is experiencing some issues

Hey there... people and creatures of the night!

I just wanted to inform you that I'm well aware of the problems that BuzzOne experiences on the Google Profiles  at the moment.
As it seems, there is some recently updated jscript code not playing nicely with the injected plusOne code, so the +1 button doesn't turn up... (basically it has to do with Google's recent upgrades)
Well, I'm trying to fix that as soon as possible. Until then, be brave!

buzzOne is sad.

Discuss on Buzz

Hey there... people and creatures of the night!

I just wanted to inform you that I'm well aware of the problems that BuzzOne experiences on the Google Profiles  at the moment.
As it seems, there is some recently updated jscript code not playing nicely with the injected plusOne code, so the +1 button doesn't turn up... (basically it has to do with Google's recent upgrades)
Well, I'm trying to fix that as soon as possible. Until then, be brave!

buzzOne is sad.

Discuss on Buzz

[ANNOUNCEMENT] BuzzOne is experiencing some issues

[PREDICTIONS] Google is currently under full steam

Many of you might have (or might not have) noticed that Google rolls out a load of tiny tiny updates lately (paired with lots of hiccups in the system). I suspect they are currently play-testing to get the new features of Google's Social experience playing nice with the existing implementation. With mixed results.. of course. Stuff like that is rocket-science... and a complex system is always very sensitive to changes.

They try to avoid bricking the whole system by enabling one by one changes that prepare the big launch (if there is one.. Google sometimes launches quietly stuff that is awesome)

Usually someone might suspect that the trickling of features will continue until the whole bunch of features is rolled out, but if I'd be in Google's situation, I'd try to establish the connection between Google's different services under the hood first.

Let me explain how Google's System works right now:

As far as I can tell from the code-style and from Google's history of acquisition of different services, the products Google offer are quite different in code-style and technology they are based on.

One by one over the last months and years, they ported the software to -whatever Google is using right now- some kind of AppEngine on steroids and GWT-style code so it became inter-compatible.

That is kind of a scary monster of a process.. They have to avoid disruptions of the services and everyone who ever had to migrate a system knows what that means.

For example:

I can tell from the source that Google hotpot/places was developed independently by a small group as a kind of experiment. The pet project became a success internally and was made publicly available. No one could expect that it became such a success and it graduated as a stable, valid member of the Google Product-line. Yet there is a lot of incompatibility in the code which they try to work around.

For example... a while ago I found out, that if you star a place and rate it "best time ever", it shows up as a +1 in the Google places search. (not very fancy, huh? But it showcases how tough it is to integrate these services into each other)

What does this example mean for the rollout?

Well it shows that combining all these services is quite difficult and that's why Google seems to "just make a few adjustments" to the UI. But in reality, they are building a big framework under the surface, testing if the services become compatible until they are able to "flip a switch" and launch the beast that slumbers under the surface.

We, the mighty and noble Buzz community, are currently experiencing a lot of woes during the process. Buzz became... quite slow and moody and the weird behavior of the timeline hints to the movement of data in the database. Google buzz data is not hosted centrally (I guess). The data is replicated over several Servers in the cloud, to ease the load and reduce access times. As the import/export/migration is going on, the data is not consistent on all servers. Data is temporarily missing, posts disappear and reappear while it gets replicated over the infrastructure.

Buzz is the heart and the soul of the Activity stream of Google's social experience and that's why we feel there the aftershocks of every little step forward the strongest.

"chili", as Google once called Buzz, is the key to combine the information stream, next to the recommendation engine +1, which is a second, stable pillar of the Google Social Experience.

One is the active interaction (Buzz) where you have action (Posting an Update) and reaction (liking, commenting, resharing), the other one is passive (action without direct reaction but with a social benefit).

And a personal note to Captain Crunch:
I want to explain it to you as simple as I can:
The reward for using plusOne is indirect. You benefit from the stuff you recommend due to the willing of others to do the same. The wisdom of the crowd aids the social search and improves the experience while looking for valuable knowledge. If you still don't understand it, read my other article. I won't link it. Google it. You can do that, I believe in you.

For us Buzz-people:

We just have to be patient. When I look at the speed at which the implementation is progressing, I'm quite sure that Google will flip the switch real soon!

You might report bugs, but I guess they are well aware of all of them, as they are actively working on the system.

Cheers.

Off Topic:

Ps.: I want a honeycomb tablet. I want it really hard! And spacemoose at xda is currently close to finish a very well working alpha-version of a HC port to the good old 7inch Galaxy tab... so please consider heading there and donate a little for his hard work if you own like me a Galaxy tab

Discuss on Buzz

Many of you might have (or might not have) noticed that Google rolls out a load of tiny tiny updates lately (paired with lots of hiccups in the system). I suspect they are currently play-testing to get the new features of Google's Social experience playing nice with the existing implementation. With mixed results.. of course. Stuff like that is rocket-science... and a complex system is always very sensitive to changes.

They try to avoid bricking the whole system by enabling one by one changes that prepare the big launch (if there is one.. Google sometimes launches quietly stuff that is awesome)

Usually someone might suspect that the trickling of features will continue until the whole bunch of features is rolled out, but if I'd be in Google's situation, I'd try to establish the connection between Google's different services under the hood first.

Let me explain how Google's System works right now:

As far as I can tell from the code-style and from Google's history of acquisition of different services, the products Google offer are quite different in code-style and technology they are based on.

One by one over the last months and years, they ported the software to -whatever Google is using right now- some kind of AppEngine on steroids and GWT-style code so it became inter-compatible.

That is kind of a scary monster of a process.. They have to avoid disruptions of the services and everyone who ever had to migrate a system knows what that means.

For example:

I can tell from the source that Google hotpot/places was developed independently by a small group as a kind of experiment. The pet project became a success internally and was made publicly available. No one could expect that it became such a success and it graduated as a stable, valid member of the Google Product-line. Yet there is a lot of incompatibility in the code which they try to work around.

For example... a while ago I found out, that if you star a place and rate it "best time ever", it shows up as a +1 in the Google places search. (not very fancy, huh? But it showcases how tough it is to integrate these services into each other)

What does this example mean for the rollout?

Well it shows that combining all these services is quite difficult and that's why Google seems to "just make a few adjustments" to the UI. But in reality, they are building a big framework under the surface, testing if the services become compatible until they are able to "flip a switch" and launch the beast that slumbers under the surface.

We, the mighty and noble Buzz community, are currently experiencing a lot of woes during the process. Buzz became... quite slow and moody and the weird behavior of the timeline hints to the movement of data in the database. Google buzz data is not hosted centrally (I guess). The data is replicated over several Servers in the cloud, to ease the load and reduce access times. As the import/export/migration is going on, the data is not consistent on all servers. Data is temporarily missing, posts disappear and reappear while it gets replicated over the infrastructure.

Buzz is the heart and the soul of the Activity stream of Google's social experience and that's why we feel there the aftershocks of every little step forward the strongest.

"chili", as Google once called Buzz, is the key to combine the information stream, next to the recommendation engine +1, which is a second, stable pillar of the Google Social Experience.

One is the active interaction (Buzz) where you have action (Posting an Update) and reaction (liking, commenting, resharing), the other one is passive (action without direct reaction but with a social benefit).

And a personal note to Captain Crunch:
I want to explain it to you as simple as I can:
The reward for using plusOne is indirect. You benefit from the stuff you recommend due to the willing of others to do the same. The wisdom of the crowd aids the social search and improves the experience while looking for valuable knowledge. If you still don't understand it, read my other article. I won't link it. Google it. You can do that, I believe in you.

For us Buzz-people:

We just have to be patient. When I look at the speed at which the implementation is progressing, I'm quite sure that Google will flip the switch real soon!

You might report bugs, but I guess they are well aware of all of them, as they are actively working on the system.

Cheers.

Off Topic:

Ps.: I want a honeycomb tablet. I want it really hard! And spacemoose at xda is currently close to finish a very well working alpha-version of a HC port to the good old 7inch Galaxy tab... so please consider heading there and donate a little for his hard work if you own like me a Galaxy tab

Discuss on Buzz

[PREDICTIONS] Google is currently under full steam

[PREDICTIONS] Is Google building a social network juggernaut? Probably. And what the hell is Google Typhoon?

Ok ok, I gotta clear my head for a few minutes here...
I'm still dizzy from the loads of code I walked through and I should try to keep my head clear when I interpret all the clues.

So far it seems, that Google Profiles and gMail have a different progress at implementing new features.
I can't really figure out why there doesn't seem to be a possibility to plusOne a Buzz post on gMail, but they are already implementing it on Google Profiles...
As far as I could tell, Google is currently working on adding a rich media support to the gMail side.
Basically they dropped a huge chunk of picnik's code into gMail/Buzz with features like adjusting contrast, brightness, cropping, black and white, Sepia, cross-process, auto-color and so on.
There are also hints to editing videos, like rotating videos...
I  also found references to something called "Google Typhoon" with a link to a support page that isn't existent  (yet) ->(check it out here)
There is also support for displaying all available EXIF data... At first I thought it might be pure picasa code but there are also enhancements like the ability to +1 photos. (and probably videos too)
next to editing with picnik ("picnikedit", there is something called "pixyedit" o.O I couldn't find ANY reference on the web yet what that could be...

The tagging-system (for photos/videos) has been revamped with different approval and blocking schemes...

And there is Gadget support incoming.. The Gadgets will be loaded into the Googlebar, but I guess it is just an enhancement of the "add Gadget by URL" feature under labs.

Enhanced privacy with multiple private and public groups (for example you can hide certain people you follow from showing up in your "following-list" on your profile)

You will be able to restrict commenting to certain groups or certain people.
You can block certain people from commenting without blocking the whole user.

A little customized version of Buzz is coming to Google Apps users (very handy privacy settings!)

There are some kind of weird recommendations... probably for People to follow... but this time with a reason why this person was recommended and your feedback why this suggestion is terrible, so that Google can find less terrible people to follow based on your decisions.

There seems to be support (as source for Buzzposts) for flickr photos (cooperation highly likely!), picasa (yeah that is treated exactly the same like flickr in the code), standalone... whatever that means, QUESTIONS as activities (!! you can mark something as a question so you can discuss about a topic! AWESOME!), normal activities, imported feeds/connected sites, Google Talk Status, Twitter, eMail-updates, Gadgets (? maybe plusOne and 3rd party), and "friendview" checkins... WTF is friendview? Are they rebranding Latitude? Or is this the old name before it was called Latitude?

There are also additional ways to filter "updates"(buzzposts).. Like "just high activity" or "just low activity"
There is a possibility to directly start a chat with the author of a post... Maybe it's nothing new... you can already do that in Google Buzz by using the dropdown next to the post.

You can choose which relationships/circles/groups whatever are public on your Google Profile.

Every user will show statistics like ... Number of public posts per week on average etc.

And I found a text that said "reshared post from Google +1"... Weird stuff.

And I found a ton of smileys.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are hints to "trending topics" and the possibility to save searches...

That's about it... :D

Discuss on Buzz

Ok ok, I gotta clear my head for a few minutes here...
I'm still dizzy from the loads of code I walked through and I should try to keep my head clear when I interpret all the clues.

So far it seems, that Google Profiles and gMail have a different progress at implementing new features.
I can't really figure out why there doesn't seem to be a possibility to plusOne a Buzz post on gMail, but they are already implementing it on Google Profiles...
As far as I could tell, Google is currently working on adding a rich media support to the gMail side.
Basically they dropped a huge chunk of picnik's code into gMail/Buzz with features like adjusting contrast, brightness, cropping, black and white, Sepia, cross-process, auto-color and so on.
There are also hints to editing videos, like rotating videos...
I  also found references to something called "Google Typhoon" with a link to a support page that isn't existent  (yet) ->(check it out here)
There is also support for displaying all available EXIF data... At first I thought it might be pure picasa code but there are also enhancements like the ability to +1 photos. (and probably videos too)
next to editing with picnik ("picnikedit", there is something called "pixyedit" o.O I couldn't find ANY reference on the web yet what that could be...

The tagging-system (for photos/videos) has been revamped with different approval and blocking schemes...

And there is Gadget support incoming.. The Gadgets will be loaded into the Googlebar, but I guess it is just an enhancement of the "add Gadget by URL" feature under labs.

Enhanced privacy with multiple private and public groups (for example you can hide certain people you follow from showing up in your "following-list" on your profile)

You will be able to restrict commenting to certain groups or certain people.
You can block certain people from commenting without blocking the whole user.

A little customized version of Buzz is coming to Google Apps users (very handy privacy settings!)

There are some kind of weird recommendations... probably for People to follow... but this time with a reason why this person was recommended and your feedback why this suggestion is terrible, so that Google can find less terrible people to follow based on your decisions.

There seems to be support (as source for Buzzposts) for flickr photos (cooperation highly likely!), picasa (yeah that is treated exactly the same like flickr in the code), standalone... whatever that means, QUESTIONS as activities (!! you can mark something as a question so you can discuss about a topic! AWESOME!), normal activities, imported feeds/connected sites, Google Talk Status, Twitter, eMail-updates, Gadgets (? maybe plusOne and 3rd party), and "friendview" checkins... WTF is friendview? Are they rebranding Latitude? Or is this the old name before it was called Latitude?

There are also additional ways to filter "updates"(buzzposts).. Like "just high activity" or "just low activity"
There is a possibility to directly start a chat with the author of a post... Maybe it's nothing new... you can already do that in Google Buzz by using the dropdown next to the post.

You can choose which relationships/circles/groups whatever are public on your Google Profile.

Every user will show statistics like ... Number of public posts per week on average etc.

And I found a text that said "reshared post from Google +1"... Weird stuff.

And I found a ton of smileys.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are hints to "trending topics" and the possibility to save searches...

That's about it... :D

Discuss on Buzz

[PREDICTIONS] Is Google building a social network juggernaut? Probably. And what the hell is Google Typhoon?

New news or no news? Google Social discoveries... Even friggin more!

THIS IS THE RAW DATA I FOUND TODAY! I'll write a summary laterPhoto and Video-Editing on-site using picnik (? seems to be integrated) and Typhoon(?)


This action requires a Typhoon account. You can <span id="link_es_signup" class="cDa4f" tabindex="0" role="link" idlink>sign up</span> for free!
b.Bc.Qa("a",{href:"http://www.google.com/support/Typhoon/bin/answer.py?answer=1047379",target:"_blank"},"Learn More."))}

this.Ch=ZD(c,"editcaption");this.Apa=ZD(c,"facerecognition");this.Zqa=ZD(c,"hideshapes")

<div class="',"J-KU"," ","J-KU-KO",'">',"Location",'</div><div class="',"J-KU",'">',"Camera",'</div>

qp:"Dvb5zd",qN:"ISO Speed:",rN:b.sH[4]},c);TE({qN:"Exposure Bias:",rN:b.sH[5]},c);TE({qp:"Dvb5zd",qN:"Flash Used:",rN:b.sH[6]},c);

Fob(b,a,c){uE.call(this,"Orton","Orton",b,a,c)}function Gob(b){uE.call(this,"sepia","Sepia",b)}function Hob(b){uE.call(this,"warm","Warmify",b)}function Iob(b,a){var c=a||new S;c.append("Sending...");

this,"enhance","I'm Feeling Lucky",b)}function lob(b,a,c){uE.call(this,"CrossProcess","Cross Process",b,a,c)

wE("autocolor","JJ-HMBDl","Auto Color",iob);v(job,uE);wE("bw","JJ-zxeK6","Black and White",job);v(kob,uE);wE("enhance","JJ-XpjyRb","I'm Feeling Lucky",kob);v(lob,uE);wE("CrossProcess","JJ-bRNY0b","Cross Process",lob);v(mob,uE);wE("Neon","JJ-IF7Vqf","Neon",mob);v(nob,uE);wE("Vibrance","JJ-E6anOd","Vibrance",nob);v(oob,uE);wE("crop64","JJ-k3zo0c","Crop",oob);oob.prototype.Lb=function $OVa(a){function c(a){return parseInt(d.substr(a*4,4),16)/65535}(!a?0:/^[0-9a-fA-F]*$/.test(a.replace("1,","")))||h(Error(Yqa("Unexpected encoded crop string: %s",a)));

eob=["CrossProcess","Orton","enhance","bw","autocolor","autolight"]

"Click to unlike this photo"


"Click to like this photo"


<div title='","Click to remove your +1 from this photo","'>","Remove +1","</div>"):c.append("<div title='","Click to +1 this photo","'>","+1","</div>"


"Delete photo","Delete video"


"Rotate video","rotatevideo"


"fs=1&hl="+c+"&autoplay=1&ps=picasaweb&fmt_list="+a+"&fmt_stream_map="+b+"&playerapiid=uniquePlayerId&video_id=picasacid&t=1&vq=large&auth_timeout=86400000000";










"Adding this tag will notify the person you have tagged. They will be able to view the photo and the related album."," ",


"block</span> "+('<a href="'+T(d.Yaa.url)+'" class="cDa4f" target="_blank">'+(T(d.Yaa.nA)+"</a> from tagging you in the future."

c.append("would like to tag you in this photo."

"This tag will not be linked to your profile unless you approve it."

" and 1 other tag waiting for approval"
" other tags waiting for approval"

f.append("You are tagged in 1 photo in this post.")

c.ea(this.Rb,"Drag the box to the face you want to name."); "onYouTubePlayerReady"

"Reshared"+('<a class="Yw"'+(b.Vx.z5?'href="'+mg(ng(b.Vx.z5))+'"':"")+">post</a> from Google+1"






b.set("photodetails",!1);b.set("photoqueryview",!1);b.set("picnikedit",!1);b.set("pixyedit",!1);b.set("ponebrnd",!1);


("camera_sync",2,"profile_photos",1,"profiles_scrapbook",4,"updates",0),zqb=new y(2,function(b,a){var c=a||new S;c.append("Photos from phone");r


c.append("Google Reader user")














:return"Gadget is already installed.";case "eb":return"Invalid gadget specification. Ensure URL is correct and the gadget does not contain errors.";case "eq":return"Gadget is over quota. Gadgets are limited to 2Kb of storage with "+(gl+".")}t










[Global score: "+T(b.update.wqa)+"]</b>"+(b.update.Bfa?" <b>[Personal score: "+T(b.update.Bfa)+"]</b>"

"You won't appear in the list of people "+(T(b.UQ)+" follows."),i="Your buzz will no longer appear in "+(T(b.UQ)+"'s stream."),k=T(b.UQ)+" will no longer be able to comment on your buzz."

"Private to chat contacts","</span>");else if(b.YK)c.append("<span>","Private to Latitude friends"

"1 person reshared this privately within "

"1 person publicly reshared this"

" people reshared this privately within "

c.append("Private to 1 person");else{var d="Private to "+(T(b.kta)+" people");

"Public on the web",mda:"Gc",mha:"Let anyone find and read your posts. Share your ideas with the world."


Dn:"Comment",pxa:"Comments on this post have been restricted by the owner."}
"You don't have permission to comment on posts from "
"Keep your posts restricted and only visible to the people you choose."
f="Keep your posts restricted and only visible to the people you choose within "+(T(c.domain)+"." (Google APPS???)


e="Visible to all members of your organization. Not shared outside of "+(T(c.domain)+".") Google APPS!
"This post will show up in your stream when it has new activity"




g.append("you have a saved search for this topic.")
"Recommended because "+
a="Thanks for the feedback! We'll keep this in mind when making future recommendations."
("this is popular in your extended network.")


" posts with less activity</span> from "+(f.toString()+"..."


("google.Picker",y7a,j);y7a.prototype.ea="http://docs.google.com/picker";


case "youtube":case "mp3":case "lala":case "vimeo":f=!0;break;case "youtube-html5":g=!0;break;case "picasa":case "gmaps":i=!0;break;case "flickr":b.Ob()=="application/x-shockwave-flash"


WXb=["d:flickr.com","s:lh2:activity","s:lh2:standalone","s:questions:activity","s:feedreader:activity","s:talk:status","d:twitter.com","s:updates:emailupload","s:gadgets:rca","s:friendview:checkins"];


"buzz/talkstatusprefetch/"
"Welcome to Google Buzz"
"Back to all buzz"

"Create Update"

"Mute updates":"Unmute updates"

("Show the list of people I'm following and the list of people following me on </label>




"These relationships are shown on your public profile"):c.append("These relationships are not shown on your public profile"
"When you post publicly, he or she will see your posts in Buzz."):c.append("When you post publicly, they'll see your posts in Buzz.")
"You have "+(T(g.Tx)+" connected sites creating new posts in Buzz"


<\!-- TODO(mknichel): Add back when the promo actually supports Add to Group functionality.<span id="',b.Bf.f1,'" class="',"fusdic",'">',"Add to group"


"Number of common followers: "+d.ea.length);a.push("Weekly # of Public posts: "+d.va[0]);a.push("Total public posts since joining: "
"View and follow back"


" public posts per week",c.append(d)):b.Bf.uxa==1?c.append("1 public post since joining")

"Chat with author","W991lc"

"Follow author" "View all posts from author"

" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comment and "+(T(b.oL)+(" like on "+

(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)):b.mL!=1&&b.oL!=1?(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comments and "+(T(b.oL)+(" likes on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)):(b.mL==1&&(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comment and "+(T(b.oL)+(" likes on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)),b.oL==1&&(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comments and "+

(T(b.oL)+(" like on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d))),c.append("</div>"));c.append("</div>");return a?"":c.toString()}function i6b(b,a){var c=a||new S,d=T(b.tk)+(" is following "+T(b.ON));c.append(d);return a?"":c.toString()}

["s:feedreader:activity","s:blogger","d:flickr.com","s:lh2:activity","d:twitter.com"];




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DWb=["asberesultsonly","blockuser","deletephoto","editcaption","hideshapes","loadalbumsforphotoposts","navigationarrows","navigationwrapping","photocomments","photocommentsalbumquery","photodetails","photoqueryview","picnikedit","reportabuse","rotatephoto","sidebarui","toolbarui"],EWb=["addtag","facedetection","facerecognition","ponebrnd","pixyedit","rotatevideo","taggeelist"]

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THIS IS THE RAW DATA I FOUND TODAY! I'll write a summary laterPhoto and Video-Editing on-site using picnik (? seems to be integrated) and Typhoon(?)


This action requires a Typhoon account. You can <span id="link_es_signup" class="cDa4f" tabindex="0" role="link" idlink>sign up</span> for free!
b.Bc.Qa("a",{href:"http://www.google.com/support/Typhoon/bin/answer.py?answer=1047379",target:"_blank"},"Learn More."))}

this.Ch=ZD(c,"editcaption");this.Apa=ZD(c,"facerecognition");this.Zqa=ZD(c,"hideshapes")

<div class="',"J-KU"," ","J-KU-KO",'">',"Location",'</div><div class="',"J-KU",'">',"Camera",'</div>

qp:"Dvb5zd",qN:"ISO Speed:",rN:b.sH[4]},c);TE({qN:"Exposure Bias:",rN:b.sH[5]},c);TE({qp:"Dvb5zd",qN:"Flash Used:",rN:b.sH[6]},c);

Fob(b,a,c){uE.call(this,"Orton","Orton",b,a,c)}function Gob(b){uE.call(this,"sepia","Sepia",b)}function Hob(b){uE.call(this,"warm","Warmify",b)}function Iob(b,a){var c=a||new S;c.append("Sending...");

this,"enhance","I'm Feeling Lucky",b)}function lob(b,a,c){uE.call(this,"CrossProcess","Cross Process",b,a,c)

wE("autocolor","JJ-HMBDl","Auto Color",iob);v(job,uE);wE("bw","JJ-zxeK6","Black and White",job);v(kob,uE);wE("enhance","JJ-XpjyRb","I'm Feeling Lucky",kob);v(lob,uE);wE("CrossProcess","JJ-bRNY0b","Cross Process",lob);v(mob,uE);wE("Neon","JJ-IF7Vqf","Neon",mob);v(nob,uE);wE("Vibrance","JJ-E6anOd","Vibrance",nob);v(oob,uE);wE("crop64","JJ-k3zo0c","Crop",oob);oob.prototype.Lb=function $OVa(a){function c(a){return parseInt(d.substr(a*4,4),16)/65535}(!a?0:/^[0-9a-fA-F]*$/.test(a.replace("1,","")))||h(Error(Yqa("Unexpected encoded crop string: %s",a)));

eob=["CrossProcess","Orton","enhance","bw","autocolor","autolight"]

"Click to unlike this photo"


"Click to like this photo"


<div title='","Click to remove your +1 from this photo","'>","Remove +1","</div>"):c.append("<div title='","Click to +1 this photo","'>","+1","</div>"


"Delete photo","Delete video"


"Rotate video","rotatevideo"


"fs=1&hl="+c+"&autoplay=1&ps=picasaweb&fmt_list="+a+"&fmt_stream_map="+b+"&playerapiid=uniquePlayerId&video_id=picasacid&t=1&vq=large&auth_timeout=86400000000";










"Adding this tag will notify the person you have tagged. They will be able to view the photo and the related album."," ",


"block</span> "+('<a href="'+T(d.Yaa.url)+'" class="cDa4f" target="_blank">'+(T(d.Yaa.nA)+"</a> from tagging you in the future."

c.append("would like to tag you in this photo."

"This tag will not be linked to your profile unless you approve it."

" and 1 other tag waiting for approval"
" other tags waiting for approval"

f.append("You are tagged in 1 photo in this post.")

c.ea(this.Rb,"Drag the box to the face you want to name."); "onYouTubePlayerReady"

"Reshared"+('<a class="Yw"'+(b.Vx.z5?'href="'+mg(ng(b.Vx.z5))+'"':"")+">post</a> from Google+1"






b.set("photodetails",!1);b.set("photoqueryview",!1);b.set("picnikedit",!1);b.set("pixyedit",!1);b.set("ponebrnd",!1);


("camera_sync",2,"profile_photos",1,"profiles_scrapbook",4,"updates",0),zqb=new y(2,function(b,a){var c=a||new S;c.append("Photos from phone");r


c.append("Google Reader user")














:return"Gadget is already installed.";case "eb":return"Invalid gadget specification. Ensure URL is correct and the gadget does not contain errors.";case "eq":return"Gadget is over quota. Gadgets are limited to 2Kb of storage with "+(gl+".")}t










[Global score: "+T(b.update.wqa)+"]</b>"+(b.update.Bfa?" <b>[Personal score: "+T(b.update.Bfa)+"]</b>"

"You won't appear in the list of people "+(T(b.UQ)+" follows."),i="Your buzz will no longer appear in "+(T(b.UQ)+"'s stream."),k=T(b.UQ)+" will no longer be able to comment on your buzz."

"Private to chat contacts","</span>");else if(b.YK)c.append("<span>","Private to Latitude friends"

"1 person reshared this privately within "

"1 person publicly reshared this"

" people reshared this privately within "

c.append("Private to 1 person");else{var d="Private to "+(T(b.kta)+" people");

"Public on the web",mda:"Gc",mha:"Let anyone find and read your posts. Share your ideas with the world."


Dn:"Comment",pxa:"Comments on this post have been restricted by the owner."}
"You don't have permission to comment on posts from "
"Keep your posts restricted and only visible to the people you choose."
f="Keep your posts restricted and only visible to the people you choose within "+(T(c.domain)+"." (Google APPS???)


e="Visible to all members of your organization. Not shared outside of "+(T(c.domain)+".") Google APPS!
"This post will show up in your stream when it has new activity"




g.append("you have a saved search for this topic.")
"Recommended because "+
a="Thanks for the feedback! We'll keep this in mind when making future recommendations."
("this is popular in your extended network.")


" posts with less activity</span> from "+(f.toString()+"..."


("google.Picker",y7a,j);y7a.prototype.ea="http://docs.google.com/picker";


case "youtube":case "mp3":case "lala":case "vimeo":f=!0;break;case "youtube-html5":g=!0;break;case "picasa":case "gmaps":i=!0;break;case "flickr":b.Ob()=="application/x-shockwave-flash"


WXb=["d:flickr.com","s:lh2:activity","s:lh2:standalone","s:questions:activity","s:feedreader:activity","s:talk:status","d:twitter.com","s:updates:emailupload","s:gadgets:rca","s:friendview:checkins"];


"buzz/talkstatusprefetch/"
"Welcome to Google Buzz"
"Back to all buzz"

"Create Update"

"Mute updates":"Unmute updates"

("Show the list of people I'm following and the list of people following me on </label>




"These relationships are shown on your public profile"):c.append("These relationships are not shown on your public profile"
"When you post publicly, he or she will see your posts in Buzz."):c.append("When you post publicly, they'll see your posts in Buzz.")
"You have "+(T(g.Tx)+" connected sites creating new posts in Buzz"


<\!-- TODO(mknichel): Add back when the promo actually supports Add to Group functionality.<span id="',b.Bf.f1,'" class="',"fusdic",'">',"Add to group"


"Number of common followers: "+d.ea.length);a.push("Weekly # of Public posts: "+d.va[0]);a.push("Total public posts since joining: "
"View and follow back"


" public posts per week",c.append(d)):b.Bf.uxa==1?c.append("1 public post since joining")

"Chat with author","W991lc"

"Follow author" "View all posts from author"

" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comment and "+(T(b.oL)+(" like on "+

(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)):b.mL!=1&&b.oL!=1?(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comments and "+(T(b.oL)+(" likes on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)):(b.mL==1&&(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comment and "+(T(b.oL)+(" likes on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d)),b.oL==1&&(d=T(b.FZ)+(" new public posts by "+(T(b.tk)+(" and "+(T(b.mL)+(" comments and "+

(T(b.oL)+(" like on "+(T(b.tk)+"'s public posts this month")))))))),c.append(" ",d))),c.append("</div>"));c.append("</div>");return a?"":c.toString()}function i6b(b,a){var c=a||new S,d=T(b.tk)+(" is following "+T(b.ON));c.append(d);return a?"":c.toString()}

["s:feedreader:activity","s:blogger","d:flickr.com","s:lh2:activity","d:twitter.com"];




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DWb=["asberesultsonly","blockuser","deletephoto","editcaption","hideshapes","loadalbumsforphotoposts","navigationarrows","navigationwrapping","photocomments","photocommentsalbumquery","photodetails","photoqueryview","picnikedit","reportabuse","rotatephoto","sidebarui","toolbarui"],EWb=["addtag","facedetection","facerecognition","ponebrnd","pixyedit","rotatevideo","taggeelist"]

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New news or no news? Google Social discoveries... Even friggin more!