Hey! Follow me on Google Buzz!

Google Buzz is a bit of old with a lot of new. It takes the features that people love out of other social networks, improves them, and mushes it all together for you to read and interact with inside your Gmail Inbox. Though it has been receiving some positive buzz lately, there are still many skeptics out there that don’t see a use in it because to some, reading tweets on Twitter, for example, seems more at home. But Google Buzz is much more than a place to check out content provided by other sites. It’s also a social network in itself, and if you have been living under a rock this past decade and haven’t bothered with the whole MySpace, Facebook, Twitter thing, that’s okay.

You can make a Google Buzz account and post whatever you want, wherever you want, and however you want – the vitals of technological convenience that any social network should have if it wants to leave any sort of mark in the industry.

Google Buzz is a new social network – so what? Social Networks come and go these days and it seems that right when you are getting used to the “new” one that everyone is playing with on their iPhones, something better comes along and you are forced to switch over. You have so many “friends” that you just have to check at two or three different social networks daily, don’t you? Don’t you? Yes, you know you do, and it gets to be too intense sometimes. Google wants to fix this problem, let’s see if they do.

Let’s start with Orkut, Google’s own Facebook/MySpace competitor that hasn’t really made much of an impact yet. You can post things, it has friends lists, really good discussion tools, and has that familiar social network feel. But what has Google done to themselves? Google Buzz has all of the features listed above and even more, and Google knows they are going to have to add heavy Orkut integration soon. Should Orkut be afraid? More than anybody; Orkut is going to slowly be phased out as Google Buzz grows and we will soon see most of the Orkut features in Google Buzz – but it’s okay, they are both owned by Google.

Many people haven’t realized that Google Buzz has an amazing location aware posting system. You can post (much like a check-in on other sites) from wherever you are from your mobile device or computer – it then notifies your followers on Google Buzz where you are. Ever since Apple allowed in-browser location support in iPhone OS 3.0, Google has been loving every minute of it. They updated their mobile Google Maps page, allowed Google Search to see where you are, and even finish Google Latitude – another simple Google tool that allows you to see where your friends are – much like Brightkite and foursquare.

All of the features that you find on Google Latitude, Brightkite, and even foursquare, are already found inside Google Buzz. Do these sites need to be afraid? You bet. Almost no other social network out there has a location aware check-in feature built in, unless that’s the sole purpose of the network (like Brightkite and foursquare). Because Google Buzz has this already built in there will be no use for an external network to tell other networks like Twitter or Facebook where you are so your friends can see. Why would you go to another site to tell another site that has all your friends where you are?

Now let’s get to the obvious one: FriendFeed. FriendFeed has been doing what Google Buzz is now doing for a long time now. It has support for hundreds of social networks and takes all of the different live feeds and puts them into a single timeline for you to follow and post from. It has support for followers and over the years it has gotten even simpler to use. So should FriendFeed be worried about Google Buzz? Nope, Facebook just bought them.

Just to throw this out there, there’s a good chance that you’ll eventually find the features of FriendFeed that we know and love natively inside Facebook. This means that you won’t have to install a million apps and import RSS feeds from all of your other social networks to get it to show up in your stream. This will be Facebook’s answer to Google Buzz, and will be the only thing saving Facebook from becoming another Pownce.

What about Twitter? Unfortunately, unless Google decides to buy them like they have talked about before, the simple social networking site may start to lose more and more traffic. Google Buzz does what Twitter does and a lot more. Unless Twitter decides to add support for multimedia like Facebook and Google Buzz instead of just tweeted links, and possibly even a native location aware check-in system, then people are going to ultimately grow tired of their 140 character limit.

So let’s see what happens as Google Buzz gains momentum and support for other social networks. Will these mentioned sites hurt? Probably. Will they get more popular when Google Buzz gets support for them? Probably not. Google isn’t trying to take over the Internet, it just kind of happens.

Hey! Follow me on Google Buzz!

When a brand new product comes out on the market, especially if it is made by one of our favorite companies, we just have to have it. I’m not talking about the new cellphone model that Motorola comes out with every week, I’m talking about something brand new and extremely over-hyped that places itself in the back of our mind until we have it in our hands.

For example, remember the Xbox 360 launch? It was one of the first consoles ever that caused people to camp out in the blistering cold weeks before just to snag one of the ten consoles that a brick and mortar store received. The PlayStation 3 and the Wii caused similar effects upon consumers, but they weren’t nearly as competitive as the Xbox 360 launch.

But what happened with the Xbox 360? There were massive failure rates – over half of the consoles sold to early adopters overheated and had to be replaced. Microsoft responded by redesigning the system.

What did they do? Well, for starters, they implemented a new cooling system to make sure that the “Red Ring of Death” was a thing of the past. Sure, I’m sure it still happens here and there, but it’s not the market mess that it was the first year that the Xbox 360 was out.

So it’s a year later and Microsoft is fixing the consoles and preparing the huge shipments of the new ones with the new cooling system. The PlayStation 3 is about to be launched and everyone is talking about HDMI. “The PlayStation 3 has HDMI and is truly HD unlike the Xbox 360″, they said. “I’m going to get a PlayStation 3 because component cables suck,” they said. So what did Microsoft do? They took this perfect time of reconstruction to add HDMI and even larger hard drives to compete with Sony.

Hey, those of you who camped out in the cold, took off work and school, and even that guy who was followed home from an Xbox 360 launch and got robbed, guess what? Your crappier console is going to have problems and not have some new features because you early adopted! Sounds fair, right?

This is a perfect example of how early adopting is a bad thing to do. Sure, you can be one of the first to use it, but if you wait, something good may happen. A new generation is always around the corner which will almost always include new features and functionality for the same price or even cheaper. And to those of you who paid $600+ for a PS3 on eBay the first week that came out, I truly feel sorry for you. The PS3 now has more harddrive space and functionality than ever, and they’ve been in stock only a few weeks after you got yours on eBay.

When GameStop asks you if you want to pre-order the next Xbox, the Xbox 720 or whatever, say no. The next generation of gaming is going to be the same or worse. Everyone sees now that controlling the market and keeping supply under demand increases hype, and thus allows the market to flourish with software sales before hardware. Thanks, Nintendo.

Does this apply only to gaming? No! Think about the iPhone. Thousands camped out outside of malls and Apple Stores to get their hands on the first generation of the device – the one that didn’t have 3G. Apple dropped the price $200 only a few months after it came out. Thanks to Steve Jobs and his Open iPhone Letter, Apple did offer a $100 store credit for those who got it first, but they were still out another $100. Also, less than a year later, the iPhone 3G was announced which deemed the first generation pretty much useless. Then, less than another year later, the iPhone 3GS came out, which is the only version of the iPhone that runs iPhone OS 3.0 smoothly.

But what about the people with extra cash in their pockets that needs to own absolutely ever generation out there? They are the fortunate ones in the technology world, I suppose, but companies need to think about everyone by increasing the lifespan of their products. Apple especially leaves out features just so they can have a new update next year and make everyone buy the almost same product again.

So just remember this. If you early adopt, you will be disappointed. If you buy, for example, the iPad (3G version) now, which lacks some features that were hoped for and it is all during the transition of everything to 4G and beyond, you will be disappointed. It doesn’t have a camera – within a year it will. When something is announced, let everyone else get it first and see how things go. If there’s no announcement of a change to the lineup shortly thereafter (6 months), then grab one. If a new generation comes out, then you’ll be the cool kid on the block. It pays off to wait.

Check out Apple’s site for the full list of specs and features. Most of them have been previously discussed about on many different sites and there wasn’t nothing really of surprise, except there is no camera and the pricing is insanely generous (starting at $499). Hey, for the amount of hype this thing got, Apple seemed to deliver.

Also, click here to watch the full keynote in High Quality.

For those of you who have been following some of my recent projects, you’ll know what DigiDose was. For those of you who haven’t, it was a gaming/technology blog that hit a pretty high point but then fell due to some political issues of our talented team. DigiDose has been collecting dust for a while, but because of Apple’s supposed “tablet” related news later today, DigiDose has been getting a tens of thousands of hits because of one single picture:

This Apple Tablet mockup was sent to us by an anonymous tipster during the time that I ran DigiDose. We created a post with it alongside some other pretty good mockups to show what the Apple Tablet may look like. Though recent news shows that the Apple Tablet may be either called the iSlate or now even the iPad, this mockup introduces some of the looks and features that the device will probably have.

I’ve decided to host this image on my blog now so that you all can comment and view it here – if you search Twitter for “DigiDose” you’ll see that this image is being passed around in extreme numbers and even sent to news sites such as CNN. I’ve also redirected any DigiDose traffic that would have gone to that image to this post.

If you are the original author of this mockup and can prove it let me know. If not, just enjoy this slick rendition of what will hopefully be announced later today and please, discuss away.

This post is influenced directly from overhearing someone say the other day “‘The Hangover’ is a great film because it won a Golden Globe.” Sure, ‘The Hangover’ may be fun to watch, and it did indeed win a Golden Globe, but it’s not a great film. So what is a Golden Globe? What does winning one actually mean? Why does a certain movie or TV show win a Golden Globe? You’ll find all the answers here, and once you realize what’s actually going on, you’ll see how The Golden Globes really work and ultimately why they suck.

The Golden Globes have recognized the “best” films annually for over 67 years now, and though they receive enough attention to convince the biggest celebrities to attend, they have a bogus voting and nominating system. The awards show looks childish to Hollywood when compared to the Academy Awards and with a majority of the 82 voting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) being celebrity gossipers opposed to actual film critics, winners of a Golden Globe shouldn’t be taken seriously.

It’s time to think of The Golden Globes as a beauty contest. Despite the actual foundation of the film, if a movie is popular, it’s going to be nominated for a Golden Globe. This is because a film that’s nominated isn’t recognized from a technical standpoint like it is when being considered for an Academy Award, it’s considered if the movie/TV show has grossed a certain amount of money or if a certain movie/TV show is in need of publicity and the publisher has bribed the HFPA with gifts and cash. Don’t believe me? Search around, there are hundreds of news articles with different sources for evidence talking about bribes given to the HFPA in return for an incredible amount of publicity through a nomination at the awards show. Even check out this post while you’re at it.

If you look at a film that was either nominated or more importantly actually won a Golden Globe, then you can see side-by-side that it had some impact on the entertainment industry of the year it’s nominated for. Here are some examples:

Avatar: Grossed over $1 Billion in Box Office ticket sales. This is only the fifth film in history to accomplish this and it happened in the first few weekends. Won Best Picture Drama at the Golden Globes.

The Hangover: Became the highest grossing R-rated film ever. Won best Picture Comedy at the Golden Globes.

James Cameron: One of the most talked about names of 2009. One of the first to spend 300 million on a single movie. Won Best Director at the Golden Globes.

You can do this with each and every winner of a Golden Globe.

So what does this mean? Well, if you hear of a movie breaking box office records or a TV show that is getting amazing reviews from magazine and internet blogs, then you’ll hear about it at next year’s Golden Globes. If you don’t hear of a movie breaking records or becoming incredibly popular, then you probably won’t hear of it at the Golden Globes. The Hurt Locker is an example this year of a movie that a lot of people didn’t know about when it first came out that was still nominated, but its DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals were through the roof.

Sure, popular movies also make it to more serious awards shows such as The Academy Awards, but movies that did terribly compared to a “blockbuster” still get nominated for an Oscar. Why? Because they are great films in all the different areas. For example, ‘Lost In Translation’ with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson was nominated for best picture in 2003. It grossed a measly 44 million worldwide compared to Avatar’s current holding of 1 billion. Not everyone saw it in the theaters, but it was still nominated.

Though the tone of this post toward the Golden Globes has turned out to be pretty negative, to give it some credit, there are still some positive to say about the show. For one, production companies that have money and good offers that put out a movie that hasn’t received much exposure, can try their luck with the HFPA and possibly even get nominated if the price is right. Though that may be cheating in your eyes, if you look at the Golden Globes as a popularity contest rather than a “Best of” show, then it may be more accepted. The HFPA also donates a lot of money to schools and film programs to make sure that the film industry lives on, which is a good move on their part and maybe you’ll hate them slightly less because of that. There you go, HFPA, there’s a little good in you.

Just please, don’t think that a movie is amazing because it won a Golden Globe. Sure, it may be good, it could even be great when it became popular and therefore nominated because it was good, but you should probably wait for the Academy Awards and see what they have to offer before saying things like “The Hangover is a great film because it won a Golden Globe.”

I'm not obsessed with dogs.

In many ways, Bing has some pretty cool features that Google doesn’t. The first new thing you may notice is the related search categories on the left sidebar. If you do a simple search for “dogs“, instead of pages displaying in the search that only have the word dog in them, Bing creates some extended options for you such as “Breeders” or “Toys”. Well, Google has this too, but you have to enable it.

When looking at your search results, Bing will find the most popular pages or categories within the site and display them for you. You can also roll your mouse over and preview some text from the homepage before you decide to head to that site or not. Some sites have reported that these “popular pages” aren’t totally accurate, but I’m sure in time Bing will become propagated correctly and things will sort themselves out. I love this feature of Bing.

Another thing you may notice right off the bat is the speed of Bing. Whether you are changing to a search category or  going to another page on Bing, the load time is almost instant. This shows that Microsoft has really improved their architecture and optimization of the platform over their previous attempts, and overall the experience is a bit quicker than that of Google. This is something that I want in a search engine, and quick speeds is a must.

I like Bing Images better than Google Images. After all these years of searching Google for images, I think I may make my switch over to Bing when in need of someone’s body to Photoshop one of my friend’s heads on, or any other purpose of searching for an image out there that I may not be aware of. Instead resorting to pagination, Bing displays most of the found images on a single page. There’s also no text or url, like there is on Google, so therefore it is truly an image search. You can instantly change the zoom of all of the found images, and it is easier to find the direct link to the image than it is on Google since it displays it immediately after you click on the image.

Searching for Videos is pretty intuitive as well, as it searches for videos on any site, rather than videos only on YouTube on Google Videos. Google’s video search right now is mostly video results mixed with regular results, and though it works, it’s still not a dedicated video search. On Bing, there is also a preview of the video that you can watch by rolling your mouse over the thumbnail. Though this is cool, don’t try to preview a video at work if NSFW is in the title.

Shopping, maps, and etc are the same they were on Live. Though they aren’t bad, I don’t see myself switching from Google Maps or Google Earth anytime soon. Also, I don’t know what is with Microsoft’s fetish of defaulting to annoying hot air balloon or forest backgrounds throughout the search bar and results. I want simple, and this makes it still feel like the old Live.com, which I hated. Also, if you try out Bing on your iPhone or mobile web device, it just forwards you to Live Mobile, which just isn’t cool.

The unique features, speed, and intuitiveness of Bing makes it a good competitor towards Google. It is definitely Microsofts best attempt, but it still falls short in the beautiful simplicity that Google offers. There is no web app, annoying backgrounds, it still needs to be propagated correctly. Though Bing is a vast improvement of Live and I will be checking it out every now and then, I’ll still use Google for all of my searching needs. Microsoft is close, and competition is good, but there are still some things that need to be worked out. I really like Bing, but it has yet to win my love. I look forward to seeing Google’s reaction to this, and can’t wait for future builds of Bing.

[Tags]Bing, Microsoft, Google, Search Engine, Search, Live[/Tags]

To easily answer that question, check out this graph. It’s based on Twitter’s traffic for the past six months.

Though the graph fluctuates and dips every few months, it is continually rising. In fact, Twitter has continued to surpass sites almost every month that are ranked under 100 in Alexa, and that takes a lot of increased traffic. Sure, Alexa isn’t totally accurate, but it’s the closest thing we have to officially ranking sites. Twitter’s traffic may even be greater than what Alexa picks up, but only the company and their investors know.  Either way, we can see that Twitter is continuing to rise per month, and if you wait around too long, there may not be room for your Twitter-based App.

So what should you do? Purchase a Twitter domain…now. Think of something, preferably with Tweet or Twit, bird, or Twitter in it, and purchase the domain.  Buogo, Inc. is sitting on a number of Twitter domains only to be used for with our own apps or sell them in the future. We have already launched our first Twitter-based site, TweetMyLink, and there will be more to come.

You may be asking “Aren’t you creating competition for yourself by encouraging people to create Twitter-based sites?” Yup, and we love it. Twitter needs sites like these to continue to grow and hopefully in the future profit. Sites like these need competition to improve on their game and offer more to the internet than they ever did before. Competition, especially on the web, is a good thing.

If you are indeed worried that Twitter may go out of business and your site will go with them, then come up with something that can still be used afterward. Perhaps loosely base it around the API, or create something that is marketed towards Twitter users but everyone can use it. Like TinyURL, yFrog, TwitPic, eggURL, or any other web app that is beneficial to both someone using Twitter and those who are missing out.

I predict that now is the best time to start on your tweet-action.  Whether it’s a highly followed account, an app based on the Twitter API, or something mobile that you have in mind, get a start on it. If you are a web developer I highly recommend that you get into this game. You’ll love it, you’re users will love it, and in the long run, Twitter will love it because you are improving the power and publicity of their platform. Oh, now I see what their business model is.

Turn ON the lights to turn ON the future.

Please start by Retweeting this Post, thanks! http://twitter.com/zea/status/1409267129 When talking about Power Hour on Twitter, use the tag #powerhour

Click To Enlarge

If you are a Twitter user, then you will immediately see what familiarity I am talking about from the above picture. The new “public wall” on Facebook now looks exactly, and I mean EXACTLY, the same as someone’s Twitter page. Sure, there is another sidebar on the left, but the top of the page has the status entry field, like Twitter, and underneath it is your friend’s statuses, like Twitter. Their small picture is also displayed the the left of their status, with “reply” and “like” buttons, just like the “reply” and “favorite” buttons that Twitter have used for o’so long. Twitter has had this layout for every year of its life, and Facebook has just stolen it.

There have been some recent analyst reports that Facebook is worried about Twitter, and this is definitely proof, in a clone-copy cheap rip-off kind of way. Facebook: you have been pretty unique and quite funcitonal for as long as I can remember, please keep it that way. In order to retain loyal users you must be different. If you continue to look and feel like Twitter, will I or millions of other people have any reason to come back to Facebook? Absolutely not.

[Tags]Facebook, Twitter, Social Network, Web 2.0, Politics, Copycat[/Tags]

Apple just announced that they will be holding an event on March 17th, and will unveiling the new iPhone OS version 3.0. This is a big deal because Apple is skipping the rest of 2.x, and going straight to 3.0. This usually means that a whole redesign and a large list of new features are in store – the blueprints on the image also may symbolize the fact that Apple went back to the “Drawing Boards”. Hopefully the change list contains many long awaited and needed features alongside shiny new and unexpected surprises that will make the iPhone better than what it already is. These are my predictions:

Copy/Cut & Paste: Perhaps one of the most basic yet wanted features on the iPhone. The current magnifying glass on the iPhone, (when holding down your finger to place the cursor in a text field), will be updated for smoother and easier functionality. When you hold down your finger, it will turn into a solid cursor, allowing you to highlight your text by dragging your finger over the portion that you need. You can either then tap it to copy to the clipboard, drag it to another section for a cut/paste function, or tap in a non-highlighted area to paste.

Stacks: Many users with a large App library complain that finding the App they need is difficult when scrolling horizonatally through pages and pages. I predict that iPhone OS 3.0 will feature Stacks, and work much like the genius feature in OSX Leopard. The homescreen will be able to be customized to have folder like icons, categorized for Games, Utilities, etc. A simple click on the icon will dim the screen and have those relevant icons pop-up in grid view. This will save a lot of time and make customization easier.

Local App Management: iTunes will of course be updated alongside the OS update, and it will allow App management, alongside the new Stacks management, all within iTunes. It will work much like this mockup:

10mb 3G Download Limit Increase: It seems as if AT&T has allowed more to download over 3G upon each iPhone update in the past. Originally, users had to be connected to a WiFi source to preview or purchase something from the iTunes App on the iPhone. Slowly, they removed that ban, and now users can download anything, whether it be a song or an App, under 10mb over 3G. AT&T will increase the size cap to 15mb in this next update, allowing almost any product on iTunes and a larger amount of Apps to be downloading via 3G.

Dynamically Updating Background: There are a few Jailbreak iPhone Apps that do this, but in iPhone OS 3.0 your background will no longer be a static picture. It will be able to display the current weather, walking map, upcoming events, random color/image fading much like in OSX, or of course a static image if chosen. This will allow users to look at their phone without unlocking it to retrieve important information of their choosing.

Landscape View In Any Screen: No longer will landscape view be available in a limited amount of Apps. It will now work with the homescreen, SMS texting, email, and any other App that could use it in a useful way.

Background Apps: Push services will now be able to work with AIM, your Twitter client, or any other sort of notification service. Currently, besides a few of the official Apple Apps that come loaded on the iPhone, become shut down when you exit them. Apple will now allow Apps to be run in the background, but limit the amount so the iPhone doesn’t get overloaded with resource requirements.

Picture Messaging/Video Recording & Conferencing: Users will now be able to send Picture/Video Messages over 3G and Edge, and the camera will be able to record short clips of video.

Speed and Optimization: There will be many improvements to utilize the current hardware in the iPhone. Apps will load faster and battery usage will be improved overall.

And that is what I predict. After the event, I will come back to this list and update accordingly; listing what I was correct and incorrect on. I hope most of these predictions are indeed true, because the iPhone is in desperate need of features like these.

[Tags]iPhone, iPhone 3G, Apple, iTunes, OSX, Leopard, Conference, Apple Expo, iPhone OS, iPhone OS 3.0[/Tags]