Buzz, meant to be Google’s answer to Facebook and Twitter, takes communicating with friends to a new level by integrating location services with it. However, Buzz still needs some tweaking to make it fully functional and more user-friendly. Buzz even brings all of those ideas to the mobile community on both the iPhone and Android platforms, making it a powerful tool for getting around and finding one’s friends. What makes these mobile apps so successful in keeping people connected?

Buzz came along and upstaged Google’s own location based Latitude service. Many users prefer the fact that Buzz does not always run in the background as Latitude does. This grants them greater privacy by allowing them to check in with friends rather than have everyone in the social group know where they are at all times. Like Foursquare and Gowalla, Buzz lets the user tell it where and when a location is sent out, making it simpler to use in finding one’s way around. To check-in, the user of the service presses a button on the device, and his or her location is transmitted to the others in the group, giving each control of when to display information.

This checking-in concept is built into Buzz for the mobile devices. Users buzz from the device and are allowed to tag the buzz, attaching it to a place while sending the information to friends. By giving people the opportunity to check in in this way, the services function better for transmitting location. Rather than giving out coordinates of where someone is, which are meaningless to many people, check-in services feature an option whereby the user can select an exact place, sending its name in the message to those he or she wishes to meet there. Maps provided by Google enable Buzz users to search for and find directions to the locations provided by friends, making the more efficient in getting there and giving the groups more time to catch up with one another.

Current users find Buzz to be a much better check-in and location service than social network. Many suggest using it as an Android and iPhone app for finding locations, perhaps linking it to people’s Google profiles. By doing so, Google would more easily add in the desired social feature needed to connect groups of friends before they meet in person. Unfortunately, Buzz does a better job of sharing information within Google’s Gmail so their internal users connect rather than reaching out to other networks and bringing together more of the world.

Thus, one can see how Buzz tries to rival other social sharing networks. Although it does well in the mobile market among Android and iPhone fans, Google needs to bring Buzz to other platforms and the point where people can socialize and discuss plans as well as looking up venues on maps. Until those changes come about, users will have to be content with checking in and meeting up with friends much as they would use a GPS tool.

Google dropped a bomb shell on the internet world yesterday as it announced a couple of new ways for users to search the net. The more prominent announcement entails the use of realtime data from the social media communities of Facebook, Twitter, and mySpace.

So what could this mean for us? How will it shape our online world? While there are dozens of implications, 5 reasons come quickly to mind in how Google’s real time search will change our virtual world.

1. Real Time Answers - Ever look for information on the net, only to find that the only piece information you could muster up was from 1991? While this may be great if you are working on a history project, current technology based information needs to be fresh in order to be accurate. A real time search engine could prevent this by giving you access to more prominent data from users in large social communities -such as Facebook and Twitter.

2. Public Opinion on Current Events – Find out what real people are saying about current events – and not just overhyped or bias press. As the event unfolds people on the scene that contribute to Twitter and other social communities will become prevalent in the search engine results, allowing you to better form your own judgments, contribute to the conversation and find the social community that has the best information for you.

3. Cost Effective Marketing – Companies that have a good product or service can make use of real time search by asking satisfied customers to speak out about their brand. If Company XYZ sells product M, and 3000 people are updating there status about how great it is, Company XYZ essentially saved thousands of dollars from branding themselves through traditional means.

4. Faster Shopping Online – Are you looking for a certain book to read? Want to know what people are saying about it now- before you spend that twenty dollar bill? With real-time search capabilities you will get answers from various people in the social communities quickly, and not have to search all over the net to compare and contrast product reviews. Needless to say this will dramatically increase the speed in which you can shop online for products and services.

5. Higher Customer Satisfaction – With the social web – Companies are just a few clicks away from being rendered a hero or a complete z… well you get it. Let’s face it, people enjoy telling their social communities what they thought of a particular product or service – good or bad. With real-time results this information will weigh heavy on company’s to maintain a competitive advantage and truly strive satisfy their customers needs.

Mixed Messages about Texting and Driving

While many states will fine you for even messing around with your smartphone- some are more than happy to send you tweets regarding current traffic conditions. This is very disconcerting for safety experts who claim this sends a mixed message to driving smartphone users…

A Related Story

Twitter- having recently changed some design elements on their site -switched the default avatars from a bland “meh” character face to a new more appealing bird icon. In this process they also blew away many users’ hand picked avatars – replacing them with the new bird. This created a bit of an uproar in the community because many veterans view this new avatar as a newbie branding of sorts – while others just view it as a sign of instability in the twittershpere…

A Related Story

Facebook gained a whopping 50 million plus users since July 2009, when they proudly announced their following had reached 250 million users. This marks a major milestone for any business considering this small timeframe…

A Related Story

Facebook agreed to shut down the invasive beacon service, that tracks users actions through out the net via facebook. This occurs after a settlement was reached from a class action suit filed in August of 2008…

A Related Story

Jonathan G. Parker, 19 of Fort Loudoun, Pa., decided to logon to his facebook account while robbing a house in Martinsburg, WV. In the robbery Parker stole some jewelry valued at $3,500 and Googled “best escape routes” in the process. When leaving the premises Parker left his facebook account logged in…

A Related Story

The saga continues as more evidence points out that Apple may have lied to the FCC and did in fact reject the Google Voice App for the iPhone. While Apples stands firm stating they did not reject the app and they are still studying it. Google fired back releasing the previously secret document to the FCC- accounting for all interactions between Google and Apple (pdf here)…

A Related Story

Google’s Massive Book Scanning project was handed another setback on Friday Sept 18, 2009, when the Department of Justice pressured a district court to reassess Google’s class action settlement in fear on a Monopoly …

A Related Story

Twitter Plans to Add GeoData to your Tweets

In a blog post on Thursday Biz Stone announced that they will be adding a geolocation feature to Twitter that will be first rolled out to developers. With this option users will be able to turn on an optional location aware feature that will add GeoData to your tweets (latitude and longitude). This sounds both fun and dangerous at the same time. On one hand it would be nice to use with family and friends, on the other hand if rouge users have access to your twitter feed, this opens the door for personal attacks.

Related Story

Twitter Plans to Bring in Revenue From Businesses

Twitter is hoping to have the processes in place by the end of they year to charge business users’ a fee for added account features. While users and companies will still have the option to sent tweets for free, the added features will include a subset of special tools to assist businesses in tracking the effectiveness of their tweets.

Related Story

Facebook: First Cyber Bully to be Put in Jail

Vile Keeley Houghton, now 18, was the first person in Britain to be put in jail for cyber bullying via Facebook. In her taunts she threatened victim Emily Moore stating the she was an actress and she was going to murder her …

Related Story

Facebook is now allowing Status updates to be Sent to Twitter

Facebook announced that it will allow Public figures and Businesses to post profile updates to Twitter. The company feels that they often go tweet the same information so this would basically save them a step in the process …

Related Story

Phishing Apps Found on Facebook

Trend Micro reported that they found a some phishing apps on Facebook that sent users to other rouge sites (as most do). These sites would then ask for your login information, to steal your Facebook credentials. While Facebook has since removed these apps, this seriously questions the integrity of the Facebook application review process. I mean if they let these apps in and were not aware of their activity, who is to say there are not 100s even 1000s of these apps on Facebook right now…

Related Story

Apple, AT&T and Google the Google Voice iPhone Saga Continues

Much buzz was created around the net when Apple supposedly rejected Google’s Voice App from being available in the iPhone App store. Now that the FCC has decided to intercede into Apple’s magical app selection process – Apple claims the App is not rejected. They claim that they are still analyzing the app to see if it does not alter the iPhones core phone functionality.
AT&T remains adamant stating they have nothing to do with the Google Voice App rejection and they really have nothing to do with the app approval process from a contract stand point.

Outed Google blogger Rosemary Port To Sue Google

A media storm was created over some blog posts that referred to model Liskula Cohen as “The Skankiest in NYC”. A court ordered Google to release the IP address of the once phantom blogger responsible in order find their identity. Google initially fought to keep this information private but needless to say was unsuccessful.
Rosemary Port the owner of the blog Skanks of NYC, now plans to sue Google claiming they “breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity”.

Related Story

Google released a beta version of a new search engine that engineers have been working on in secrecy over the past several months dubbed Caffeine. While most people will not notice any aesthetic differences, many developers have said the new google search engine is a lot faster.
Google claims that the new search engine architecture will go far beyond the current Google search and will push the “envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google has stated that the new project has yet to be fully completed and is asking that web developers and “power searchers” test the new project out here http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and give Google your feedback.

It should be noted that Google does not want just any feedback and includes the following in their recent blog post.

Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google’s current search results and our new system. We’re also interested in higher-level feedback (”These types of sites seem to rank better or worse in the new system”) in addition to “This specific site should or shouldn’t rank for this query.” Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won’t have the cycles to send replies.

Here’s how to give us feedback: Do a search at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Initial testing of both search engines (Caffeine and normal Google) using the keyword iphone (all lower case), has shown slightly different results in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Most Notably is the number of indexed pages in both search engines. Normal Google (decaffeinated) displayed 357,000,000 results for the term. While Caffeine displayed 458,000,000, giving validity to the initial blog announcement – where the size envelope will be pushed.

What will this mean for search engine optimization experts and other search engine marketing gurus? At this point it is too early to tell since the project has been pushed out in a fashion to elicit user and developer feedback. While this is not a Google Lab product (notorious for pooping up and then just dying off), feedback from users could ultimately change the direction of the project.

Has this every happened to you? You find a new site that offers you really great information. You end up subscribing to their newsletter only to find that its not what you thought it would be. Or better yet it was what you thought it was but you interests have changed.
So what do you do? Do you track down the site where the newsletter came from and search endlessly for the coveted “unsubscribe to newsletter” form? Or do you give up and mark the message as spam, so you that it is one less message you have to sift through on your daily adventures to your gmail box?

Whatever you do, the guys at gmail realize that this can be a problem for many. So they have added a new unsubscribe feature to gmail to help alleviate some time for you and some wrongful spam claims for legitimate companies.

Using this feature is pretty straight forward. When you are tired of seeing these nuisances just mark the message as spam, like you normally would. A pop-up window will surface in the middle of the browser asking you if you would like to mark the message as spam or unsubscribe. Its pretty seamless at this point.

It is important to note that the unsubscribe feature is not instant and it may take a few days for the Google Gods to process your request. In addition this feature is not available for all companies just yet.

(Source cnet)

According to a recent blog post in the official Gmail blog, Gmail Labs will now include a spiffy little key icon next to emails that it deems the sender to be “Super-Trustworthy” . This is Google’s latest attempt to keep you safe from phishing scams -where the “phishers” attempt to elicit your PayPal or eBay password from you in an official looking email. You know the one that says click on this url to update your user info or your account will be deleted.
Currently they only have this “Super-Trustworthy” status for emails that come from PayPal and eBay, but plan to have more companies added in the future.

In case your are wondering what exactly does “Super-Trustworthy” mean, the Gmail Spam Czar, Brad Taylor wrote this in his recent blog post,

Super-trustworthy” is a technical term I just invented that means: (1) the sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers, (2) all of the sender’s email is authenticated with DKIM, and (3) Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don’t.

It should also be noted that if you want this feature to work in your Gmail, you will have to turn it on by going to your settings link (in the top right corner of your gmail account). Then go to the labs subtab/link, scroll down from about 30 secs (there are a lot of features here) till you eventually see the “Authentication icon for verified senders” . From here click the “enable” radio button, scroll to the bottom of the page and hit the save changes button.

When you are completed you should see something like the screen shot below in your PayPal and Ebay emails….