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Social Buzz-ing
buzz
On the lines of Facebook and Twitter, Google brings you the Buzz.
G
oogle Buzz – the next big thing from Google after Wave. But unlike Wave, Google brought out Buzz rather unannounced. So what is Buzz? What is it used for? Remember RSS feeds? Well, Google Buzz is just like a RSS with a fusion of social networking features in the Gmail edifice. With comments, links, photos and videos, Google Buzz is being considered as a direct competition to Twitter and Facebook. Without confusing buttons or never-will-be-used options, Buzz is simple in its initial stages, and will be good if it continues to do so. Acting as a dashboard for the messages, photos and posts that you put in your Gmail, Buzz is bang on with their ‘the-simpler-the-better’ policy. Embedded within Gmail, Buzz gets you updates and comments by others in real time so as to engage in a compact conversation or an elongated one (it
doesn’t have the 140 character limit as in Twitter). Giving prior importance to privacy, the Buzz gives you the option of posting public or private. Your public post goes to everyone and your private posts are available only to your followers as chosen by you. That’s one big advantage the Buzz has got over Facebook. You can select who to follow and others can also choose you to follow them. Also you don’t need to go in search of friends or followers. These will be built based on your Gmail contacts list. After posting your messages, you can edit, delete or email them. You can also create a link to your message that opens as a standalone web page for the post. Anyone who views the post can also email it using web email editor. The web email editor includes fonts, attachments and all the features that a full email editor has. This helps Buzz in a big way and makes it different from other no-editing email op-
tions we generally see. Importing stuff from other sites is limited to only five apps currently - Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader and Google Chat. But this helps in more than one way. You can get all these updates linked to your Gmail which makes it very convenient. The notifications are sent to your inbox. Be it your comments on a post, or someone else comments on your post or someone buzzing you, everything comes to your inbox. You can opt to stop receiving notifications by using the ‘mute’ option. Photo-sharing is done by integrating Picasa or Flickr but it is yet to get the feature of sharing a whole album. Buzz can pull updates from Twitter, but it is a one-way operation. The updates can come in and be commented upon in Buzz but you can’t respond directly to Twitter. This will surely be worked to make it a twoway integration in the near future. Google Buzz is also accessible from iPhone and Google’s Android phones. The revved up app for mobile, though working only in Safari browser (as of now), feels vibrant. You can also view who are available for buzzing in your vicinity. And if you don’t want your location to be shown to others, Google offers the hide option before sharing your GPS coordinates. A pulverized mix of Maps and Wave, Buzz is an improvisation upon Twitter’s simple SMS-based application. Still in its initial stages, Google Buzz is unlikely to be considered a serious competition for Facebook or Twitter. Miles to go and many more features to come, before Buzz can really make a buzz.
Inside Out!
No setup needed Automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail. Share publicly or privately Publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends. Inbox integration Comments get sent right to your inbox so it’s easy to keep the conversation going. Photo friendly See thumbnails with each post, and browse full-screen photos from popular sites. Connect sites you already use Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader. See updates in real time New posts and comments pop in as they happen. No refresh required. Just the good stuff Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.
MZone
- Balasubramaniam N
Flaunt your font
Part II
Do you know that you can change the font types of your Nokia 5800? If you are not a hardcore mobile enthusiast, then you don’t. Here’s how. You don’t need to be a spectacled book nerd to do it. You need to use only Open Type Font (OTF), the one with the symbol O in its thumbnail and not TT or A. Though there is no need to use any external application, you have to create a folder with the font files inside.
- Connect the phone in “Mass Storage” mode to your PC.
Part I - Create a folder named “Fonts” - Place four copies of the same font in the folder.
can’t find any). - Copy the “Fonts” folder into the Resource folder. - Disconnect the phone and restart it. And if you got bored with it and want your default font, just delete the font folder, restart your phone and we are back to square one.
- Rename the fonts: s60snr.ttf, s60ssb.ttf, s60tsb.ttf and S60ZDIGI.ttf
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- Explore and open the “Resource” folder (create a new one if you
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