Smarterware

Now Shipping: ThinkUp Beta 1

Hit a big milestone today! We released the first beta of ThinkUp, the PHP/MySQL webapp that archives your social media interactions in a database you control. Download it here.

Following eight alpha releases over the past eight months, I'm so proud that the ThinkUp community and the software product itself has reached beta. The beta represents hundreds of commits by over 20 thoughtful developers scattered across the globe, and countless conversations on the mailing list, in Wave, on Skype, IM, and on GitHub. It's amazing how far ThinkUp's come since its early days as a solo weekend project.

This release includes an easy, three-step installer, multi-user and account support, full search and export of you and your friends' posts (something even Twitter doesn't offer for those of us over the 3,200 tweet limit), the beginnings of Facebook integration, and neat data visualizations courtesy of Google Maps and the Google Charts API.

Here's a quick screenshot tour what what we've been working on in ThinkUp, and how you can get involved with the project.

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Train Your Fingers for Google Instant

Google Instant promises to save you up to 5 seconds every time you search the Web, but you'll only see those savings if you know how to take advantage of its new real-time mind-reading. Here are the must-know keyboard shortcuts for zipping your way around Google Instant predictions and results.

Google Instant is rolling out to Google.com now, but it's not available in your browser's search box--yet. (Executives confirm Google is working on that, as well as making Google Instant available on your mobile phone.) So, to get started using Instant, you must visit Google.com in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or IE 8. Begin typing your search term into the text box as usual, and then:

Tab to auto-complete: As you type your search term, Google Instant fills in text predictions in grey following what you've entered. Press Tab to accept the next word and add it to your search automatically. For example, when you enter fast c, and Google Instant suggests fast company, press Tab to accept the second word. The Tab key in this example saves you 5 keystrokes. (Hit escape to pull back the drop-down.)

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Gmail Priority Inbox Puts Important Messages First

Just completed my first email sweep with Gmail's new "Priority Inbox" feature enabled, and it's a keeper. Over time, if this mechanism proves to be as good as Gmail's top-notch spam filtering, it could be the reason why you only check Gmail in the browser. (Well-played, GOOG.)

Priority Inbox adds an "important messages" section above your inbox. Initially, Priority Inbox decides what messages are important based on your email and chat patterns--a message from someone you often email with will get marked as important automatically. Like the spam filter, you can train it by manually marking messages as important and unimportant as well.

You can also add up to 3 other sections to your inbox. By default it's Priority Inbox, Starred items, and then "everything else." But you can define what's in each section using rules based on read/unread status, stars, and labels. For example, I keep all my unread stuff in the second section. Trusted Trio users could add a section of just items labeled "Followup." I don't love the idea of using my inbox as a to-do list, so I'm still experimenting with what works best for me.

Here's what the Priority Inbox settings look like in my Google Apps account.

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What to Expect From “Google Me”

My greatest hope for the hotly-rumored, might-launch-any-day-now social networking app "Google Me" is that it will not merely clone Facebook in a weak attempt at parity, but that it will innovate and solve problems that plague existing social networks.

Last month, a senior user experience researcher at Google, Paul Adams, gave a presentation entitled "The Real Life Social Network." The 224 slides, embedded below, describe some of the problems and common user behavior on existing social web sites, and suggest how to better design that experience. While the presentation is targeted towards businesses who want to use social media to get their message out, it also serves as a roadmap for what Google will attempt to do with Google Me.

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On Google Wave and “Failed” Experiments

Yesterday while I was on the air with Jeff and Leo recording TWiG, Google announced that they are halting development on Wave. The webapp will be available till the end of the year--with mechanisms to export your current wave data--and the code will remain open source.

As the author of the first user guide on Wave, I spent this morning doing interviews with tech journalists about what this all means. Here are some questions I got asked, and answers I offered.

What do you think about Google killing Wave?

I'm really disappointed. Wave is a tool I love and use daily, and this announcement makes Adam's and my user guide essentially a history book, an homage to a product that I believe was simply ahead of its time.

What did you love so much about Wave?

I loved Wave's ambition. From a purely technical perspective, Wave pushed the edge of what was possible in a browser; it promised a new federated communication system; it's open source and uses an open protocol; it's a platform that developers could customize and extend with gadgets and robots. From a user perspective, it had the guts to try to introduce a whole new paradigm of communication, one that combined document collaboration and messaging into a single interface. It demonstrated real-time collaboration in a browser the way no other webapp had yet. It made group discussions/brainstorming/decisions much, much easier.

I respect any product that aims as high as Wave did, even if it misses the mark.

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ThinkTank is Now ThinkUp

Naming products is hard. After weeks of brainstorming, teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling, trademark searching, late-night strikes of inspiration followed by crushing morning realizations that the idea sucked, I'm thrilled to announce that ThinkTank has been renamed to ThinkUp. It's our Firebird-to-Firefox moment. Rebranding is difficult, but the most heartening part of this process was that the ThinkUp idea came to us via the app. @markwallace responded to Anil's call for ideas on the name change in this thread, captured by ThinkUp.

With name changes come URL changes: we're now @thinkupapp on Twitter and at ThinkUpApp.com.

I've been busybusy shepherding this project along this summer, and loving every minute of it. Between our two excellent Google Summer of Code students and a community of volunteers, the project has been growing and evolving in leaps and bounds. Late August/early September we're on track to have a web-based installer in place as well as some neat data visualizations that will make capturing your tweets and Facebook updates even more easy and fun to do. Interested in hearing more? Join the ThinkUp mailing list.

(Updated) How to Transfer Google Voice to Your Google Apps Account

Update: Google Voice product manager Craig Walker confirms that the Apps transfer is NOT supported right now, and that it was only done for a small group of testers. Sorry, all. The good news? He says there will be a way to transfer your Voice account to Google Apps once the new GApps features that are being tested right now launch. In the meantime, I'm removing the link to the request form from this post.

Update: After I published this post, Google added very strong language to that form insisting that transfers to GApps accounts are NOT SUPPORTED (caps theirs). I'm not sure why it worked for Dustin and myself. Your mileage may vary.

Even though this request form says it doesn't work for Google Apps accounts, I can confirm that Google is transferring Google Voice from regular Google accounts to Google Apps accounts right now. Thanks to a comment by reader Dustin Boston, I gave it a try this afternoon and within the hour, my Google Voice number, texts, and voicemail was ported to my Google Apps account. If you try this, a couple of things to know:

• You'll have to enter your 4-digit PIN into the request form. I forgot mine, had to reset it, got it wrong the first time, got a message saying so, reset it again, and then all worked. Write down your PIN. It's only 4 digits.
• You'll have to re-record your Google Voice name and greeting(s). They don't get ported.
• I maintain an Apps contact list, so this didn't really affect me, but Dustin recommends exporting your Google account contacts before the transfer so you can import them into your Voice account.

Here's the form to request the transfer [removed]. Even though it does say it doesn't work for Google Apps accounts, it did work for Dustin and myself.

Buy The Complete Guide to Google Wave, Get the Ebook Free

Copies of The Complete Guide to Google Wave have been selling like hotcakes, and unsurprisingly, the ebook has moved a lot faster than the print version. We've still got a stack of full-color, hold-in-your-hand paperback books just dying for a home, so we've got a special deal: if you buy the paperback book for $25, you'll get the ebook free, emailed to you on the spot for instant gratification while you wait for the softcover to arrive at your door.

The electronic version of the book is now available as both a PDF and an ePub file; you'll get both when you buy the paperback. We're also happy to announce that The Complete Guide to Google Wave is now officially available in the Kindle store, no awkward PDF-to-Kindle conversions required.

Best of all, thanks to a partnership with a local charity, when you buy a copy of the paperback book, you're helping to employ developmentally disabled adults here in San Diego. Meet the folks who will fulfill your order when you buy the book, thanks to NBC San Diego:

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Google Apps vs. Google Accounts Parity Coming

Google Apps users who want access to all the same products that regular Google Accounts have won't have to wait much longer. An anonymous tipster tells me a Google Trusted Tester program is underway right now, which "transitions" Google Apps accounts to full access to all GOOG products, including Voice, Reader, Buzz, Analytics, and more. Here's the official Help page which includes a visualization of the transition, in the screenshot here. (Here's a PDF, in case they pull access to the link.)

On this week's episode of TWiG, Leo, Jeff, and I were hoping aloud that there would be some way to merge existing Google/Apps accounts into one. It doesn't look like that will be possible. However, if you have a Google account that "conflicts" with your Apps account because you've assigned the same email address to both, GOOG will resolve the conflict by adding a +personal to your regular account's sign-in address. Stay with me here.

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