My latest FastCompany.com video segment, shot several weeks ago, is about managing your social media updates, partly by funneling them all into one place (like your email inbox).
Then Google Buzz launched.
So, here's my social media productivity two-punch: first the video, then a walk through Google Buzz's more advanced features.
Google announced the all-new Google Buzz today, a Gmail "inbox" of sorts that aggregates all your contacts' social network activity across the web. Lifehacker's got the full rundown.
A few quickly-jotted first impressions of the service:
Last year's trashy GoDaddy SuperBowl commercials annoyed me enough to switch domain registrars; this year's just confirmed I made the right decision. If you want out, here's what I posted about it last year:
Yes, I knew that popular, cheap domain registrar GoDaddy always used sex to sell their services, and yes, their bullying upsells always bugged me, but yesterday’s Super Bowl ad shot my “Stop doing business with GoDaddy” to-do to the top of my list. But where to transfer to? I polled my Twitter friends on which registrars were the best alternatives. Here’s a spreadsheet of the full vote tally; turns out the least expensive, top vote-getter was Namecheap.com.
Been very happy with NameCheap ever since, and their "Not happy with your current registrar's advertising methods?" switching coupon code, SWITCH2NC, still works. Sorry, Danica: I like looking at beautiful people, just not at Hooters.
A week ago I asked readers to tell me how they're using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of "ha! no one's using Wave!" snarking on the Twitter, I got lots of interesting responses. Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done--with screenshots.
Once you're active in Google Wave, you want to know if something new is happening there--even if you don't have Wave open in your web browser. Several Wave notifier applications and browser add-ons can do the work of checking your Wave inbox for you, and letting you know you've got new and changed waves.
The following is an excerpt from the all-new Chapter 9 of The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Got feedback? Let me know in the comments and help write the first book on Wave!
Google Wave may be in invite-only preview and still lack important features, but early adopters ARE using it--and we want to hear about it. Tell us about how you use Wave on a day-to-day basis, and your use case just might get included in The Complete Guide to Google Wave, the first book about Wave.
My co-author Adam and I are updating the book to replace theoretical, potential uses for Wave with real-world case studies of actual humans putting Google Wave to good use. We need your help. If you're waving regularly, please tell us about it, and we may include your story in the book.
Update: The brand new chapter 10, called "Wave in Action," has been posted. Check it out!
One of the most-needed missing features in the Google Wave preview rolls out this week: user access permissions. Now, rather than everyone being able to edit everyone else's blips in a total free-for-all, the creator of a wave can add users and groups and give them either full access to edit everything, or read-only access. The binary choice is still too limiting, but GOOG says that "Reply only" access is on its way.
To limit a contact's access to a blip you created, click on their icon on the top of the wave and choose "Read only" from the drop-down, as shown. You can give both individual users and groups read-only access; though individual access permissions trump that of the groups. (For example, if the public group has read-only access, you can grant a single user full access to edit, even though that person's part of the group.) You can only set permissions for waves you have created.
Along with this first iteration of access permissions, the Wave team also added a "Restore" button to Wave's playback feature. If a wave gets destroyed beyond easy repair, you can use playback to roll it back to a former version of itself.
Even though this means quite a bit of revision to the book, it's great to see Wave evolving into something much more usable. I've also updated the Wave vs. the Rest chart to reflect this new feature.
Got a great response to last week's frequently asked questions about Google Wave, and it's worth expanding further on the differences between Wave and the current crop of web-based collaboration offerings.
Wave combines features from email, instant messenger, Google Docs, wikis, and forums and throws its own spin on things. For a quick visual of its offerings versus similar tools, check out this feature-by-feature comparison.
The Google Wave Preview has been available to one million+ people for over three months now, but questions about Wave still abound, even by the early adopters who have gotten in and taken it for a test drive.
After publishing a book on everything I know about Wave, I still get many of the same questions I heard back when I started. Even folks usually bullish about new technology still don't understand what they can use Wave for, how to sell it to their friends and co-workers so they have someone to use it with, and how to fit it into their workday.
As much as I'd love it if everyone bought a copy of my book for every person they invite to Wave, reading 102 pages just to "get" a product is ridiculous. So, I've compiled some of the most frequently asked questions I've gotten about Wave and my best (and briefest) answers for them right here in quick-fire format.
Step inside to hear a two-word definition of Wave, what it's useful for, why you'd choose it over similar products, and how to do the things in Wave that most often trip up new users.
Introducing ThinkTank
December 28th, 2009, 3 comments
The application formerly known as Twitalytic is now called ThinkTank, and I'm carving out some time in the New Year to grow it into something good. Here are a few details on my plans for the app; more to come on this in 2010.
Google Wave 2009 Year-End Screencast · It's still not easy to explain what, exactly, Google Wave does and is, but it sure does make for some cool screencasts. Hit play for a Wave-powered trip through 2009. (If you liked this, see also Good Wave Hunting and Pulp Wave Fiction.) ∞ December 22nd, 2009, 2 comments
Gmail Has “Mark unread from here” But…
December 15th, 2009, 18 comments
It kind of amazes me that Gmail has an advanced feature like "mark unread from here" but still lacks basic things like sorting your messages by date or searching/sorting by attachment size. Wacky.
Just found out about a neat Google Easter Egg for the New Year: on the Google homepage, click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button with nothing in the search box, to see a live countdown of seconds left in 2009. They should have linked the seconds number to a "seconds in days" calculator search to let people know what it is. Time marches on. Thanks, Nom de Guerre!
Yesterday the Google Wave team confirmed Wave's unfinished but working Google Groups integration, which lets you send waves to groups of participants in one shot. To try it out, I created The Complete Guide to Google Wave Wavers group. Join that Google Group with your Google account email (not your Wave ID), then search for group:wave-guide-wavers@googlegroups.com in Wave to see and update group waves. Sound confusing? It is.
While I'd seen this rudimentary support for groups mentioned in various public waves, we didn't include it in the Preview edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave because it seemed so utterly unfinished (and it wasn't officially documented). Right now, there's no way to add users to Wave groups in-Wave, and messages to the group in Wave don't show up on the list and vice versa. There's obviously a whole lot of work to be done in the Groups arena as it relates to Wave, but for now, this is what we've got. Give it a try and let me know what you think in Wave.
Waving with Groups [The Google Wave Blog]
How do Google Groups access settings interact with waves? [Google Wave Help]
Chrome Beta for Mac/Linux Released
December 8th, 2009
Today Google finally releases a beta of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux. I've been using a Chromium build on my Mac for awhile now, and while it's faster than Firefox on the Mac, it's not nearly as fast and stable as the Windows version of Chrome. Also, without Google Gears for Mac OS X 10.6, Chrome and Google webapps are even less useful on the Mac. While I was on the road with my MacBook over the last few weeks, I found myself missing my desktop PC back at home only because of the more-stable Chrome and Gears availability. Will Gears for 10.6 will ever come out, since they're phasing it out in favor of HTML5? With features that depend on Gears like offline Gmail coming out of Labs, you'd think so.
I'm Gina Trapani: creator of ThinkUp and Todo.txt apps, host of This Week in Google, founding and former editor of Lifehacker. This is my personal blog.
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"You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it." —Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
