Using Google Buzz | Features Explained

Hey Friends,

You would have noticed the new feature on your Gmail page. Yeah the Buzz. Mostly when if you are signing in for the first time after buzz was rolled out then you would see a welcome screen prompting you to activate and use Buzz.

Now that you are there you might ask what exactly is this Buzz about. Wasn’t Wave enough? Well wave was a whole new world where you could share and work in a collaborative environment. You could share and work on documents, applications updates and much more. This one is a simpler thing much like our Twitter and Facebook status updates.

You have followers and you can follow people like you do in Twitter. To find more people to follow you may use the follow more people option. Feel free to use the search profiles option to find people or use the contacts options to follow people who are already in your Gmail contacts. Very simple and lightning fast.

Once you have followed some people you can see the updates like the following. It is in a similar fashion as we see in Facebook. Checkout the red box for some really kool options. Comment and like as we normally have on Facebook. Google tops it up with their email this feature. Plus you may chat with the original poster right from the update regarding the update. Nice eh?

Now notice the green box. These are cascaded updated from the same person. To see more of what a person has been doing lately click the cascaded area. E.g doing clicking the same area on my updates will give you an expanded update list exclusively by me.

I will put in some more stuff once I fill myself up (lunch time). Damn those cooks in downstairs restaurants. The smell is invading our workplace and aggravating our hunger.

Checkout My Room on YooWalk

Hey Guys. I just found an amazing place to kill time on web. If you thought Facebook was the ultimate time killer social platform then here is something you must check out. I recommend yoowalk.com for the ultimate social networking freaks.

For some time I have been looking for a change from Facebook. This one comes as a fresh new idea for internet marketing as well as social networking. Yeah I know you are asking me how it is better than Facebook. For all those who have a Facebook page compare yours with my yoowalk room. See below. (if you can’t see the flash loading then click here to see my room)

Walk around. Yeah I mean it. Just walk around.
If you want you can take a nap on my sofa.
Use the speaker to listen to my songs. There are two at the moment. (might take some time to load)
My fishes are really cute. All you non non-vegetarians don’t even think about it.
The bath tub is for babies. No messing in there.

Need I say that if you are there you must add me as your friend?

Bhoot chad gaya re Music Video| Rakhi Sawant | Controversy

Now this is about the fiasco about the latest Rakhi Sawant album. For those who don’t already know India’s no.1 (who decides these titles – not me) item girl just launched a new album with Canadian hip hop artist IshQ Bector. So what’s the big deal?

Actually I like the marketing strategy that these people follow. This is a very interesting and low budget promotion trick that almost always delivers. All you need to do is to create a controversy. If you are even a little known celebrity the media will catapult you into limelight. TV channels will repeat your controversial music video N number (where N tends to infinity). So the normal viewer and reader will be so bugged that he will finally get the music video to see what the hell is this all about.

I did the same. Now don’t give me that look. Blame the media. Watch the video here.

Now this could be a repeat compilation of the promo video. What ever it is it tastes yuck. Rakhi is such a gross Hip Hop performer. Good try nevertheless. But she needs to try harder.

I feel the sensor board did the right thing to hold it but they gave the wrong reasons. They should have instead censored the song for being crapy. Rakhi now has a very valid reason for suing the board for holding the song just because it uses the word “kaminey”. They did allow the super hit movie “Kaminey”.

Here are some more music videos in this series – Jhagde ( Rakhi Sawant and Ishq bector)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjuzXW91KkE

Facebooks Retweet Equivalent | How to Use Facebook Via

We are all familiar with twitter’s RT (retweet) features. Now Facebook has started a similar feature on the lines of Retweet. This is a short post on how this feature works and the advantages it will bring to Facebookers.

Retweet feature that first started on twitter as a practice of preceding any post that you want to re-post to your followers with a RT and @originalusername. Now we have dedicated retweet buttons as it became massively popular. @mentions on Facebook also caught up soon. Now its time for RTs. The main idea behind RTs on twitter of Via on Facebook it so credit the original poster for his contributions. Lets see how they work.

This feature is now available to the public and only works on links for the time being. That is you cannot “via” your friends status updates or shared videos. All You need to do is use the good old share option on a link posted by your friend. Then notice the change marked red.

You can choose to remove the via feature if you like to. (note the remove link) I would strongly suggest you keep it. This would let people know who the original poster is and you won’t be involved with the nasty incidents that follow when you share something that does not match everyone’s taste.

On twitter we have some thing like this.

Enjoy the new feature. I hope this is implemented on status updates as well.

Why Kal Kya Hoga Facebook app had to die

There used to be an app on Facebook till yesterday called Kal Kya Hoga. This bull shit application transgressed the line between lite humor and public slandering of unsuspecting Facebook Users. These involved serious privacy violation and defamation that not only affected involved facebookers but their friends and families as well.

I site this instance because it happened to me and I swore I would stamp out this nonsense for ever. I never subscribed for this app – Kal Kya Hoga, but one of my friends did. This application takes in a friends name and throws out some random nonsense that is supposed to happen to the friend in future. I understand this is supposed to be funny but there is a limit to every thing and on this occasion it did cross the limit.

Here is the blotted snapshot of the app. It was a blatant attack on my character and I was in no mood to take it lightly. Not just that, it is an attack on my family as well. Its a different matter that I am not married.  It could have soured relations between me and the friend who published the same. Why should I loose a great friend for a sick and sightless software application created by some dung-brain programmer?

It could be happening to many more people. I shudder to think what degree of insults these people would be coming up with. This had to stop.

I reported the matter to the company that helped create this app – Phrases, by smsocial.com. Their first response was casual and it seemed they wanted to brush aside this issue. Here is their reply.

Totally dissatisfied I shot back the following.

At the same time I reported the matter to Facebook too. Then it worked. The snake was nailed. Kal Kay Hoga app got what it rightly deserved – the Ban.

I am grateful to the creators of Phrase for the maturity they have shown in addressing social security issues. This will not only cement your reputation as professional developers for social media platforms but mark you as a team of caring individuals too.

A word to fellow Facebookers.
Do take such instances seriously and report them as required. Read once what you are publishing on the social media. If it is not appropriate for your parents, younger siblings or weaker section of society do not publish it. It hurts others and in this process you could loose a valuable friend. I am not sure if you can see it but it actually is a huge loss.

*Disclaimer : There are some people and companies mentioned above. If for any reason you feel this is incursion into your privacy just let me know.

Twitter’s new Techie Cat

You are all familiar with the the Twitter Bird and the Twitter Whale. They are all over the place. Internet is flooding with the twitter bird variants.

Have you ever seen the twitter Cat. Yeah they have a Cat not. The Techie Cat. When ever their Technology fails the Techie cat comes up. Today Twitters list membership page was down. I was slightly amazed to see the new twitter star and did not mind the technology outage.

So how do you like it?  Like all cats you forget to be annoyed with twitter for letting you down once more. Ha ha.

Great Google Doodles by Indian Kids

Here are some great Google Doodles made by Indian children to be used on the Google India homepage for Children’s Day. Those who are not aware of the term Doodles let me tell you these are creative Google Logos used on Google Homepages worldwide on special days or in honor of special people and events.

Google Doodles have been  the center of gossip on social media portals. The latest being the Sesame Street doodles. Before that The UFO doodles made big news and there were many conjectures as to what they signify, finally Google laid the mystery to rest announcing that they were to remember HG Well, celebrated Sci-Fi writer.

Doodle by Indian children are about our culture and will be displayed on Google.co.in home page. Check them out. All Image credits go to Google.

The following three were made my children in class 7th – 10th

The following three are my favorite among the Doodles made by kiddos in class 4 – 6.

Check out all of them on Google. I love them all but could include a few here.

Adding a Facebook share button and Digg this button with tweetmeme retweet button in wordpress thesis theme

I guess the thesis theme is among the most popular wordpress themes among professional bloggers. The best part about the theme is its ability to support custom functions and styles. So virtually everything is possible.

After I tried my hands at Thesis theme for Wordpress I added some plugins. I need not explain to you the merits of social media sharing buttons. The hottest in this section are Twitter, Facebook and Digg. Especially the share buttons with the counter are must haves for any blog. You get the code to add these buttons from the official portals. There are plugins to achieve the same. But it’s hard to get all three of them or two of them next to each other using different plugins. The example is right on this post.

If you need to have some thing like this on your blog, then follow this simple guide. I have put in screenshots to help you in process. We will be tinkering around with the coding. So some hands on experience with PHP and HTML is welcome. Else you can follow the coding exactly as it is and hope for the best.

Most popular and accurate Re-Tweet button with count comes from tweetmeme. They have a wordpress plugin for that. I am going to add official Facebook and digg share buttons with share count display to the tweetmeme plugin. In this example I am messing with Thesis wordpress theme. You can do the same to any theme you want. It only changes the code of the plugin so – a theme independent solution.

I believe you have a self hosted wordpress blog.

>>So navigate to the wp-content folder.

>> >>Find the plugins folder. Enter

>> >> >>Find the TweetMeme folder. Enter

>> >> >> >> locate this file tweetmeme.php

Now we tinker with the code. To do so, download the file to local system and open is with some standard text editor. I am using dreamweaver. Now look for this function in the code ‘tm_generate_button()’. Use the find feature in your text editor (ctrl +f ) to find this function. The code is rather long so might be hard to do it manually.

The red bordered area is where we do the actual change. You will have something different in the original file. Now add this code to the $button variable so that the final code looks like above.

<br><br><script>var fbShare = {size: \’large\’,google_analytics: \’true\’}</script><script src=”http://widgets.fbshare.me/files/fbshare.js”></script>
<br><br>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
digg_url = \”.$url.’\';digg_title = “TITLE”;

</script>
<script src=”http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> </div>

Replace the file and enjoy. Download this php file right here if it is too much for you.

You can do your own modifications to suit your purpose. Replace the <br> with spaces to get a horizontal effect. Feel free to comment.

How to use the @mentions in facebook? Link to your facebook friends in status updates

I reported about the latest Facebook @mentions on Mashyep yesterday. Once I started using it some of my friends started to inquire how I do it and what good does it do. So now, I am putting it to a little more text so that things become a little clearer to those who are not used to this.

If you are a twitter user you would know what are @mentions. When you put @ before any twitter username it gets replaced by a link to the particular user’s profile. This way it helps spread your network. For example ..
“You should follow @rooturaj for some latest Social Media updates.”

Now any one who is following your updates (friends and connections) will know that this bloke, rooturaj, deals with Social Media. So if they are interested they might add me to their list too. Great isn’t it.

Now that was limited to twitter. But starting from 15th Sep Facebook has rolled out a similar feature. When you @mention your friends in your status updates those who are mentioned get a wall update about your status. That is your status update will appear on their wall. You may also link to Groups and Fan pages on Facebook using the same @ symbols.

All is good, but how to do it?
This again is pretty simple. Use the visual guide below.

Now that you know how to do it, its time to surprise some friends. Enjoy.

Twitter should provide Tweet Flocks like Facebook List

If you have more than 200 followers on twitter who tweet regularly then I am sure it would be a herculean task for you to keep track of your friends tweets. Assuming every friend posts only 5 tweets a day that a whooping 1000 tweets per day. If you are not virtually living on twitter all the time tracking these status updates would a very difficult. Particularly when you are highly interested in the updates from a close circle of friends or technology experts. You cannot keep expanding the time line for ever to trace those tweets. This is where we need features like the friends list option on FaceBook.

If you are not a FaceBook fan then let me tell you it is a feature where you can choose a smaller group of friends and assign them a name. So next time you want updates of this particular group then selecting the same will hide all other updates form your other friends who do not belong to this group/list. Pretty easy to keep track of things. Easy to separate business relation from family. Easy to separate local friends form international contacts. You could even have a list of “hot babes” and “kool dudes”. Take a look at my Facebook wall below. To the left you can see some lists highlighted with red arrows.

But this is only on Facebook. How much do I wish a similar feature be provided by Twitter!! It would make things a hell more easier to manage. And this is why I say – “Twitter should provide Tweet Flocks like Facebook List“