Welcome to Google Buzz

Our very own King Google brings in one more fabulous service. Recently, the Gmail account holders must have come across the new social-media service by Google – Google Buzz. I’m here to share my thoughts about it, and later in the post, I’ll be telling some ways to customize it and use it. I’ll also share a trick, which can help you to opt-out from the email updates of buzz, which may have started to clutter-up your inbox.

According to my belief, Google Buzz is is ready to set benchmark in terms of Social Media Marketing. I bet that Google is trying to incorporate a large number of people for Google Buzz. It has already taken a giant leap by inviting the existing Gmail users as part of the Buzz Community, which is a very good start for them. It is better than other social media in a way that it is backed by G-power such as Picassa for photo uploads, Youtube for videos, and what more..

Google introduces "Google Buzz" - A social media service

There is already a debate sparked between the various webmasters about comparing Buzz Vs Twitter. According to me, it is too fast to reach to a conclusion now, but after 6 months or so, the picture would be clearer. Previously, when Google launched (Gmail + GoogleTalk), people were skeptic about it being able to compete with other services, chiefly (Yahoo Mail + messenger). Today, Gmail has overpowered Yahoo mail and Google Talk is used more than Y! messenger now.

Now, here are some of the features I would want to share:

1. Formatting Text in Google Buzz

   This is usually known to most out there, it’s the same as that in GoogleTalk:

   • Wrap text in asterisks for bold text (*Vinay* becomes Vinay).
   • Wrap text in underscores for italics (_Vinay_ becomes Vinay).
   • Wrap text in hyphens for strike-through (-Politics- becomes Politics).

2. Permalink to a specific Buzz Post

   

   How to get permalinks of a post on Buzz

   Every post you make on Buzz has it’s own, unique web-page. You can go to that page by clicking on the small arrow on the right side of the post, and selecting “Link to this post” You can share this link anywhere, for example – IM, emails, linking back through another page, etc. Here is a permalink to a one of my buzzes made yesterday.

3. @ Replies on Buzz

   

   Sending @ replies on Buzz

   Are you bored of sending emails, or consider it too-old fashioned? Then you can think of buzzing with twitter-style @ replies. You can start a buzz with an @ sign, and a drop-down menu comes to auto-complete it for you, choosing from your contacts. The Buzzes you send out will appear on their time-lines (they must have Buzz enabled).

4. Get rid of Buzz updates cluttering your Inbox

   Like me, most of you must be annoyed of emails from Google Buzz. When anyone comments something on one of your Buzz posts, an email lands in your Gmail inbox. If you want to turn-off these emails, but you still want to use buzz, then try out the following steps:

   

   Gmail Filter settings to avoid Buzz Emails

   • Go to Gmail Settings and click on “Filters“
   • Create a new Filter (by clicking the link).
   • Check for a field named “Has the words“
   • Enter “label:buzz” there (without quotes)
   • Click Next. Ignore the warning that will appear.
   • Make “Skip the inbox” as the choice for filter action and save the filter.

Picture credit - blogohblog.com

People who spend maximum of their internet time on social networking sites are the ones who are destroying it the most. A person who creates his first profile at orkut (or any other Social Networking site) keeps it very clean, and types his profile info and scraps very clearly. Then he spends some time there, sees the profile of their friends, and destroys his language, and the simplicity of the profile.

The first thing – I’m yet to understand the reason behind people constantly changing their Profile names to crappy quotes or annoying self-proclaimed titles such as “lost ma mobile phone” “life looks better now” “i puked yesterday” () or “beauty lies in your attitude” (and those are the First name + Last name). I mean, how the hell someone is going to find them by search utility? For one more reason, how am I supposed to know that the one listed as ‘just special, and is not weird‘ in my friend list is actually “Sophia” when I need to scrap her. People should use the status display to write all this. Changing their name like this actually defeats the purpose of social networking.

Second – the language – The next thing that annoys me most about these Social networks is that people write in a language like

hiiiiiiiii ………………
hieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….
vveeerrrryyyyy sssssswwweeeeettt
buh-bayee!!
U mst do tis by urself

This looks insane to me. The morons who are obsessed with typing too many i’s and e’s must lower the repeat rate off their Keyboard strokes (Go to Control Panel > Keyboard > Repeat Delay and set it to short). For those who  ignore the red underlines thrown by your spell-checker,  while SMS’ing, you have limited characters, so this may sound OK. But, using this on internet? Don’t you people own a QWERTY keyboard or what? It looks like one of them writes like this because he doesn’t know to write proper English. And then everyone thinks that cool and adopt it.  According to me, that sucks. What is the whole point in writing like that? I feel like an ass deciphering the encrypted scraps and tweets I receive.

Thirdly, the mentality of managing two or more accounts – This is also an issue which beats the whole concept of social networking. How many males I have seen, who have at least one duplicate account, which they run with a fake Female name, use a display pic of a nice looking girl (leached from the WWW, obviously), and have a status which more or less signifies “Boys not allowed” Then they send out requests to girls and chat with them. These losers must get a life. How can they ever believe that they can search for a “love” online? In a country like India, forget about a date with a sweet girl, even a hooker won’t contact you through a social networking site.

With these and some more points (on which, I’ll rant about in later posts), the social networking sites have become a pain for me. My orkut and Facebook accounts, which I used to visit regularly in old days (literally speaking, I had them permanently open in tabs with auto-refresh enabled on the tabs), have now become the least significant place to update me about the issues. I hardly visit them once in a day. How badly I wish that the creators of these sites can come up with some !deas to clean up the mess, and we could relish them in the way we did in the days of their golden glory..

But right now all I can think about is the extent to which I will party on New Year’s Eve. I’m sure that the whole world is having a rocking night planned with friends, family and loved ones. I pray that everybody parties to their heart’s content, but they do remember to be safe this New Year.
It’s time to share my new year resolution. In the coming year I have decided to learn atleast 1 foreign language. Just imagine I will be showing off my newly learnt language skills in my future blog posts. He He.. I hope that all have zeroed down on their resolutions for 2010. It’s high time.

New Year’s Eve is the day not to mull over the year gone, by but to plan how to bring in the upcoming year with a spirit, which would last the entire year. The first thing, which one needs to resolute, for the coming year is to, ring in the year with fun, gaiety, and style.

Wishing everybody a happy and prosperous New Year 2010, once more.

Too much of ROFL’s and LMAO’s there.

The LMAO’s queuing up outside to try out on ROFL’s for $5

The ROFL Brothel - LMAO's queuing up outside to try out on ROFL's for $5

However, I’m missing LOL.

Just look at the results for my name. The first page of Google Results for my name is dominated by me. All links are related to me in some way or the other, with none of those which will earn me a negative reputation from someone.

Google Search results for the term "Vinay Swastik"

In the recent scenario, you just cannot afford to ignore this, and you must monitor the search results for your name, and have knowledge on how they got there. This applies to all, whether a businessman or a student who is just going to start his career or any other individual. It is simply because of the increasing trend to Google about the person after the first meeting.

So, you need to remain prepared for it. You must at least know how to control it.

I will just give an outline on how to dominate Google Results for your name.

First Step: The Social Networking Buzz

1. Signup to Facebook.
2. Make your Professional Profile at LinkedIn.
3. Filling out your Google Profile can be a great help.

Social Networking is a pretty good way to connect with your friends and family and also with your professional contacts. The information you will provide on the profiles will help the search engines to present your profiles in search results for your ‘name’ as a keyword.

Second Step: Connect to the outer world

1. Start a blog. You can get a free blog at WordPress or Blogger or you can have it on your own domain (like me)
2. Sign up for Twitter

Having a personal blog is like having your own house on the www. Your blog can be the thing that will distinguish you from others. You can use twitter also. It depends on you if you want to express yourself in simple 140 characters, or you want to write small posts in blog, or you can write till your fingers bleed on the same blog.

Third Step: Explore the Internet, be Social

1. Spread your name on the web.
2. Increase interaction by other bloggers.
3. Visit the online communities and Forums.

Interact with the persons who share the same interests as yourself. You can comment on their blogs, and get comments on your blog in return. You can visit the various forums which discuss topics that interest you, and take active part in the ongoing discussions there.

When you do this, you will spread links of your blog, your twitter facebook and other profiles, on the various web pages. These scattered links are counted as incoming links to your blog or profile by the search engines, which will increase the ‘importance’ of these.

By following some or all of the above steps, start controlling and optimization of the brand “YOU” before you get too late.

An invisibility cloak may sound like something from Harry Potter, where our good old lad uses it to move around the school, unseen by anybody (Dumbledore is an exception).

While browsing some news today, I came across a news stating that the researchers in London were today given the go-ahead for a £4.9 million project to create a real invisibility suit.

They hope to create a cloak from a new material that can manipulate light. Normally, when light hits an object, it bounces off the surface and into the eye, making the object visible. The invisibility cloak made from ‘meta-material‘ would work by ‘grabbing hold’ of light waves and making them flow smoothly around an object, in the same way that water in a river flows round a stick.

My best wishes to the leader of the project – Sir John Pendry and hats off to the Leverhulme Trust for funding it.

A photo of 'meta-material', which can deflect microwave beams so they flow around a 'hidden' object.

The reason behind this is the recent PageRank (PR in short)update by Google. My twitter profile acquired a PageRank of 4 (on a 10 point scale), in the PageRank update of 30th October 2009. This time, the PR update came amidst a lot of  conjectures on various webmaster discussion forums that the PR system is discontinued by Google.

Vinay Swastik's Twitter profile gets a Google PageRank-4

I hope that this blog of mine would also get a PR in the next update. It has been 15 days only since I registered the vinayswastik.com domain, so I wasn’t expecting PR so early on this domain.

What is PageRank?

There is a ranking system used by Google to rank the web pages based on their relative popularity on web. This is known as PageRank. This was originally started as a project at Stanford University. Google acquired it as trademark in 2005, though the patent still resides with Stanford.

According to the definition given by Stanford -

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting (on a 10 or 100 point scale) to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents (or simply, a web page) , such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

In PageRank, more the number better is the rank, e.g. PageRank 8/10 is better than PageRank 2/10

The actual calculations of PR system are pretty complex (couldn’t have expected any better by Stanford) and can be found on Wikipedia.

The homepage of Google.com stands at PR-10, Official website of Indian Government also holds PR-10, twitter homepage has been assigned as PR-9. The popularity of a web page is reflected in it’s PageRank.

Hopefully, I’ll continue to improve my PageRank and keep on climbing to higher PR.

Final Effect Obtained

I’ve written it myself in such a way that even a person who has not used Photoshop in past, will be able to understand this tutorial, and produce this effect. You can add your creativity with this tutorial to get better Graphics.

So, let’s start our work. As I’ve already told, this one is easy. You can accomplish this in 8-easy-to-perform steps.

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Step I) Open a new image in Photoshop. I used the size to be “500 x 125” pixels.

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Step II) Fill the background with Black Color. For this, firstly, select the Foreground color as Black, then select the Paint Bucket Tool. Now click anywhere in the image to fill it.

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Step III) It’s time to write our text on the image. Click the ‘Horizontal Text Type Tool’ and click on the image. A cursor will blink, where you can write the text. (Don’t worry if nothing appears. The text color is black by default, which is same as background color. Just type what you want, and we will fix this later).

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Step IV) Change the font color to ‘White’ from the ‘set text color’ box (see screenshot). You can adjust the Font Style and Font Size also. I recommend using simple fonts like ‘Monotype Corsiva’ in this effect.

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Step V) Now go to “Layer || Flatten Image” or press “Ctrl+Shift+E” to merge the text layer and the background layer.

Step VI) Now, go to “Filter || Stylize || Wind” and choose “From the Right” direction and press OK. Again go to “Filter || Stylize || Wind” and choose “From the Left” direction and press OK.

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Step VII) Now choose the option “Image || Rotate Canvas || 90° CW” Repeat Step VI now. You will get the following result.

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Step VIII) Make the image normal by “Image || Rotate Canvas || 90° CCW”

Step IX) Choose the option “Filter || Stylize || Glowing Edges” A dialog box will open up. You can see three sliders here. Adjust them as you wish. I used these settings :

• Edge Width – 1
• Edge Brightness – 9
• Smoothness – 5

Press OK when satisfied. You will get something like this.

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Step X) Time to give the final effects. Choose “Image || Mode || Grayscale” (Choose ‘discard’ if a message pops-up). After that, choose “Image || Mode || Indexed Color”

Step XI) Go to “Image || Mode || Color Table” and select ‘Black Body’ from the drop-down menu. Voila!! Magic happens.

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Step XII) Finally, choose the “Image || Mode || RGB Color” option. You are done. Now, you can save the image in any format you wish.

I’ve read occasional bits of his writing, which is good. The excerpts from “The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone” (it is a book authored by Tharoor, for those of you not knowing it) that were published in newspapers showcase a person who is trying to portray an accurate image of India to the west in a very elementary way (in that book at least). Basically, his writings are sort of a Dummies Guide to India.

And in this latest tweet and the news on it, my head hurts. I feel like an alien organism was gestating inside me and is now trying to emerge from my cranium.