February 16, 2010
Web 2.0
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Do you buzz? If you tweet, facebook, or even blog, you may want to buzz too. Google took on social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook on their own turf by launching Google Buzz.
If you have a gmail account, you couldn’t have missed it, the first time you have to click through an interstitial buzz setup page on the way to your gmail inbox, and once in, the colorful buzz icon is on the left nestled in among your folders.
The initial launch caused some privacy alarms, and google backed off from automatically linking your other google activity, such as Picasa to Buzz.
It seems to be catching on. I already got two buzzes from one of my gmail chat mates and I noticed that Joel Comm is publicizing his Buzz profile. And Mashable, the venerable social media blog, already has a new Buzz icon next to it’s Twitter and Facebook icons.
I went ahead and created a basic profile so I can join the party but deliberately left many things inactive or blank, I’ll watch how the privacy debate unfurls first.
February 7, 2010
The Online Life
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As a Google apps user I recently received an email from Google advising me that support for IE 6 (Internet Explorer), along with some other older browser versions (Safari and Firefox 2.0) would be dropped in March. If you are a user of Google apps, docs and sites, not to mention gmail, you will need to upgrade.
No one really should be using IE 6. Its security failings are widely known and missing features such as tabs should goad anyone to upgrading to IE7 or IE8, if they wish to continue using Internet Explorer, rather than Firefox.
In fact a recent eWeek article tied google’s recent announcement to the gmail Chinese hacker incident, where hackers that originated from China got access to gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents, apparently exploiting security holes in IE 6 to place some malware for download onto user’s computers. Google in their blog simply points out that the web is evolving at a fast rate and the newer browser versions offer a better experience.
The change will first roll out on google docs and sites on March 1st and then work its way through calendar and gmail through out 2010.
Bottom line? It’s time to upgrade.