Google Wave

Google Launches Buzz: New Social Media Sharing Platform Integrated with Gmail

by bintangkecil on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Tuesday morning, Google launched Buzz; the latest Google product for sharing links, media, and status updates with your friends.

Google Buzz is integrated in Gmail. So, if you have a Gmail account, you can go to buzz.google.com to turn the feature on right now!

Buzz is more than a little bit like Twitter — and a whole lot like Facebook and FriendFeed. Anything you post is automatically sent out to the people on your Google Contacts list you interact with the most. All updates are real-time, and anything you share is open for comments. You can also post privately to a select group of friends.

During the Buzz press conference, Google expressed eagerness to integrate Buzz with the company’s existing properties (Wave, Latitude, Voice) the way it has with Gmail.

	No setup needed Automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.
	Share publicly or privately Publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends.
	Inbox integration Comments get sent right to your inbox so it's easy to keep the conversation going.
	Photo friendly See thumbnails with each post, and browse full-screen photos from popular sites.
	Connect sites you already use Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.
	See updates in real time New posts and comments pop in as they happen. No refresh required.
	Just the good stuff Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you're likely to skip.

Google Buzz in Action!

Google Buzz for mobile

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Google Acquires VoIP company Gizmo5 for Google Voice

by gadgetqueen on Friday, November 13th, 2009 | Business, News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Google has acquired Gizmo5, a company that offers voice-over-IP software for mobile phones and computers, for about $30 Million intending to roll the company’s engineers into the team that develops the telephony application/controversy magnet known as Google Voice.

Whereas Gizmo5 offers Skype-like software for calling people over the interwebs, Google Voice is a special telephony thingy that lets you use a single phone number for multiple phones - and turn your voice mails into emails. “While we don’t have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5’s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience,” reads a post on the official Google Voice blog.

Google Voice is itself the child of an acquisition. It was first developed by GrandCentral, a startup Google gobbled up in 2007.

Last month, during Google’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Eric Schmidt told the world the company was pulling out its checkbook now that the recession is supposedly over. “We believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future,” he said. The Gizmo5 buy marks the ad giant’s second acquisition in the four weeks since.

Google Voice sits at the heart of not one but two ongoing controversies. Google nemesis AT&T has argued that Voice violates Google’s beloved net neutrality, while Apple is under investigation by the FCC for rejecting Voice’s entry into its iPhone app store.

According to the Gizmo5 homepage, the VoIP service can already be used in tandem with Google Voice. Google has now closed Gizmo5 to new users, but existing users can continue to use the service. Existing users cannot, however, sign up for new call-in numbers.

Unlike Skype, the Gizmo5 network is based on open standards: the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). XMPP is what underpins Google Wave, the company’s new-age communication and collaboration thingy.

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Google Wave Looking for 10,000 testers

by wildcherry on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 | News, Tech/Gadget | 5 Comments

Here are FOUR WAYS TO GET AN INVITE to Google Wave”

1. You signed up early on for a Google Wave account. Google put up a request form for Wave invites not long after Wave was announced. Most of the invites arriving tomorrow will go to people on that list. Your chances improve if you signed up early on and wrote a message to the Wave team.
2. You have an account on the Developer Preview of Wave. The Sandbox version of Google Wave has been active for a select group of developers for several months now, allowing them to test Wave, report bugs, and build Wave extensions. They will all get accounts.
3. Some paying users of Google Apps will get accounts. It’s likely several companies asked Google for invites when the real-time tool launched. They will get accounts. Some schools that use Google Apps will also get early access.
4. You are invited by someone currently using Wave. This is the most intriguing revelation made today by the search giant. Here’s how Google explained it:
“We’ll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations — Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too. This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well we will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave.”
Do you know what this reminds us of? Gmail. Do you remember when it first came out and there were a select number of invites users could send out? I remember that people were willing to pay cold, hard cash for one of those invites. You might see the same type of frenzy over Wave.
Regardless, these are currently the only four ways to get an account on Wave. So if you don’t get an invite tomorrow, you still have hope. You’ll probably have to beg someone for an invite, though.

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
Read more about Google Wave

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