Techie Buzz

Google Buzz API For Developers

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:03:45 +0000

The one thing that I really like about Google is that, they have APIs which allow developers to access user data for most of the Google Products. With the announcement of Google Buzz today, it was more natural for them to have an API to access and write data to Google Buzz profiles.

If you are a developer, you can access and develop applications using the Google Buzz API. The Buzz API provides users with an option to Syndicate Buzz updates with Activity Streams and RSS feeds including Google’s own PubSubHubbub.

In addition to that users can also Connect to Buzz and share RSS feeds and make use of the Social Graph API. However, there are quite a few missing features such as Activity Streams, Atom Publishing and oAuth authentication, which will be added to the API in the near future.

Right now, the Buzz API has limited documentation, however, it more documentation will be added in future as newer features are included in the API. If you are developer and want to write applications for Google Buzz, head over and take a look at the Google Buzz API.

TAGS: Development, Google Buzz, Google Buzz API

Google Buzz API For Developers originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Keith Dsouza on Tuesday 9th February 2010 04:03:45 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Yahoo Says, We Had Yahoo Updates for A Year Before Google Buzz

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:23:13 +0000

Google Buzz is already making a buzz on the web, the product demo was definitely a real treat and the final product will not only be useful for geeks, it will also come in handy for non-technical users as well.

However, Yahoo has had a similar feature called Yahoo Updates for over a year now, and they have sent out a note to Business Insider, which lays out the features that are available in Google Buzz, but were already present in Yahoo Updates for a year.

Here is the email in question, courtesy Business Insider:

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web – and we wanted to share the latest on what’s happening with Updates:

There are now more than 200 Yahoo! and third-party sites that feed into Yahoo! Updates – like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp and Yahoo! Buzz – allowing people to see and share updates such as when they’ve uploaded photos, changed their status, buzzed up a news story or posted a new restaurant review, all from Yahoo!

Yahoo! Updates now appear throughout the Yahoo! network, in popular sites and services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo.com, and Yahoo! Messenger and across our content properties, meaning people can always keep up to date with their friends’ latest activities

Yahoo! Updates are featured prominently on the “What’s New” section of Yahoo! Mail, which is used by more than 300M people worldwide. People can also update their status and share it with friends and family directly from the “What’s New” tab

Yahoo! Updates are now available globally

Additionally, Yahoo! recently announced an expanded integration with Facebook that will allow people to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo! and share Yahoo! content with Facebook friends as well

Ultimately, Yahoo! sees social as an enabler and as a dimension that is part of everything we do—and everything people do online.

As you can see from the email, Yahoo does not really think much about the new "Google Buzz" and have been working on the product for quite some time now, however, comparing both these products at this point would not be right. However, Google has definitely done a lot of thinking and has always been under pressure from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, who have overtaken the popularity of Google.

Unlike Google Buzz, Yahoo Updates is also integrated into Yahoo Messenger 10. Google Buzz is definitely a product to watch out for, and unlike Google Wave, this might not be a failure, however, it would be interesting to see how it stacks up against Yahoo Updates amongst other things.

TAGS: Google Buzz, Google News, Yahoo, Yahoo Updates

Yahoo Says, We Had Yahoo Updates for A Year Before Google Buzz originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Keith Dsouza on Tuesday 9th February 2010 03:23:13 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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KDE releases KDE SC 4.4 “Caikaku” and buzz.kde.org

Raseel Bhagat — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:00:55 +0000

The KDE Desktop Environment is in news this week for a number of reasons.

To begin with, the folks at KDE have released the KDE SC (Software Compilation) 4.4 application suite , codenamed “Caikaku”. The KDE SC 4.4.0 is a Workspace, Application and Development Platform compilation bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users.

The KDE SC 4.4 release introduces major new technologies such as:

Social networking and online collaboration features
A netbook oriented interface of the KDE Plasma Desktop, called the Plasma Netbook.
Underlying infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework, a more stable implementation of the Nepomuk Semantic desktop project and better Desktop search.

The overall look and feel of this Linux desktop experience has become much more sleek and refined and the community seems to have shown excitement on this release.

To follow what is happening around the KDE SC 4.4 release on the social web , you can visit the new KDE community livefeed , buzz.kde.org .

buzz.kde.org aggregates what people say about KDE all around the web. It currently monitors identi.ca, twitter, youtube, Picasa Web Albums and flickr to show you news, opinions and other interesting stuff concerning KDE. The content claims not to have been filtered and in “almost” real time.

With bouncing windows et al, the buzz.kde.org website has been launched alongwith a complete redesign of the KDE.org frontpage. This step seems to be a deliberate attempt by the KDE Marketing team to re-vitalise the website which contained orphaned and out-of-date pages.

With such an attractive horde of releases, even GNOME users are getting tempted to give another go to KDE.

How many Gnome-to-KDE conversions do you reckon will take place with these new releases ?

TAGS: Desktop, kde, kde4, Linux, livefeed, microblogging, Open Source, plasma

KDE releases KDE SC 4.4 “Caikaku” and buzz.kde.org originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Raseel Bhagat on Tuesday 9th February 2010 03:00:55 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Personal PayPal Payments in India To Be Suspended for Few Months [Official Update]

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:53:48 +0000

For those who have already been following the PayPal problem in India, you might already know that PayPal has stopped processing Personal payments to and from India. I did write a rant about PayPal as they did all of this without intimating it’s customers.

However, it looks like there is some clarification on the issue from the official PayPal Blog, according to the new blog post, the problem occurred because of enquiries from India regulators with questions on whether personal payments constitute remittances into India.

Personal payments to and from India are suspended for a few months until they will be able to resolved the questions with Indian regulators. However, a good news is that local bank withdrawal will be available in the next few days, so you will get a chance to empty your PayPal account for good.

If a PayPal reversal has left you with a negative balance you will have to ask the sender to use the Purchase option for sending money to you. This is again a pain and I am sure that many of you will not be able to recover the money that was reversed.

PayPal has come clean, however, I believe that it did a bit too late after it’s reputation took a huge hit. If PayPal would have been a regular bank they would have totally been taken out by the RBI, however, what can we say, we rely on it.

For more info on this, visit the Official PayPal blog post here.

TAGS: India, PayPal

Personal PayPal Payments in India To Be Suspended for Few Months [Official Update] originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Keith Dsouza on Tuesday 9th February 2010 02:53:48 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Capture Screenshots from Google Chrome With WebPage Screenshot Extension

Amit Banerjee — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:00:36 +0000

While browsing the web, sometimes you would like to capture a screenshot from the browser itself. If you love using Google Chrome and want to capture a screenshot without using any other utility, Webpage Screenshot extension will be useful.

This extension provides three preset options – capture the visible region, capture entire page and capture after resizing the browser window. After installing the extension, you will see an icon placed just to the right of the address bar as shown below:

You have the following three options to take the screenshot from Google Chrome:

Capture screenshot of the whole page: Click the “All page screenshot” button and the extension captures the full screenshot and opens the image in a new tab.

From the new tab, you can select to zoom into the image and save it in PNG format.

Resize the image before the capture: This feature lets you first resize the browser tab and then capture the screenshot. To do that, select the desired width and height of the image that you want from the drop down menu.

Capture screenshot of only visible region of a page: This feature is unique and I haven’t seen the same in other browser extensions or Firefox add-ons. You can click the “Visible screenshot” button to capture only the portion of the webpage which is visible in the screen. So if you want to capture an area which lies in the bottom of the page, scroll down and hit the”Visible region” button. (also read: Aviary Google Chrome extension for capturing screenshots)

Techie Buzz Verdict

The extension is good since it comes with preset options but you cannot select a region using your mouse and capture an area. This is the most desirable feature required in a screenshot application, which is missing.

Techie Buzz rating: 3.5/5 (average).

TAGS: Google Chrome Extensions, Screen Capture

Capture Screenshots from Google Chrome With WebPage Screenshot Extension originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Amit Banerjee on Tuesday 9th February 2010 02:00:36 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Google Buzz Introduction Video and Website

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:59:03 +0000

Google Buzz is here and it is a direct competitor to both Facebook and Twitter, if you have not yet heard about Google Buzz, it is a social networking product from Google which will directly integrate into Google products like Gmail and Google Apps.

You can learn more about Google Buzz by visiting our earlier coverage here. However, now that Google Buzz is live and online you can read all the details about it by visiting http://buzz.google.com. The page has a introductory video which should go online in some time.

We will update this post with the introductory video shortly, if you want you watch the Google Buzz event live, head over to our earlier post to find live streaming links for the Google Buzz event.

TAGS: Google Buzz, Social Networking, Videos

Google Buzz Introduction Video and Website originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Keith Dsouza on Tuesday 9th February 2010 01:59:03 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Google Buzz: Social Sharing by Google

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:29:11 +0000

Google has officially announced Google Buzz, a Google Approach to sharing. This is the Google product which will take on Facebook and Twitter by allowing social sharing in Gmail and other Google products.

When you use Google Buzz, it will have an option to auto-follow people you email and chat with and provide a rich and fast sharing experience.

Google Buzz will also pull in your social activity from other websites, and looks pretty similar to the Facebook News Feed. This is definitely interesting as you will be able to see what your contacts are doing without having to leave Gmail.

Google Buzz will also have a feature to share links with your followers, when you add a link, it will allow you to select the picture which you want to share with the link, this again is a feature similar to Facebook Share. However, unlike Facebook, you can choose to share the link publicly or privately. This is akin to sharing something with just your followers and not everyone.

Gmail will have features like Google Wave, where you can share emails with your followers and they can comment on them in real-time. Just like Twitter, Google Buzz will have @replies which will be sent to the mentioned users Inbox.

Looks like Google Buzz is also taking on the location sharing giant Four Square with the mobile version of Buzz, it will allow you to share your location with your followers

More updates to follow

Image screenshots courtesy: Silicon Alley Insider

TAGS: Gmail, Google Buzz, Social Networking

Google Buzz: Social Sharing by Google originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Keith Dsouza on Tuesday 9th February 2010 01:29:11 PM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Tweak XP Security Settings with XP-Antispy

Clif Sipe — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:00:00 +0000

A few hours ago, Pallab told us how to “Optimize Windows 7 Services with SMART”. That made me wonder if there was a similar utility for XP. However, I found out that the SMART utility mentioned in Pallab’s article now supports Vista and XP. After a bit more research, I found a utility I’ve heard about for a long time and hadn’t tried until now.

XP-Antispy is a small application that lets you control some of the XP system services and registry settings. Disabling these services and settings can make your PC safer from outside threats and also keep it from contacting Microsoft when it doesn’t need to. These settings could be changed manually by a Windows user, however, tracking all of them down and changing them could take hours and hours of hard work. XP-Antispy makes it simple.

Here’s what XP-Antispy looks like:

As you can see, the interface is simple enough, and the operation is as simple as adding check-marks or removing them. Each setting is briefly explained so that you have an idea what each does. Antispy also allows you to keep a copy of your old settings so that you can always return to them if you need to.

There is a built in help file that is fairly detailed if you need it. I was also pleased to find that a portable version (in a zip file) is available for download as well as the typical installer based version.

Important Note: This program is not recommended for a new or casual Windows user. Many of these settings should only be changed by experienced users. As an additional precaution, you could also make a full back up the XP registry with ERUNT before making changes with this tool.

Home Page of XP-Antispy

http://www.xp-antispy.org/index.php/en/ueber

Alternate download at Download.com

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I like XP-Antispy’s simplicity and the help file that is provided. I’m also happy that the author updates this program quite often to keep it current with today’s changing security needs. However, I wish that there was more explanation for each setting. I was also disappointed by a re-directed to eBay on my first attempt to download the zip file. That’s why I included the alternate download location above.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

TAGS: Freeware, Hacks And Mods, Online Security, Portable Software, Useful Tools, Utilities, Windows Tips

Tweak XP Security Settings with XP-Antispy originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Clif Sipe on Tuesday 9th February 2010 03:00:00 AM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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FlickrPress: Display Flickr Photos On Your Wordpress Blog

Tehseen Baweja — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:50:10 +0000

Wordpress bloggers often need to integrate Flickr photos with their blog. There are a number of ways to do that but if you want to go the simple way, FlickrPress is a great option. It is a simple Wordpress plugin that can be installed on any blog having Wordpress version 2.6 or higher. Using FlickrPress you can display Flickr photos on your Sidebar, Footer and even your posts and pages.

Within the settings of the plugin, you can specify if you want to display photos from a specific RSS feed, a specific user, a photoset, photos filtered by tag or random photos. The thumbnails can be either large, proportional or square. It is a multi-widget which means the widget can be embedded more than once in your blog. You can even embed it more than once in the same post or page. The plugin uses the secure Flickr API and reduces server load by caching the data locally.

It supports the Lightbox feature and is based on the phpFlickr library. The plugin also allows you to add custom styling while displaying photos on your blog and specify the number of thumbnails you want to display at a time. The plugin can be downloaded here.

TAGS: Embed, Flickr, Photos, Sidea

FlickrPress: Display Flickr Photos On Your Wordpress Blog originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Tehseen Baweja on Tuesday 9th February 2010 02:50:10 AM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

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Gmail To Add New Social Feature, Compete With Twitter and Facebook

Tehseen Baweja — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:13:49 +0000

Ever since Gmail launched, Google has been trying to make it much more than an email service. Wall Street Journal reports that Gmail may launch another social feature as soon as this week that will let it compete with Twitter and Facebook. This feature will allow users to view media and status update of their friends. Gmail still partially offers this feature but is nowhere close to what Facebook and Twitter offer. The new feature will reportedly add a separate module to Gmail, allowing users to view a stream of updates from their friends. It will be tightly integrated within various Google’s services like YouTube and Picasa.

Gmail currently has around 176 Million unique users compared to the 400 Million registered Facebook users. With Facebook launching a Gmail like Inbox and Gmail launching a Facebook like social feature, the competition is heating up. No matter what it means for Facebook or Google, it will definitely be good for the users as they will have plenty of options for all their social needs.

Some analysts also suggest that Google would be better off buying Twitter and integrating it within its stream of web services. The rumors for a Google-Twitter deal have come up many times in the past but never materialized. Do you think Google would be better buying off Twitter?

TAGS: Feature, Gmail, Social

Gmail To Add New Social Feature, Compete With Twitter and Facebook originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Tehseen Baweja on Tuesday 9th February 2010 01:13:49 AM. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.