YiBi's Life|Live Log

I woke up this morning to discover that TweetDeck has changed. Slightly different interface, and now we need a TweetDeck account. Not something that I like very much. Why not allow us to sign in with our Twitter account. It’s one less account littered on the Internet. But nonetheless, I created an account. TweetDeck has integration Facebook and Twitter on one screen and it’s very convenient. I *HOPE* they will consider Google+ integration as well. Then they will be the ultimate killer, in my humble opinion.

Fired up TweetDeck in my Chrome, and saw a Tweet from @davegirouard talking about new features in Gmail. There’s now better integration with Google+ which allows filtering based on Circles.

We can now add people to our circles from Gmail. I think this will tremendously help to boost the sign up for Google+ now with everything on one screen.

On a side note. The Google+ interface is still a bit unnatural somehow. It’s not as fluid as Facebook as I feel personally. Hopefully Google+ can take off in a much bigger scale. I like the circle concept much more than the Facebook lists.

Oh, 1 more upcoming. Facebook Timeline. Watch out for this. Very interesting.

After my last episode with transition to the new Google infrastructure, I have been considering whether I should stay on Google Apps. Another one of my blog is on Google, my mails with my own domain is also with Google and I’m paying for extra storage on my mail and Picassa. Tons of my photos are with Google. Google created the stickiness which I’m ready to accept, given the brillant track record they have for their services.

Now, Google+ is launched. My friends told me that their Picassa photos appear automatically on G+, they are porting their profiles over from Facebook, and they are asking me for my G+ account. And all of them are surprise that I don’t have it, given that I have been preaching to everyone the amazing benefits of using Google Apps.

I have been reading forums and it’s not surprising to find that there are tons of people like me, stuck! The common sentiment is, ‘it’s ok, we trust Google will do something about this, but WHEN?!’. Google has been silent about this. There’s no indication at all on the prospect of Google Apps users getting Google+ (and getting my Blogger account back).

The only sure way I can get it now, is to actually to move my domain out of Google, cancel my Apps account and register a personal account with my yibi.org email address. The next best and natural choice is Apple’s iCloud, but maybe just hosting my mails back at my own server.

Well, let’s see if Google can fix this fast. Otherwise, I’m going to get started on moving.

Popular game app Angry Birds, for example, sends a user’s username, contacts, location and phone ID along to Google/Chillingo (a unit at Electronic Arts, which markets the game) and to Flurry, an application analytics company. Do Angry Birds actually seem more menacing to you now?

It’s not only smartphone apps. Facebook apps leak alot of information too. That’s why I’m very particular when adding apps.

Read the whole article from the link below.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2010/12/20/how-smartphone-applications-spy-on-their-users/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Google Buzz

Google launched Google Buzz, a social networking platform. This is cool, because I’m an avid user of Google. But I’m wondering at the same time, what’s going to happen to Google Wave? The functions seems to overlap, although Wave seems to be more cutting edge.

Right now Google Buzz is only available on Gmail. I wished they had it on Google Apps for Your Domain as well. I host my email, docs, calendars etc on Google using my own domain. Unfortunately, I can’t use Buzz with my own domain. Same goes for Wave when it was launched.

Google Buzz *IS* available on Google Apps For Your Domain! For some reason it didn’t show up in the mail interface on the PC, but it works on my IPhone. Cool! That means now I can have all my stuff on Google. Mail, Calendar, Docs, Picassa.

Find out more about Google Buzz at http://buzz.google.com

And no. No IPhone app for Google Buzz yet. Probably never.