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In Case You Missed It, You Can Also Create a Buzz on Google Reader

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So, have you started “buzzing around?” Has Google enabled Google Buzz on your Gmail? Or have you tried it on your mobile phone?  How was it? Revolutionary? Innovative?  Well, in case you might have missed it due to the influx of buzz that Google has created with the launch of Google Buzz, the service is actually also available in Google Reader. That is you can also post the items from your Google Reader as a buzz on your Gmail.

To activate this feature, all you need to do is to link up your Google Reader account to Gmail Buzz. And while you’re there, you might also want to link up other current services that are tied up with your Google Profile.  Once set up, everything that you share on Google Reader will be automatically be posted to your Gmail Buzz. That’s why Google Buzz is called a social sharing service.  Once your Reader item is posted as a buzz, people who are following you will be able to post comments to the items you shared.

The good thing about this, in case you didn’t notice it, is that the people you follow and who follow you on Google Reader are also the same set of people in your Gmail Buzz.

This is why I like Google Buzz so far. It’s like partaking of a new product without exerting to much effort on learning something new. Something which Google Wave did, and which is gradually leading it to its downfall.

Got one more room for a person to follow? Follow me on Twitter, I mean on Google Buzz – http://www.google.com/profiles/noli725.

YouTube Turns On Safety Mode Video Viewing

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In its effort to provide users with a more controlled and safe environment, YouTube has rolled out Safety Mode. This is an opt-in setting that will let you screen out outright and potential objectionable contents from showing up on your YouTube account channel, which you definitely don’t want your friends and family to see when they check out your YouTube video.

I’m pretty sure at some point in your YouTube experience, you’ve seen examples of these contents. It may be newsworthy video depicting violence at its gruesome details. Since this content does not contain any sexually objectionable content, YouTube will not censor them. So, it is up to you to determine whether these contents will be displayed on your YouTube account. If you don’t want to – then comes YouTube in Safety Mode.

To activate Safety Mode on your YouTube account, just click on the link at the bottom of any video page.

Safety Mode may not be a full-proof system yet, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. It may not guarantee safe video watching at all times, but at least Google is doing something to remedy this issue and provide us all with a “safe environment”  when watching YouTube videos.

And that alone is a great achievement.

Yahoo and Microsoft React to Google Buzz

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If you’ve been monitoring tech headlines the past couple of hours, you’d know that the hottest buzz right now is none other than Google Buzz. Credit it to Google for creating yet again another noise upon launching a significant product or service and for soliciting a much needed reaction from its rivals – Yahoo and Microsoft.

In case you’ve missed the discussion thread online, Google Buzz is purported as Google’s approach to social sharing.  The main service sits right inside Gmail Inbox but you can also use the service on your iPhone or Android devices. You can read more about Google Buzz  in Gmail and Google Buzz for Mobile at 901am.

So, how did Yahoo and Microsoft reacted to Google Buzz? Microsoft was a bit short and yet direct to the point, as quoted by TechCrunch.

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

While Yahoo’s reaction was more elaborate by saying that they have the same service for a year now via Yahoo! Updates. Silicon Alley Insider shares Yahoo’s email explaining that they had that same product for over a year now.

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…

So, what do you think? Did Google just copied existing services of its two rivals? Or did Google in fact copied the services of some other location-aware, social recommendation sites such as Yelp, Gowalla, FourSquare and others?

Update: Incidentally, Google Buzz for Mobile is now on. You may check it out by pointing your iPhone or Android phone’s browser to buzz.google.com.

eBay Seeks Your Help to Make its Services Better via its Garden of New Features

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eBay has planted some seeds on its new garden to hoping to reap some valuable fruits later on, so to speak.  I’m talking about Garden by eBay which was just announced and is describe as an area on eBay that will allow eBay members to test new features and offer input on suggested improvements and changes on the eBay site.  Garden by eBay hopes to gather user inputs on initial concepts or seeds that it hopes to fully grow into a full product or feature. All for the glory of finding the best deals online, folks!

Alright, in other words, it’s Gmail Labs for eBay. But since, Labs is already an overused term, eBay decided to use Garden instead. Hence putting some environmental relevance to the project.

So, what does Garden by eBay actually offers? Or what is really, officially?  Garden by eBay is a new experimental space where eBay users can test, interact with, and offer input on existing or new ideas for eBay.com’s products and features. Member inputs will provided directly to the eBay team in-charge of new, proposed or existing eBay features. Hence, bringing sellers and buyers directly into the innovation process and letting eBay to introduce, test and roll out new features faster.

To kick off this project, there are currently two available seeds in the Garden. First is the new “Streamlined Search” which is intended to make browsing and viewing search results on eBay easier and streamlined. It presents a cleaner view of eBay inventory and a more efficient way of browsing items. It also lets users compare auction and Buy it Now listings side-by-side, refine seaches and other useful information.

The other available feature for testing is Diamond Ring Designer which has been under testing for quite some time now but eBay wants to get some more feedback from eBay users.

To access Garden by eBay, click here.

Five Coolest Super Bowl XLIV Commercials

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So did you enjoy the Super Bowl game last night? Were you disappointed by the final game result?  Well, now that the game is over, how about checking out the other side of this year’s shindig – the SuperBowl ads? It is also the most anticipated highlight of this year’s Super Bowl, right?

There are actually two types of Super Bowl ads that were shown last night. Those which are general in nature and those that are technology related. We’ve selected five of these tech-related Super Bowl Ads as our favorites.

Google’s Parisian Love Super Bowl Ad

Google surprised everyone when their Parisian Love search-related commercial rolled out.  For one thing, it’s very simple and did not have all the fanfare that other commercials have.  Google’s Super Bowl commercial highlighted how useful its localized search engine is when it comes to everyone’s everyday life. [Read more…] about Five Coolest Super Bowl XLIV Commercials

Pages Creation Feature Graduates from Blogger in Draft

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Since I stopped using Google’s free blog hosting platform, Blogger a long time ago, that doesn’t mean that I also stopped monitoring what’s been happening with the service. So, not so long ago Blogger introduced this feature for creating static pages and put it in their  “Blogger in Draft” beta feature testing site. Guess what? After a long time, that feature has finally graduated from beta and  is now an official Blogger  feature.

If you’re still running a blog hosted on Blogger.com and you’ve  missed this feature, now is the best time to try it out. Basically, what this allows you to do is to create static Pages that you can link to on your Blogger main page. You can create up to 10 static pages which can be for About page, your Biographical details, information about what you are blogging about and many other related information.

The process of creating a page is similar to the way you create a blog post. Once you’ve created a page, you can have it published on your main blog page using the Pages widget. If you’ve created several pages, you can even organize how these will be displayed on your blog’s main page.

This feature works well for blogs that use any of the default blog templates. For those who are using customized template on the Blogger blogs, the process of creating pages and organizing them is a little different and requires some knowledge of HTML and coding. You can check out the procedures for adding Pages tab on blogs with customized template from here.

You know what this mean? Those who want to create an online presence for themselves or for their businesses but do not want to start a blog, can now use Blogger.com to create their websites. And they don’t have to spend anything since the service is free.