Google Buzz Tips

Here are some tips that help you use Google Buzz in new interesting ways.

1. Send direct messages.

If you'd like to send a private message to someone, type @ and use Gmail's autocomplete feature to find the email address of your contact. After typing the message, make sure that the private option is selected, click on "Post to other groups" and create an empty group. You could call it "No one", "Empty group" etc. Now you can send your message.

When you send a private message, Google Buzz lets you select one or more groups that will receive message, but you can also include the contacts in your message.



2. Disable email notifications.

When someone replies to one of your Google Buzz messages, Google sends an email notification to your Gmail account. If you don't like the notifications or they clutter your inbox, create a filter that archives or deletes all the messages that are labeled "buzz" (a built-in Gmail label). Make sure you type label:buzz (you could also use is:buzz) in the "Has the words" box and ignore Gmail's warning.

3. Add more connected sites.

Google Buzz lets you import content from services like Google Reader, Picasa, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, but it's not obvious how to add other sites. Let's say you want to add your FriendFeed profile or the feed of your site. To do that, you need to make sure that the site links to your Google Profile or to one of the services that are associated with your Google Profile.

Google explains how to add a link to your profile and how to include a special markup (rel="me") that offers more information about the link.

<link rel="me" type="text/html" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/your.username" />

Unfortunately, you can't connect the site immediately after you add the link. Google needs to crawl the site before updating the connections. "When the site is re-crawled the mutual claim will be verified and feeds associated with the site will be made available within Google Buzz for the verified user."

4. Link to a Google Buzz message.

If a message is public, it has a permalink that could be used to share the discussion. Gmail shows the links without having to use additional options, but it's not obvious that the timestamp of the message is actually a permalink.



5. Quickly open Google Buzz.

If you've enabled keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, type g b from any Gmail view and you'll open Google Buzz.

Some other useful shortcuts:

Shift+l - like a message
m - mute (ignore) a conversation
r - add a comment
p / n - go to the newer / older conversation
o - expand conversation

6. Hide Google Buzz's counter.

Google Buzz's message counter is distracting, so it would be nice to hide it. Unfortunately, there's no Gmail option that lets you hide counter, but you can hide the link to Google Buzz. Drag "Buzz" to the "X more" drop-down and you can hide the Buzz label.



7. Subscribe to a Google Buzz account in a feed reader.

Google posts each public message to the user's profile page. Open the profile page and click on the orange icon displayed by your browser to subscribe to the feed. A Google Buzz feed has an address that looks like this:

http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/<USERNAME>/public/posted

8. Find public Google Buzz messages.

If you thought that Google Buzz's search box is restricted to your social connections, think again. Google Buzz's search feature shows the latest public messages that match your query.

Some useful searches:

author:<insertname>@gmail.com - find all the messages written by a specific user (you can also use a partial name instead of an email address)

commenter:<insertname>@gmail.com - find all the messages that have a comment from a specific user

has:photo, has:video, has:link - restricts the results to messages that include photos, videos or links (for example: vancouver has:photo)

source:flickr, source:twitter, source:reader- restricts the results to messages imported from Flickr, Twitter, Google Reader (for example: vancouver source:flickr)

9. Save searches

You can bookmark your favorite Buzz searches by enabling the Quick Links feature from Gmail Labs. After performing a search, click on "Add quick link" and add a name for your bookmark.

10. View Google Buzz photos in a slideshow

When you upload photos to Google Buzz, they're added to Picasa Web Albums. If you click on a thumbnail, Google Buzz will open a lightbox to help you quickly navigate between images. Unfortunately, there's no option to view the images in a slideshow, but Picasa Web Albums has this feature and there's a small link that opens the photo album. Click on "view all" and you can select the slideshow option, export photos using Picasa or print photos.

11. Add rich text messages

You can use the same tricks that work in Google Talk to write rich text messages:

*bold message*
_italic message_
-deleted message-



12. Google Buzz on a map

Use the address of the mobile Google Maps interface to see Google Buzz messages from all over the world. There's also a list view for nearby messages.



{ Thanks, KosciaK. }

Google Buys Aardvark

Google acquired Aardvark, a start-up that helps you find answers to your questions in an interesting way.

"Aardvark is a new kind of tool that lets you tap into the knowledge and experience of friends and friends-of-friends. Send Aardvark a question (from the web, IM, email, Twitter, or iPhone) and you'll get a quick, helpful response from someone with the right knowledge and experience to help," explains the FAQ page.

Instead of sending a question to all your Twitter followers or Facebook friends, you could use Aardvark and send the question to those that have the expertise to answer it. When you sign up for Aardvark, you need to enter your main interests. Aardvark automatically tags questions, tries to find the users that could answer the questions and sends them the questions.

Aardvark uses a lot of signals to determine the people that receive your question: related topics in profiles, how you're connected to people, who you trust, your history of training Aardvark, people who share your favorites (for taste-related questions), people in the right location (for location-related questions). It's quite clever and it's very similar to Google's ranking algorithms. Instead of matching a query to the best search results, Aardvark matches a question to the best people that can answer it.

"On average, we have to contact eight people to get two who are willing and online. But we look at thousands in order to build the list of the top prospects," explains Nicholas Chim, a senior engineer at Aardvark.


This is the future of social search and Google is already in the process of integrating social search with standard search results. For now, Google indexes existing user-generated content from your social connections, but it's not difficult to anticipate that Google Social Search will generate new content.

"When you need an answer to a very specific question, sometimes the information just isn't online in one simple place. For example, let's say you want to know if there's snow on Skyline Boulevard on a given day or the best time of year to plant beans in the Bay Area. You might find weather reports and planting guides on many different sites, but for these kinds of questions, a person with the right expertise can be a lot more useful than a webpage," mentions Google's blog.

Aardvark's acquisition is special for many reasons: Aardvark's chief executive is a former Google employee, the service is still available even if it was acquired by Google and it's the first acquisition directly added to Google Labs.

"Aardvark is meant for tips, advice, opinions, and recommendations that pull knowledge from a trusted network." Here's an example of conversation:


A Google Labs user posted a way to find if it's a good idea to ask a question using Aardvark:

"Ask subjective questions that are interesting for someone to answer and rich in context. My rule of thumb is to ask anything that could be better answered if I gave a second sentence of context. If no second sentence would really help get me a better answer (like "who was the 40th president?") then it's probably a better question for Google."

It will be interesting to see how Aardvark integrates with Google Buzz, Google Talk and Google Search.

YouTube Video Speed Stats

Video Speed History is a new YouTube feature that shows information about your video download speed and the average speed for your ISP, your city and your country. YouTube also shows the average global speed, which is now 2.91 Mbps.

YouTube's goal is to help you compare the video speed from your ISP with similar numbers from other ISPs. "Video speed is an important part of your viewing experience since it determines the amount of time you need to wait before you can start watching a video. It is also an important factor in determining the quality of the video you can watch. By making the video speed history data available, we hope to better inform you of speed issues as they relate to your viewing experience, and give you the ability to compare your speed numbers with other users in your region," mentions YouTube.

Average speed in the US = 3.62 Mbps


Average speed in Japan = 5.53 Mbps


Wired thinks that "this level of transparency could pressure ISPs not to slow down data from YouTube, because it will be clear to consumers if a given provider offers a poor connection". It's also a great way to compare ISPs and to test your Internet connection, but you should take the results with a grain of salt because the speed numbers are only for YouTube video traffic.

Tip. Some YouTube videos have an additional option in the contextual menu: "show video info". This feature shows information about the video and some streaming stats.

Google Maps Labs

When a product doesn't have many users, it's easy to add new features, even if they're still experimental. But how can you test new features in popular services like Gmail, Google Docs or Blogger? One solution is to launch a labs section with experimental features that can be enabled by early adopters.

Google Maps is the latest Google service that adds a labs section with cool features that aren't ready for prime time. As Google says, the features "may change, break or disappear at any time".

The most interesting feature available in Gmail Maps Labs is aerial imagery, which shows a "rotatable, high-resolution overhead imagery presented in a new perspective". Unfortunately, the aerial view is only available in a few locations from the US, including Googleplex.


"This new perspective gives users the ability to tilt their view of the world. In addition to seeing hotel rooftops like in our current "satellite" view, users can now see both the rooftop and sides of the hotel at an angle. In fact, users can rotate around all the sides of a hotel to get 4 different views from back to front," explained Google in a post from December.

Another great feature is drag&zoom, which lets you select a part of the map before zooming. This way, the results are more precise and if you don't have to constantly click on the map to find a location.


Did you know that you can search for * and Google Maps shows the top results from the current view? If you don't want to remember this trick, enable the "What's around here" option and Google Maps will add a new button that searches for *.

If you want to find the latitude and longitude of a point using Google Maps, enable "LatLng Marker", right click on a location and select "Drop LatLng Marker". If you use this feature a lot, you should enable a more advanced option that shows the latitude and longitude in a tooltip.


{ Thanks, Pascal. }

Google Buzz's Inefficient Photo Uploader

Here's another reason why limiting Picasa Web Albums to only 250 albums for the free version and 1000 albums for paid accounts doesn't make any sense. When you upload photos using Google Buzz, Google creates a new album to store your photos.

That means you can upload photos less than 250 times and Google Buzz albums clutter the interface. Another issue is that storing photos in separate albums is inefficient and you can't delete the albums because your photos will no longer be available in Google Buzz.


Picasa Web Albums limitations:

As you accumulate more pictures in Picasa Web Albums, please keep in mind your account limits. These limits differ depending on the storage plan you're using:

For users with the standard (free) one GB of storage, the following limits apply:

* Maximum number of web albums: 250
* Maximum number of photos per web album: 500

Users with upgraded storage have the following limits:

* Maximum number of web albums: 1000
* Maximum number of photos per web album: 1000

Google Buzz Makes Your Profile Searchable

An unexpected side effect of enabling Google Buzz is that your Google Profile automatically becomes searchable. Until now, you could edit your profile and only show your nickname publicly. When you activate Google Buzz, it automatically enables this option: "Display my full name so I can be found in search" and your full name becomes searchable. Google mentions that "changing your name here will change it in all Google products".


If you try disable the option in your Google profile, you'll no longer be able to post a new Google Buzz message until the option is enabled. Google will show this message:


That means Google Profile Search indexes all the profiles of Google Buzz users. Since Google Buzz is automatically enabled if you use Gmail, almost all Gmail users are listed.

Upload Multiple Photos to Picasa Web Albums

For some strange reason, you can't upload more than 5 photos at once in Picasa Web Albums and you need to manually select each photo.


Gmail and Google Docs use a Flash uploader, but Picasa Web Albums recommends to install Picasa if you want to upload photos. Internet Explorer users are lucky because they can install an ActiveX for uploading photos.

Fortunately, Google Buzz lets you upload multiple photos at once and it stores the files in Picasa Web Albums. That means you can use it to upload photos, without installing Picasa or the ActiveX control.

Open Gmail, go to the "Buzz" section, pretend you are posting a new message and click on "Photo". Select the photos you want to upload, add them to your message, but don't post the message.


If you go to Picasa Web Albums, you'll notice a new album that includes your photos. Using the "Organize and reorder" option, you can move the photos to another album.

Google Search Options for Q&A Sites

Google tests a new option that lets you restrict the results to Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Stack Overflow or Askville. After enabling "search options", users click on "discussions" and select the "Q&As" category.

Google's smart snippets include some useful information: the number of answers, the date of the most recent answers. Not all question answering sites show the status of a question, but Google is able to detect solved questions.


Depending on your query, you might want to read a brief answer or a detailed response. Google lets you find web pages that include short, medium or long answers.


You can try this feature by changing your Google cookie. Go to google.com and paste this in the address bar:

javascript:document.cookie='PREF=ID=4b4effd9962edeec:U=f2242a9b3313152d:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1264815801:LM=1265708970:S=_-AONXhoipKjVUOo;path=/;domain=.google.com';void(0);
If you're not in the US and Google redirects you to a different domain, replace google.com with the appropriate domain.

Menggunakan Manipulator setw() dan setfill()

"Om Swastiastu"

Kali ini kita saya akan membahas mengenai manipulator setw() dan setfill(). Kita mulai dengan manipulator setw().

Manipulator setw()
Manipulator setw() bermanfaat untuk mengatur lebar dari suatu tampilan data. Sebagai contoh kita mempunyai data berupa jumlah penduduk di kota A, B, dan C. Penduduk A = 266, penduduk B = 2356, dan penduduk C = 12456. Nah, untuk menampilkan data tersebut agar keluarannya berupa rata kanan, maka kita akan menggunakan manipulator setw(). Dan karena jumlah digit terbanyak dari penduduk adalah 5, maka kita menggunakan setw(5). (Ingat: Penduduk C = 12456, (5 digit))

Sebagai contoh, Anda dapat meliha pemakaiannya pada syntax dibawah ini:

#include <iostream.h>
#include <iomanip.h> // untuk manipulator setw()
#include <conio.h>

void main()
{
int jmlA = 266, jmlB = 2356, jmlC = 12456;
clrscr();

cout<<"Penduduk Kota A = "<<setw(5)<<jmlA<<endl;
cout<<"Penduduk Kota B = "<<setw(5)<<jmlB<<endl;
cout<<"Penduduk Kota C = "<<setw(5)<<jmlC<<endl;
getch();
}



Continue Reading »

Google Buzz

Google has never managed to create a successful social network. Orkut's success is limited to Brazil and India, iGoogle's latest update was a let down and Google Friend Connect is still in its infancy.

In 2007, Gmail's code included some details about a feature that showed updates from your contacts. Google intended to create activity streams and share them with your friends. That feature wasn't ready to be launched, but Google unveiled the first piece of the puzzle: unified profiles.

Interestingly, in 2007 four ex-Googlers launched FriendFeed, a service that allowed you to share interesting pages with your friends and use them as the starting point for a meaningful conversation. FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook last year.


It took Google more than two years to launch a product for sharing and discussing ideas with your friends. It's called Google Buzz and it's integrated with many Google services, including Gmail and Google Maps.

"Buzz lets you share updates, photos, links, and pretty much anything else you'd like with your Gmail contacts; it's an easy way to follow your friends, too. When you click Buzz in your Gmail account, you'll see the stream of posts from people you're following, and a box for you to post your updates," explains a help article.

Much like FriendFeed, Google Buzz lets you import content from sites like Twitter, Flickr or Google Reader. You can follow interesting people, flag the items you like, add comments and get notifications in your inbox.


"There's a FriendFeed in my Gmail," commented Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who created Gmail and co-founded FriendFeed.

Google Buzz will be added to your Gmail account in the coming days, but Gmail is just one of the interfaces that will integrate Google Buzz. You can already try Google Buzz on your mobile phone by visiting buzz.google.com if you have an iPhone or an Android phone.


"We focused on making the sharing experience really rich by integrating photos, videos, and links. No more fuzzy little pictures: Buzz makes it easy to quickly flip through photos and experience them the way they were meant to be seen: big and full-resolution. And videos play inline so you can watch them without opening a new window. You can choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post," informs Gmail's blog.



Update. Here's the launch event video:

Download Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (Theme Song)

"Om Swastiastu"

Hi bloggers, I have something interesting that you might like. I just got Harvest Moon Back to Nature Original Theme Song and ringtones and I want to share it with you guys. You must know Harvest Moon. It is a famous RPG Game for Play Station. There are about 22 theme songs here. I hope you enjoy it. Just download the songs on the link below:
Continue Reading »

Kuadrat Bilangan Menggunakan Prototipe Fungsi

"Om Swastiastu"

Setiap fungsi yang dipangil di dalam program harus didefenisikan. Letaknya dapat dimana saja. Khusus untuk fungsi yang disediakan sistem, defenisinya sebenarnya ada dalam pustaka, yang akan digabungkan dengan program sewaktu proses linking.

Contoh defenisi fungsi kuadrat() yang dibuat sendiri oleh pemrogram contohnya seperti ini


//prototipe fungsi
long kuadrat(long l);

------------------------

//defenisi fungsi
long kuadrat(longl)
{
 return(l*l);
}

Continue Reading »

Google's Super Bowl Ad

Google's search engine didn't become popular because of advertising. Many people liked that it returned relevant results, it was fast and had a simple interface, so they told their friends to try it.

Google rarely used traditional advertising to promote its products, but that started to change in 2007, when Google used billboards to promote GOOG-411. Last year, Google aggressively promoted Chrome using flashy ads.

Despite the noticeable cultural shift, it's still surprising to see that Google decided to promote its search engine at the Super Bowl.

"If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience," explains Eric Schmidt.

Google's CEO mentioned in a Twitter message that someone told him: "Hell has indeed frozen over." This is Google's first Super Bowl ad:

Google Chrome Safe Mode

Firefox has an option that lets you temporarily disable themes and extensions, so you can still use your browser even if one of your add-ons is buggy. It's called safe mode and it's "a special Firefox execution mode that can be used to troubleshoot issues in Firefox. In Safe Mode, you can reset some settings or disable add-ons that might be the source of the issue. By comparing Firefox behavior in normal mode to its behavior in Safe Mode with various items disabled, you may be able to diagnose issues."

Google Chrome doesn't have this feature, but you can open an incognito window to temporarily disable extensions.


If you want to create a shortcut that opens Chrome in incognito mode, duplicate an existing Chrome shortcut, right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties" and append this flag to the target value: --incognito (don't forget to add a space to separate the flag).

Konversi Bilangan Menggunakan Manipulator

"Om Swastiastu"

Ada terobosan baru dalam C++ untuk mengkonversi suatu bilangan ke bentuk Oktal, Heksadesimal atau Desimal. Kali ini kita menggunakan manipulator bernama dec, oct, dan hex. Ketiga manipulator ini berguna untuk menampilkan data dalam bentuk desimal (bilangan basis 10), oktal (bilangna basis 8), dan heksadesimal (bilangan basis 16).

• oct mengkonversi ke oktal
• dec mengkonversi ke desimal
• hex mengkonversi ke heksadesimal

Contoh program yang memperlihatkan pemakaian ketiga manipulator tersebut dapat dilihat dibawah ini:
Continue Reading »

Mencari Nilai Akar dengan Fungsi sqrt()

"Om Swastiastu"

Kadang kala kita bingung, bagaimana caranya mencari nilai akar suatu nilai dalam C++. Nah, kebingungan kalian terjawab dengan adanya fungsi sqrt() dalam C++. Berikut adalah contoh syntax untuk mencari nilai akar dalam C++. Programnya sangat sederhana dan mudah dimengerti. Karena kita tinggal memasukkan angka kedalam fungsi sqrt().
Untuk lebih lengkapnya, lihat saja syntax berikut:


#include <iostream.h>
#include <conio.h>
#include <math.h>

void main()
{
 int angka;
 clrscr();

 cout<<"ROGRAM PENCARI NILAI AKAR"<<endl;
 cout<<endl;
 cout<<"Masukkan Angka : "; cin>>angka;

 cout<<endl<<endl;
 cout<<"Akar Dari "<<angka<<" = "<<sqrt(angka)<<endl;
 getch();
}

Bagaimana? Bergunakah artikel ini untuk menambah wawasan Anda dalam dunia C++?
Semoga apa yang IT Programmer berikan selalu bermanfaat bagi kalian semua.

"Om Santhi, Santhi, Santhi, Om"