Labels: Mozilla

The Google gang has gotten down on its knees to apologize, offering tweak after tweak to its Gmail-centric service. Still, plenty of people aren't too pleased with theirautomatic enrollment in a program that invaded their inboxes.

Now, there's an easy way to bid Buzz adieu once and for all.

My Google Buzz Goodbye

Me, I'm in the camp of those who are pretty much ready to tell Buzz to buzz off. In the hours leading up to Buzz's official debut, I had optimistically hoped the service would end up providing us witha way to manage our existing social media connections -- centralizing something old, rather than creating something new. Instead, as I'd feared might happen, Google's Buzz is really just adding more noise into an already buzzing area of my life.

Now, as any regular readers know, I'm fond of many of Google's services (I'm even bordering on becoming an Android fanboy, according to a highly scientific quiz I just took). I use Gmail to manage my numerous e-mail addresses and accounts. And that's precisely why I'm ready to say bye-bye to Buzz: Privacy considerations aside, the last thing I need is yet another social networking site to keep up with when I should be working. And the last place I need it is in a Web site that serves as one of my main productivity tools.

Getting Rid of Google Buzz

If you, too, are ready to swat Buzz away, here's how: Surf over to Gmail and sign into your account. Scroll down to the bottom of the main inbox screen and look for the link that says "Turn Off Buzz" -- it's at the very bottom of the page, just above the copyright notice.

Thanks to Google's most recent set of changes, that link now leads you to an expanded menu of Buzz-specific settings here's exactly what it looks like). You'll find options to control whether your Buzz "following lists" are displayed on your Google Profile page, to remove Buzz-related content from your Gmail page, and -- if you're ready to fully pull the plug -- to disable Buzz altogether.

The Buzz-busting option deletes anything and everything Buzz-related from your Google account: your public profile, your connections, and any posts you may have shared. You'll retain the option to re-enable it in the future -- a small "Turn On Buzz" link will appear at the bottom of your Gmail inbox screen -- but all other signs of Buzz will be banished, one might say, to infinity and beyond.

Labels: Google Buzz

Both services are supposed to help you create conversations and give you a richer experience around Web-based media like videos, images ,and regular text. But while Buzz and Wave have a lot in common, there also some key differences that set each service apart.

Wave and Buzz? What the heck are you talking about?

Google describes Wave as "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more." Basically, Google Wave is e-mail, instant messaging, an online collaboration tool and a wiki all rolled into one service.

But Google Buzz is designed solely to let you share videos, photos, links, and status updates with others just like you would on Facebook or Twitter. You can access Buzz through your Gmail inbox or through your mobile device's Web browser.

Real-time communication versus e-mail conversation

While you will receive Buzz updates very quickly via e-mail, communication in Google Wave is much faster. Unlike Buzz, communication in Wave happens in real time, and you can actually watch someone typing out their response or comment on an individual wave. That's a big difference, since it allows Wave users to easily collaborate on a project.

Wave is about collaboration, Buzz is about conversation

Wave was built on collaborative features like editing a document, planning an event, creating meeting notes, and so on. But if you just want to share photos, videos, or comments that don't require real-time communication, then Google Buzz is probably the better option.

Waving is complex, Buzzing not so much

One of the problems with Wave is that it's a difficult tool to explain to others, and once you understand what Wave is it's even harder to understand everything you can do with it. Buzz, on the other hand, works similarly to e-mail and is focused on one thing: sharing content with others.

Buzz is a gateway to Wave

In a lot of ways, Buzz is a halfway point between regular e-mail and Wave. For example, when you get an updated Buzz in your inbox or Buzz tab, it displays the various comments and media that have been shared as a list. As the Buzz develops, that list gets updated and edited, but you only ever have one copy of an individual Buzz in your inbox.

Similarly, in Wave you only ever see one copy of an active wave, making it easier to track changes to a document or conversation. But new e-mail messages pile on top of one another, and it doesn't take long before you end up with these massive conversation strings that are constantly being replicated every time you hit the reply button.

So my guess, as well as the guess of others, is that once you're comfortable with Buzz, you might be more willing to use Wave for collaborative online projects. But the trick will be to get you to buy into using Google Buzz, and that may be a tough sell if you're already used to sharing items with your existing networks on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

Have you tried Google Buzz yet? What's your take?

If Google Buzz hasn't shown up in your inbox yet, PCWorld has a workaround that lets you try out Buzz right now on your desktop or smartphone.

Labels: Google Buzz

It's easy to see why Google built Buzz. Google wants to compete with Twitter and Facebook. What's difficult to figure out is why people will want to use Google Buzz, when they can already use Twitter, Facebook, and a variety of other services to do the same thing. I hate to be a buzzkill, but I think Google Buzz will join the heap of failed Google services.

Google launched Buzz Tuesday as an add-on for Gmail. It's designed to allow users to share photos, videos, links, and status updates with their friends, as well as discuss shared content. It's very similar to the News Feed in Facebook in that regard. It's also similar to FriendFeed, a social sharing service acquired by Facebook last year with a small, but devoted following.

And that's Google Buzz's problem right there. It's similar to too many services already on the market. Google Buzz looks like a "me-too" product. I don't think Google Buzz will get much buzz.

People already have a plethora of ways to share content with their friends: Facebook and Twitter are two popular choices. Blogging is another. E-mailing text and images to friends is still very popular. I'm not seeing how Buzz will add to those choices.

One of Buzz's major weapons is that it's integrated with Gmail. So you don't have to manually find your friends on Buzz; Buzz knows who you e-mail the most, and automatically adds those people to your friends list. However, that only works if you're already using Gmail as your primary mail interface. Gmail has 176 million users, according to the Associated Press, but how many of those are using Gmail as their primary e-mail? Moreover, Facebook has more than double Gmail's installed base, with 400 million users, according to a post on Silicon Valley Insider (headline: "The Truth About Google Buzz: It's Late, Boring, And Lame" -- ouch!). I bet every Gmail users has a Facebook account, and the ones most likely to use Buzz are already using Facebook. Why would they switch?

Moreover, Gmail integration could prove to be a liability. Gmail is usually used for personal mail, but people often use their personal e-mail to communicate with co-workers. Some content is OK to share with friends and family, but not co-workers. Likewise, work-related content might simply bore your friends and family. Like the Ghostbusters said: Don't cross the streams.

Google has a lousy record convincing people to use its social media products. Most famously, Orkut failed to take off outside of Brazil, and Google's other social media efforts also crashed in the marketplace: Dodgeball, Jaiku, and OpenSocial, to name three. Sadly, Buzz is likely to be more of the same.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried Google Buzz, or even seen a lengthy demo, although I've read a lot about it and watched the two-minute demo video on the Google Buzz home page. My track record for predicting social media success is mixed. On the plus side: I was an early adopter of Twitter, where I'm @MitchWagner. I was moderately early into Facebook. I was extremely early into blogs; I was reading them avidly back when you could read all of them every day.

On the other hand, I also have a track record of embracing social media that fail in the marketplace. I was an early and enthusiastic FriendFeed user for a while. I thought RSS was going to be huge. I'm still a devoted user of Google Reader. And I'm also still a devoted user of Second Life. So I'm not always right when predicting the success of social media.

YouTube today introduced a new content filter that helps users screen out offensive content, such as news videos with graphic violence, or sexually suggestive clips that don't exceed the service's Community Guidelines. The optional filter, named Safety Mode, also hides all text comments by default.

Google's YouTube has long banned family-unfriendly content, including pornography and videos that show gratuitous violence, animal abuse, underage drinking, and the like. But Safety Mode adds another layer of protection to keep kids and sensitive adults away from more provocative material.

"An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains graphic violence such as a political protest or war coverage," writes Associate Product Manager Jamie Davidson on The Official YouTube Blog.

The setting is being rolled out Tuesday. To opt in, you scroll to the bottom of any YouTube page and click "Safety Mode is off" on the bottom left. Click "On" and "Save" to activate the filter.

Labels: youtube

Labels: Google Broadband

Labels: IBM

Employees at Facebook last night were celebrating the company's anniversary, passing the 400 million user mark and the launch of yet another home page makeover.

The redesign is the latest of several home page changes launched by the company in recent years -- many times to the consernation of its users. The latest makeover, according to Jing Chen, a Facebook engineer, is focused improving navigation to the many features on the site.

"We think sharing information about the applications you use enriches the shared experience between you and your friends," said Chen in a Facebook blog post . "We hope the simplified design of the home page will make it easy for you to stay connected with the people, applications and activities that matter the most to you."

For example, the updated home page provides alerts about messages, notifications and requests. And the menu on the left-hand side of the page has added links to messages, events, photos and applications. If you click on "friends", a list of friend suggestions pops up, along with friend search options. Click on "applications" and you can see what Facebook apps your friends have been using.

Comments about the redesign posted beneath Chen's blog entry show that many users aren't so happy with the changes.

"New look is AWFUL!!!!! Please change back to old look and leave it alone," wrote one user. "Once more Facebook makes changes that don't work without doing proper testing," posted another.

While most of the comments on the site were negative, some users were happy about the changes. Wrote one user: "I love the new home page! It's great and I love the ease of access for the inbox etc."

With this makeover, Facebook also is trying to deal with complaints uttered after the last redesign about about privacy controls. Some Facebook users had complained loudly last fall that the redesign made it harder for them to maintain their own privacy settings.

The latest redesign looks to rectify that issue, Chen said.

"We feel strongly that control is an important element of any information sharing on Facebook," wrote Chen. "That's why these features are launching with an entirely new privacy setting. If you would rather not have your recent application activity visible in the dashboards to your friends, you can change this through your Privacy settings. We're also working on a more granular set of controls for specific applications, so that you can turn off activity for certain applications while leaving it on for others. We'll have more information to share on this soon."

Originally Posted in pcworld.com

Labels: Software

Microsoft today issued a security advisory to acknowledge an information disclosure hole in its Internet Explorer browser and warned that an attacker could exploit the flaw to access files with an already known filename and location.

The vulnerability was first discussed at this week’s Black Hat DC conference by Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina, a security consultant with Core Security Technologies. Microsoft says the risk is highest for IE users running Windows XP or who have disabled the browser’s Protected Mode feature.

Medina’s presentation demonstrated how an attacker can read every file of an IE user’s filesystem. The attack scenario leveraged different design features of Internet Explorer that can be combined to do serious damage.

Here’s more on Medina’s talk from DarkReading’s Kelly Jackson-Higgins:

[Medina] says popular features in IE, such as URL Security Zones and the browser’s file-sharing protocol, can together be abused to execute an attack that results in the attacker being able to read all files on the victim’s machine. Medina plans to release proof-of-concept code for the attack next month after Black Hat DC, and after Microsoft issues a security update for the attack, which affects IE versions 6 and above, he says.

“These vulnerabilities are just features … the implementation of the features allow you to obtain certain information, which by itself is harmless. But when combined together with other features, it renders an attack vector,” Medina says. The attack requires the user to click on a malicious link.

According to Microsoft’s advisory, IE’s Protected Mode prevents exploitation of this vulnerability and is running by default for versions of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008.

The problem does affect every version of the browser but is considered most serious on Windows XP.

The vulnerability exists due to content being forced to render incorrectly from local files in such a way that information can be exposed to malicious websites.

Labels: IE