Google Earth View

Google has introduced a new feature called Earth View which helps us to see the 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. To view it,  all you have to do is, visit Google Maps and click the Earth Button which will prompt you to download the Google Earth Plugin, which is just a browser plugin. Once it is installed, you can visit all the corners of the world. You have options to  zoom in and out like the current Google Maps. You can also tilt the view by using Ctrl and left mouse button as you move the mouse around.

xAuth Makes Social Sharing Easy

Extended Authentication (XAuth) makes social sharing easier by automating the way users share the content on various social networks. XAuth was an initiative by Meebo. When you log in to social networks like Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Yahoo! and others, these services notify xAuth.org that you have an active session with the service. When you visit a website, which is xAuth enabled, XAuth will ping all the partipating social networks to see if your session is still active. If any of these services are being used, you can authenticate directly from the publisher’s website and share the content to your social network. It is similar to Facebook Connect, but it is meant for every social network.

Gmail attachments

GMail is getting more user friendly. Now it allows users to just drag and drop attachments to the composing window. This is one of the efficiency booster if you sent many emails within a period of time.

Presently this works only in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 3.6. So if you are using any of this browsers for composing your emails then just try drag and drop to the email body. When you start dragging the attachment, you will get a drop here area in the email compose window.

Drop your files in that area, as you can see above, and your attachments are attached to the email. This is as simple as editing the email in your desktop email client.

Do you like this feature?

Google Buzz Share and Follow Buttons

Google has launched its share button for Google Buzz. It helps you to share posts on Buzz.  To promote your Buzz account, there is also a “Follow on Buzz” button (similar to Follow on Twitter button) which helps people to follow you on Buzz from your sites. To add the Google Buzz buttons to your site, all you have to do is go to the page : http://www.google.com/buzz/stuff, check your preference and copy the javascript and paste it in the webpage, where you want the Buzz buttons to appear.  Buzz is definetely keeping up with the trends and are on a path to be the ultimate word in Social Networking. Do you think so too? Who are the tough competitors for Google Buzz? Let us know what you think. (more…)

10,000 Albums in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums have increased the number of Albums you can have, from 1000 to 10,000. It is aiming at being a prime place where you can keep all your digital photos. The free storage space remains the same of 1GB per user account but you can upgrade it at an reasonable rate.

Evan Tsang and Tammy McLeod, Software Engineers at Google said “We want Picasa Web Albums to be a place you can share and store all your digital photos, regardless of how many you have. We recently made extra storage really affordable, but until now, Picasa Web accounts have been limited to a maximum of 1,000 albums. We heard that you needed more room, and because we want you to keep sharing your photos and posting them to Buzz, we’ve worked hard to now raise this limit to 10,000 albums.”

The default view would only show a 100 albums. You can option to view more albums or all albums.

Double Check Privacy at Google Buzz

With all the privacy issues that Google Buzz had faced initially, it is once again trying to revamp the privacy concerns, giving the users the control over the privacy. Initially the Google Buzz users were automatically following the people whom they used to email and chat with most frequently. But now Buzz suggests people whom they could follow. (more…)

Best password managers for everyday use

Passwords are the first line defense in protecting the identity in the computing world. To ensure the protection of the online identity, it is important to protect the passwords of your online access. Be it your email account or your job site password, the protection of these passwords are very important.

The typical weaknesses of passwords are:

• Same password for multiple accounts and applications and mostly with same user name and occasionally the username is the email address
• These days the memory of people are becoming weak and people tend to forget passwords. As a workaround we write down passwords in small paper sheets/sticky  and stick around the computer location
• Another way of remembering passwords is by storing passwords in excel or other sheets in the computer itself without protecting it. (more…)

Facebook – Changing from ‘Become a Fan’ to ‘Like’

Facebook’s “Become a Fan” button is going to be replaced with “Like”. Facebook users click on “Like” twice as much as they click on “Become a Fan”. Facebook is a great means for marketing various businesses. A company can create a Facebook page, which can be used to promote their business to the millions of Facebook users and also connect with them.

Facebook says “Changing the button will make users more comfortable with linking up with a brand and will streamline the site”. Once this is done more users will “Like” a brand and hence there will be more fans for a brand.  Also this would encourage more brands to start having their Facebook pages.

“The idea of liking a brand is a much more natural action than [becoming a fan] of a brand,” said Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, a company that helps establish brands on social networks. There is always a tendency for us to mostly click the Like button if we like our Friend’s status, a photo, a video, a link and what not.  It does take sometime to Become a Fan. Don’t you think so ?

New Home Page for Twitter

Twitter has a new home page now. It is visible if you are not logged in to Twitter account. On top we can see the scrolling “Trending Topics”.  It has a “See who’s here” which lists the well known people or brands who are on Twitter. It also displays the “Top tweets”. The home page looks good and pretty lively now!

File Transfer for chats in IGoogle and Orkut

Google has enabled the File Transfer in the chats in iGoogle and Orkut to share files among your Google contacts. Till now this feature has been available only in the Google Talk Desktop client. To use this feature, all you have is do is click the “Send a File”, under the “Actions” menu in your chat client and upload the file that you need to share (Photo, Document or any other file).

“File transfer is available in orkut and iGoogle only for now. We’re working on bringing it to Gmail as well, and we’ll keep you posted when that happens!” says Lizhen Wang, software engineer at Google. Till recently a person using Google Talk Desktop version was unable to share a file with a person using the web-based version of Google Talk. But now that is also possible. With more and more changes being incorporated and the launch of Google Buzz, Google might be taking the upper hand for the time being!