As a company, Google never ceases to amaze me in terms of their constant innovation and tinkering in order to ensure the end user has a satisfying experience. I was having a look at changes they’ve made recently and have been playing around with a few of their applications to see the difference. Here are some of them, in no particular order…

Bringing improved PDF support to Google Chrome

Introducing the Google Command Line Tool

5 things you may not know you can do with attachments in Gmail

View .doc attachments right in your browser

An update on the AdSense Product Ideas page

Folder and tag renaming

Gooooaaal!

Tips & Tricks: Advanced Sorting Rules in Google spreadsheets

Optical character recognition (OCR) in Google Docs

The new Google Docs graduates

Tips & Tricks: Table of Contents in Google documents

Sharing in Google Docs just got easier

Do check ‘em out and have fun!

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Pretty catchy title, huh? Kinda like the ‘Death By Chocolate’ one gets to drink at Pepinos…

But no, this one is different, deadly serious and a path breaker for sure. We are all living in a highly connected and networked world now where having a social profile somewhere is the norm, with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter being the most common ones to communicate thoughts or ’status updates’.

Mark Shurtleff, Attorney General for the US state of Utah, used Twitter to convey his go-ahead for the death sentence to Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer. Ronnie was executed by a firing squad, which seemed a rather archaic way to do so.

As expected, there were varying reactions, to executing someone like this or even announcing it in such a manner. Whatever one may say, using social media to communicate – whether official or personal, is definitely here to stay with more and more government officials and corporates getting online, hopefully not for such morbid announcements though!

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WordPress 3.0 – Thelonious, the 13th major release of WordPress is out.

With 218 contributors, a lot of work has gone into it, with new APIs allowing for greater functionality and ease of use. One of the other big enhancements is the ability to merge WordPress and WordPress MU, the Multi User edition, making it possible to run multiple blogs from the same installation in a far more easier manner. Check out the tour video;  

The new version promises much, though like with any major version, I prefer to wait a few days before jumping in to upgrade, and so it shall be in this case too. You can download WordPress 3.0 and see for yourself.

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This past weekend was quite a fun filled and exciting one (offline) and as usual, trust Google to come up with something to stir up a frenzy online. Yes, if you were among the millions of people who use Google, you could not have missed seeing the Pac-Man logo, commemorating the game’s 30th anniversary.

Initially I thought it was among the regular logos that Google regularly puts out from time to time, but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that this ‘logo’ was actually a playable, full fledged 255 level game! All one had to do was to hit ‘Insert Coin’ and you were on your way.

Have to admit this was quite addictive and I ended up playing till the 3rd level, when it got kinda boring. All in all, it was fun to rediscover this game and spend time navigating through the maze. (and memory lane )

Google kept this on their homepage for a full 48 hours and just when one was wondering about usage statistics, RescueTime, (a Seattle-based company which offers Web-based time management and analytics tool for knowledge workers and their managers) came out with some numbers, putting the cost of Google’s Pac-Man at 4.82 million hours!

Quite something, huh…

Oh and by the way, I haven’t been regular on the blog for some time now (again!).. It’s been a combination of factors really.. what with a bad internet connection (thank you BSNL), writer’s block or just sheer laziness. Amidst all this, the blog’s RSS numbers haven’t declined and a big thanks to all you readers for keeping the faith.

Hopefully, all laziness issues have been set to rest now and you guys can look forward to my posts invading your inbox / rss readers again.

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If you’re a heavy LinkedIn user and have wanted an easier way to share stuff with your connections, things just got more convenient for you.

Check out this video which shows you how…

There are over half a dozen other small changes which should make your LinkedIn sharing experience better, and you can check them over at the LinkedIn blog.

Happy Sharing!

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Sounds surprising, right?

If you are among those users who started off with Orkut and then moved to Facebook over the past 2-3 years, this might be difficult to believe, considering all the problems and issues with some features in Orkut, not to mention the total lack of privacy.

However, statistics from leading internet traffic measurement firm comSCORE seem contrary to that belief. The report, which covered social networking activity in the Asia-Pacific region in February 2010, put Orkut ahead of Facebook with 46.8% of India’s internet users logging in to Google’s social networking site.

In countries like Singapore, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam, Facebook remains top dog. China was excluded from this study, and in some countries, other brands had maximum user engagement, like mixi.jp (Japan), CyWorld (South Korea) and wretch.cc (Taiwan).

In the report, the user base comprised of internet users over 15 yrs of age who accessed these sites from home and work. However, it excluded visits from cyber cafes and mobile phones. Here are the stats from the report:

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

According to the study, 50.8% of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, translating into ~ 240.3 million visitors during the month.

It is possible that excluding visitors from mobile phones and PDAs has also skewed the results to an extent, given the number of users who access such sites from their phones thanks to inbuilt Facebook apps.

Overall though, Orkut has a greater reach and first mover advantage, and it is also possible that some users get intimidated by Facebook so they would rather remain on Orkut. Secondly, it largely depends on ‘what’ one does on these sites. I know of people who are addicted to some FB applications like Farmville, Mafia Wars and others, and can spend most of their day being on FB. Orkut on the other hand, took time to have third-party apps integrated with it’s site, but once it did so, I’ve seen an equally large number of users use those apps.

There are also those users who use these sites purely to get back in touch with old buddies, classmates and the like, and are rarely in the ‘active users’ list, surfacing once a while to accept a friend request or respond to birthday wishes.

Personally, I used Orkut for a couple of years before lack of privacy features and too many ‘fraaand’ requests / scraps from unknown people started pissing me off. Facebook has been good so far, but the lack of control regarding some privacy related features is not to my liking, so I’m reducing my FB usage too.

Do you prefer Orkut or Facebook?

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In what seems like deja vu, only the existing 2G players have thrown their hat in the ring for the much delayed auction for all India 3G spectrum, which will *finally* begin next month, on April 9.

These nine players are 

• Aircel
• Bharti
• Etisalat
• Idea
• Reliance
• S Tel
• Tata Teleservices
• Vodafone
• Videocon

For auction of BWA – Broadband Wireless Spectrum, the DoT has got 11 applications of which four are new entrants – Augere, Tikona, Infotel and Qualcomm.

The reserve price for pan-India 3G spectrum and BWA is Rs.3,500 crore and Rs.1,750 crore respectively.

The government expects to rake in around Rs.40,00-Rs.45,000 crore, though in the absence of any global player, bidding is likely to be muted and conservative and not aggressive, so I think this is a bit of an ambitious target given that it is also not all that clear who will bid for how many circles.

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Ok, so after all that brouhaha over withdrawal of funds from Indian PayPal accounts, the matter seems to have been resolved for now. PayPal has complied with directives from the RBI on compliance issues regarding settlements for export of goods and services.

From now on, when you want to withdraw funds from your PayPal account, you need to fill in a new field called ‘Purpose Code’, as explained by Farhad Irani on the PayPal blog. This is intended to help the RBI determine the nature of cross border transactions and it is likely that you may need to provide copies of receipts and invoices as and when required.

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Came across this nice sheet at cmo.com that tries to give insights into which social media tools are the best in terms of offering bang for the buck, namely by way of Customer communication, Brand Exposure, getting traffic to your site and of course, SEO.

Of course, this is not a solution in itself, but a good starting point at least. How does your company determine marketing strategy in terms of which social media sites to use?

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Google seems to be waking up to the threat posed by Facebook and Twitter, where updates, conversations and sharing happens in real time.

Enter Google Buzz, the company’s latest product, now offered in an integrated form with its email application, which allows users to quickly share messages, links and photos with friends and colleagues from within Gmail itself.  Google also said they are launching a special mobile application for Buzz.

I was a bit surprised with their choice of name though, and they cannot have forgotten that Yahoo! had a similar product with an identical name some years ago which didn’t really make an impact.

With Google Buzz, each time you post, you can share stuff publicly or with a chosen group of friends, whether on Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter, and Buzz sends responses to your posts straight to your inbox, which can then be commented on in real time.

You can follow the specific people whose posts you want to see, but Buzz also recommends posts from people you’re not directly following, often ones where your friends are having a lively conversation in the comments. If you’re not interested in a particular recommendation, just click the “Not interested” link and your feedback will help improve the recommendations system. Here’s a short video explaining the buzz behind Buzz…

This feature is not yet made available to everyone, and Google says they will be doing that over the next few days. Frankly, I’m somewhat sceptical of this whole thing, and I don’t think Google has really cracked this problem related to their social networking presence, whether with Orkut a few years ago, then with Google Wave, or with Google Buzz now. Its like they kinda either keep missing the bus or always play catch up.. :p

I’ve yet to see Google Buzz enabled within my account and will post my reactions to it once I’ve used it. Stay tuned..

Update: Ok, I’ve got the Buzz, and at first glance, I’m not too fond of it. Seems quite chaotic, with the number of people I’m supposed to be following as well as those following me… no to mention the number of updates and replies to those updates. One big concern I have with this is privacy.. just how much of what and where I update stays within my closed group and what gets ‘buzzed’ around to all and sundry…

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