Sunday, August 29, 2010

Finally TechCrunch "Gets" Disqus

Image representing IntenseDebate as depicted i...Image via CrunchBaseI just noticed that now TechCrunch has Disqus served up in its comments sections. At first it had the in house thing. Then they had IntenseDebate, then they went back to the in-house thing, and now finally they got Disqus. This "outsourcing" is a smart move. Now I am much more likely to read more TechCrunch articles and to comment on them and to share my comments over Twitter.

Mashable has always had Disqus. My blog has Disqus.

Smart move, TechCrunch. Let us all welcome the latecomer.

On Disqus And Disqussions
Content, Microcontent, Blogging, Microblogging
Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social


Google has heard my prayers. Recently I blogged saying Google does not need social envy, what it needs is a really good blog search engine, and super Twitter results. (A Ridiculously Good Blog Search Engine, Google Does Not Need Social Envy) And Google has delivered. It is work in progress, but it is a good start.

I love Google the way some people love Apple. Google gives me goose bumps. Google gives me that you ain't seen nothing yet feeling.
Official Google Blog: Google Realtime Search: A New Home With New Tools: giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools ...... www.google.com/realtime .... you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. ..... we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance.


Google has done what I asked Twitter to do: to offer tweets as conversations, threads like in Gmail. (Towards Threaded Conversations On Twitter)
Blogger Buzz: Improvements To Realtime Search: The blogosphere is a dynamic environment that changes almost as quickly as the world that we live in..... richer and fresher results than ever before.... search live updates, recently-published blog posts, and news from around the web in brand new ways. Now you can restrict your search to include just updates from a specific geographic region or just nearby you. You can also check out complete conversations from Twitter. You can also now set up custom alerts for Realtime updates to be sent directly to your inbox once a day or week, or as soon as they happen for instant blog post fodder.
Google still has a lot of work to do in terms of presenting results. You can't expect people to read every tweet. You want to give them the option to read thousands, perhaps millions of tweets at once. It is called visualization. Make it fun to dig through the Twitter archives. (Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once)
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Friday, August 27, 2010

Paying For Phone Calls Was Always Ridiculous

This is icon for social networking website. Th...Image via Wikipedia
David Pogue: New York Times: Google Shakes It Up Again With Free Phone Calls: Google .. shook up Web searching and advertising. It shook up free, Web-based e-mail services .... shook up the way companies go public. .... Calls to American and Canadian phone numbers are free ..... Calls to other countries are very cheap ...... If you have a free Google Voice account too, then you can get incoming calls, too. ..... it’s increasingly clear that one day, the Internet, not the outrageous cellphone companies, will connect our calls. The ultimate, of course, would be free calls from a phone, to a phone ...... even closer to the “free calls from a phone, to a phone” ideal. Now it’s free calls “from a computer, to a phone.” .... What if Google released an app like that for Android phones, or the iPhone? .... for the first time in history, make unlimited free phone-to-phone calls.... It would completely change the game .... the Internet-as-phone-company paradise that almost certainly awaits us.
Paying for phone calls was always ridiculous. And it still is. Now that we have computer to phone free calls, Google should go ahead and stop pretending, and I know it already has the technology. Get this ported to the smartphones, and we already have it.

The reason you should not call someone or not talk to them long is because you don't have time, not because you don't have money.

Google Voice Blog: Make And Receive Calls In Gmail

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