The simple way to explain Google Buzz is that its a feed of what your doing online, initially its all Google Related sites which is an automatic feature. Whats surprising is how Google launched this so silently with no buzz, contrary to its name. But it can be really interesting connecting all people on your list and friends list together, and following the activity of more people. Its getting a bit jumbled with Google Reader as its automatically following more people, and sometimes keeps adding them back in so Buzz is being integrated across all Google Platforms.

To Modify what your sharing go to the Buzz Page under your inbox in Gmail, right there click on view connected site to change which sites will show on your Google Buzz as well as how they are shared. You can even add individual websites so the website activity shows up on your Google Buzz. What you do want to do is stop other people who don’t know the people on your list from viewing them, its as if you are showing the world your contacts, that is a bad automated feature from Google. These steps are provided by Lifehacker but here is the simple breakdown:

Go to your Google Profile: Then click the link labeled “Edit Profile” and on that page just follow the steps below.

UnCheck: “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me”

What I Dont like:

• Automatically shows who is following you and who you are following
• Your Google Chat conversations are put up for all to see as well as other data automatically
• It isn’t intuitive in how to unshare certain features
• Slightly intrudes in your privacy if you don’t know how to control it

What I like:

• It sort of pools all your activity into one window for friends to see, from Google Reader, Flickr, Twitter, Individual Websites
• Friends can comment on your activity and your details are kept within the Buzz page
• For once Google introduced a new item which integrates across all their platform
• You can really customize the details that are presented but all these details aren’t on one page

You can click on individual people to remove them from following you or you following them, and in the grey notes just under that button it will say they won’t know that you did it. Or you can it turn off Buzz completely, its all about how comfortable you are sharing this kind of information. Google is pushing into the realm of Facebook and other types of social networking but not just communication, its based on your content and what your doing, people can see and comment as well as you can comment on what there doing.

Overall I like it because its connecting friends on a different level and I’m enjoying it.

The Great

• Android 2.1 is more refined, works smoothly
• Amazing 3.7inch OLED Screen
• Powerful CPU, the Nexus One is a fast phone
• Excellent quality sound
• Fantastic 5.1 Megapixel Camera
• Interaction with all Google Services (Gmail, Latitude, Google Voice, Google Reader, Picasa, and others) is fantastic, its smooth and updates right away.

The Good

• Android Market Applications have built up over the past year and a bit, even though some need some more refining before hitting the market
• Very Good Quality Build
• Smooth design, and relatively thin, fits nicely in your hands but I keep hearing that it doesn’t take kindly to drops
• Decent phone signal

The Crap:

• Battery doesn’t even last the whole day, it makes it 75% through the day I use the phone a lot
• No Multitouch
• No Arabic Support, expecting it soon
• Speaker is ridiculously low and the ringer speaker is on the low side too, but you can hear the ringer clearly, I still have to get used to the new ringer
• Slow charging Battery

Overall

I think they have made great progress with all the Google Phones and I am enjoying using it. So much you can do with the data and configure this phone, this phone is for people who really like customizing how their phone works and how it presents the data to you. The interaction between all the programs with data being downloaded to the phone is very fast and smooth, I have 3G switched off and its still very smooth. The best part is surfing online with Flash working perfectly, it presents websites very well and smooth. All this information can be customized, the home screen can be customized, I like how much you can tweak it and move things around, the different widgets, and how easy it is to get to the settings page and tweak it.

Zain APN Settings:

Improvements:

• Picture Preview, you don’t have to download to see the pictures now
• Cleaned up text in your status and chat previews
• Cleans up groups as well

Link: Download BBM 5.0.0.55

Lots of people have had experience with Etisalat in one way or another, and Etisalat owns a large chunk of Du so its pretty much the same company but its pretty odd how their coverage is slightly different. Everyone knows that Etisalat is one of the most rigid networks to have, they aren’t cheap, they really work hard to block your content, and they aren’t the best service.

The funny is that as we were approaching Dubai my Blackberry started dinging, I thought it was off and we were still 7000 feet in the air. I look at the phone and I was receiving the bbms, emails, and smses. I look at the network provider and I was connected to Du, all the way until the plane landed.

Now this is what I face every time I’m in Dubai:

With Etisalat:

• I can make local and international phone calls with out an issue on a normal phone
• When I connect using my Blackberry, I can’t get any BB service or msgs but the phone works normally

With Du:

• With my normal phone I can make local calls but when I try to make international calls I always get Network Busy, calls don’t go through
• With the Blackberry all the services work and I can make local and international calls

No matter what I did this always seems to be the case with these networks. Same situation that I mentioned in Bahrain with Batelco & Zain.

• You can see details of the other person’s contact
• Enlarging the contact’s photo
• Associating BBM contacts with your phone book, the picture from BBM gets associated with your Phone book
• Groups are a great edition you can share pictures, lists, dates and conversations between the group and its very organizing unlike inviting people to conversations such as before. Also you can have the group symbol on your Blackberry Homepage so you won’t have to go into the BBM to see it.
• Barcode scanning makes it easier and unique to add people to your list, you always notice people looking for their BBM PIN no matter how many times you explain it to them.
• Backing up contacts remotely and locally.

Cons:

• The one major con that I think BBM 5 has is when your trying to send images. It’s not as easy as before and you have to transfer a picture, it doesn’t compress it and sends a simple small picture as it did before. Takes time to transfer the image so the half the time it fails.

Vodafone Pay-As-You-Go service has always been very convenient because you can keep those lines for a very long time, but it seems my time is up. I have lost the number and it has gone back into the number rotation. Meaning that the life of my line has come to an end, and it has gone back to the Pay-As-You-Go lottery numbers and anyone can pick it up, and I have had this number for 5 years, since the summer of 2004 and after talking to a UK Vodafone agent I can’t seem to get it back.

When I spoke to them before they said as long as I have credit on the number that it can’t go back to rotation and last I checked was that I had 100 GBP (Pounds) on the card, but after talking to several representative for a while, it seems I didn’t really have an option of getting it back. He said that to keep a line alive I have to use the line once or top it up once every 3 months, and if it gets disconnected I have a total of 9 months to re-activate it and get the line back but I passed that mark making the assumption that I can’t lose it if I had credit on it from another representative. Having a UK line even when roaming Europe is a lot cheaper then using a Zain line on Roaming, something Zain’s charges are always higher and its convenient that your able to top it off using Vodafone cards from other countries using the Euro currency. Now it seems I either have to get another Pay-As-You-Go line or get a subscribers line, I will weigh my options when I’m at the Vodafone store. Just a thought popped into my head, I remember a long time back it was MTC/Vodafone so they can get the red from under Wataniya but I don’t know when the relationship went sour between them.

I have been a huge fan of netbooks but they do have their drawbacks, I picked up the HP 2133 but it had the Via chipset which was slow as hell but with the new Atom it worked better. There are a lot of drawbacks as well as advantages to the netbook phenomenom and one major point is they trade processor power for portability. This time around I think they struck middle ground with this HP unit, and I really liked the build and quality of the HP 2133. This time around it seems to have the same quality build with a lot of other extras that I am curious to try, it supposed to come out sometime in July and starting at $449 which isn’t bad. I’m assuming that will jump up with the SSD option, and most probably I will downgrade it to Windows XP SP3 instead of Vista because it would suck the life out of it and based on the screen details I’m assuming it can play HD movies without any real issue.

Specs that I am looking at:

• Intel Atom N280 (1.66 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
• Mobile Intel® 945GSE Express
• 2 GB 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• 128 GB Solid State Drive
• 10.1-inch diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare
• Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Integrated 2 MP Webcam
• Intel WIFI Link 802.11a/b/g draft-n;
• optional HP Mobile Broadband powered by Gobi;
• 6-cell (55 WHr) high capacity Lithium-Ion

Link: Gizmodo

I have been waiting for Windows 7 for some time now, planning on installing it on one of the test machines that I currently have laying around. I have always been one to opt for installing the higher versions of Winows XP or Vista, since they have a few features which aren’t available in the home variety. This time around Microsoft has taken it a step further, not only is Remote Desktop not available in Windows Home and Windows Home Premium, but you can’t Remote Desktop into a Windows 7 machine running Home or Home Premium, that I find to be a major disappointment.

• Windows Home (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Home Premium (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Professional
• Windows Ultimate

The HTC Hero has tickled my fancy, I’m not really a fan of HTC but I’m curious to try it out, especially with this being the third iteration with a lot cleaned up.

They have worked on integrating, Twitter, Facebook, and Flicker seamlessly into the one. The only one that really interests me is Flickr but a lot of people would enjoy the other application. And this time around they have Adobe Flash support for the phone. And now that the Android Market has had time to develop it won’t be an issue to find some applications that will suit my needs.

• 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen
• 5-megapixel cam with autofocus
• GPS
• 3.5-mm headphone jack
• 512MB of onboard memory with microSD expansion
• Flash support

Link: Coolhunting

At last they have come to launch the Blackberry Service, as of today Wataniya has launched the new Blackberry Service with the pricing plan below. Looks like their tis going to be competition for the Blackberry Subscribers, and our brethren in the Wataniya camp can at last communicate with us through BBM. Now I wonder how many people will be switching over to the BB service who already have Wataniya.

It seems you can easily switch between the plans, you don’t have to stick to one or the other.

Pricing Plan:

• Basic: 9 KD with 1 fils per KD
• Unlimited: 13 KD 10 GB Free
• Unlimited +: 25 KD 10 GB Free & 10 MB Free Roaming
• Update:Prepaid Blackberry Service Available