Before that Google threw its hat into the OS arena with Google Chrome OS. In my earlier post, I was not so impressed but others seem to be excited with it.

Now listen…. they want to pick a fight with Facebook and Twitter in the social networking business as well. Google is rumored to be set to release new features on Gmail allowing users to update their status for friends to see as part of a move that sees the search giant embrace social media initiatives popularised by other social networking sites (SNS).

The new service is reportedly similar to the status-bar tools seen on Facebook and Twitter, and will further incorporate photo and video sharing.

This new development – which is widely expected to be formally announced sometime this week – comes one week after Facebook marked its sixth birthday by revealing it has more than doubled its number of users in the last year to 400 million.

Google and Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, have recently looked to incorporate social-media services to make their offerings more relevant for users also active on SNS. In October, both Google and Bing announced they would adopt a Twitter function to reflect audiences’ growing interest and trust in social commentary. Microsoft was first to launch its Bing Twitter Search function and further connected with Facebook to offer search results on users’ updated statuses.

Further blurring the lines between search, portals and SNS, Friendster and Yahoo Southeast Asia last month also entered into a multi-year strategic partnership that lets mutual users more efficiently share information.

Now what?

Gmail certainly has a lot of users nowadays because of its simplicity to use. Many users have ditched Yahoo mail because of the clutter of news and other content that Yahoo tried to shove down the users throat. Will this move marked a grave mistake by Google?

As it is, Gmail is already pretty heavy to load with all the complex pageload. On days when the trust-worthy Streamyx typically hit bottleneck speed – one will have to switch to basic-view. Imagine, if status-update and more photo and video is added – can the users cope?

Whatever it is – welcome to the social networking bandwagon, Sir. May I introduce you to your fellow latecomer… Tan Sri Vincent Tan from Malaysia. Please get acquainted!

Update Wed 10 Feb 2010

Here it is! I checked my Gmail account this morning and there’s a new line ‘Buzz’ at the left menu column. Just under the Inbox link. Clicking on the link, it opens up a new Buzz page with a welcoming note that informed me that Gmail has conveniently made me follow 14 other people in my contact list – but for some reason none of them has a reciprocal follow on me. It also tells me that my post on Picasaweb photo services will be automatically posted into my Buzz.

If anyone is concerned about Facebook privacy… by comparison Google has even less care about my say who I want to follow or what I want to share with other people. If earlier, I was saying about how Yahoo shove unwanted content at its Yahoo! mail service… this time Google just shackle me down with forced connections. What if I’m a minor and some of those my contact list is shady characters? (contact list is, by default, automatically added based on your email sent put

)

The cheek and arrogance of them. In fact Google executives were reported at the Buzz launch to say that online social networking has become so widespread and disorganized that only Google, with its massive reach and immense computing power, can make sense of it all.

“It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem,” Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, said at the launch.

Yes… Gmail may have 176 million users. But not everyone is an active user and as I speak, a few people I checked who are inactive registered users, noted that the Buzz component isn’t in their page.

Related articles:

• Google Takes On Facebook, Twitter With ‘Buzz’ (wired.com)
• Microsoft, Yahoo Diss Google’s Buzz (wired.com)
• Facebook is the new threat to Google (guardian.co.uk)
• Google’s Bad Buzz: Microsoft, Yahoo Mock New Social Product (dailyfinance.com)
• Google flexes muscles against social networks (ubergizmo.com)

of US$110 million.

In the unlikely case that CHIP reader does not know, Friendster is a global social networking site with over 115 million registered user. That’s roughly 3 4 times the whole population of Malaysia…

Related articles

• Malaysian Firm Buys Friendster (wired.com)

Okay… yah… Friendster is yesterday’s news. It was big 4-6 years ago but has fallen down hard since the arrival of Facebook and Twitter. In fact, the service practically had its funeral in USA.. they say. Check out the graph below (from WSJ) and you can see how its market share in Asia-Pacific has dwindled from 8% in 2008 to 2.9% in 2009.

But hey… it’s been a long time that we have last heard a Malaysian IT company made a splash in the IT world. Since the slow fizzle of MSC’s glitter the last 5 years, IT has effectively been in a backburner in our economy. Yeah… the usual PR machine by MDeC and ministries still keep churning out grants, new initiatives etc. But let’s face it, we don’t feel it in our gut. The fire is no more there baby… where’s the passion?

Can Vincent Tan’s purchase flare the flame again? Let me see…. MOL (the online micro-payment company that’s the vehicle used in this deal) is not exactly the most exciting company around. What else does Vincent Tan has in his stable….
(affiliated with him – one way or another)

• McDonald – he brought this chain to Malaysia in the 80s. It’s doing good business though a way off from KFC that you can find almost any corner of the country
• Starbuck – another chain that he brought in. One of the market leaders for coffe bistro
• U-Mobile – hmmm…
• MiTV – bigger hmmmm…
• 7-eleven –
• Borders
• Krispy Kreme
• Wendy’s
• others…

Any of the above that inspires? In the IT world, 2 of them U-Mobile and MiTV stand out like two sore thumbs.

But hey.. you never know. I hope the fella managed to get a good CEO that have the juice to salvage Friendster from it’s Sad Fate. It’s a tough market for second stringers out there – so he’ll need someone that can overcome the odds much better than U-Mobile and MiTV. (Or even Thaksin’s purchase of Manc City)

In the spirit of Malaysia Boleh… good luck and hope everything will go well to this US-Malaysian marriage. Maybe all gamers should register for an account with Friendster (and get free MOL points in the process). Hehh… that’s not a bad idea ah. (c) Ash Report 2009

full the human centipede (first sequence) film high quality

love and other drugs ipod

For the FB and Tweet addicts, I wonder… did it feel like the world suddenly has no purpose? Tcshk.. so melodramatic.

Both Facebook and Twitter reported that they suffered waves of cyber attacks on their sites last week that caused their services to be disrupted. Apparently it was of the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack type and it was orchestrated in 2 waves. The first wave was a spam campaign consisting of e-mails with links back to posts by one of its users. The second and more destructive phase consisted of the denial-of-service attack, which attacked the sites’ servers by sending lots of junk requests to that users’ page.

Therein lies the crux of the issue. The attacks were not directed at these sites themselves but rather to one of their users. Apparently it is politically motivated and was targeted at a blogger who goes by “Cyxymu” — Cyrillic spelling of Sukhumi, a city in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia in Georgia. So someone somewhere who hated his (or her) guts attacked his online presence at several Web sites, including Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal. In other words these sites are just collateral damage in this political war.

• 48 Hrs.

For most of us, the damage was minimal – if any. These social networking sites are just casual indulgence. But what about organisations that have chosen to use these sites as crucial part of their business? The outages would have caused them losses – just like the losses incurred when our TNB suffered blackouts a few years back.

Surely many have asked, is it wise to put your business reliance on this fragile online facilities? Will it be safer to do business offline – face-to-face the old way? It is easy to agree with this logic. But this is the same argument faced when one decide whether to embrace new things. Like automation of factory against traditional way of doing things. Like computerising your documentation against pen-and-paper methods. Like travelling on air against using road or sea.

But it still is daunting to think that someone could just bomb you when you have done nothing wrong. The thing is – we live in Malaysia where many of these cyber terrorism and physical terrorism are just things that your read happenings elsewhere. It could not happen to me – you think. But a lot of hatred is being sowed – especially online. We might not be so safe anymore…

RoboCop video

Out There movie download

Born dvd

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day divx