Google Buzz

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-13T19:45:51Z

Q: How do I automatically publish my Buzz to Twitter?

A: There are several approaches to this, but one way that seems particularly effective is to use Feedburner to post a short summary of your Buzz updates to Twitter.

Getting started takes a couple of steps, but it is actually pretty easy.

1) Visit http://profiles.google.com/me, which will redirect to your profile
2) Copy ⌘C your profile URL (e.g. "http://www.google.com/profiles/dclinton")
3) Visit http://feedburner.google.com/ and sign in with your Gmail account
4) Paste ⌘P your profile URL under Burn a feed right this instant
5) Click next and then click Skip directly to feed management
6) Click the Publicize tab on the top
7) Click the Socialize tab on the left
8) Click Add a Twitter Account
9) Sign in to Twitter and click Allow to allow Feedburner to post
10) Change Post Content to "Body Only" (important!)
11) Click Activate

Now, when you post your next Buzz it will appear automatically in your Twitter stream.

If everything worked, you should be able to see this buzz message at http://twitter.com/dewitt.

Hope this helps! Please add your feedback in the comments below.

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-13T17:48:02Z

Q: How do I send feedback or ask questions about Google Buzz?

A: For feedback about Buzz inside Gmail we have a feedback form [1] and public forum [2], both of which we're following very closely.

For developer-related issues, like parsing Buzz feeds or adding new sites, we have a public issue tracker [3] that the developer team actively uses. For more detailed questions, please join us on the google-buzz-api mailing list [4].

Also see our frequently asked questions and answers about user control features [5] and the overview page for Buzz help topics [6].

Thanks to @Bryan Field-Elliot for asking!

[1] http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=buzz
[2] http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/label?lid=3a63236689cf8dbd&hl=en
[3] http://code.google.com/p/google-buzz-api/issues/list
[4] http://groups.google.com/group/google-buzz-api
[5] http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175004
[6] http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=27291

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-13T02:07:37Z

Huge congrats to @Monica Keller in her new role as Open Source and Web Standards Program Manager at Facebook. Thank you, Monica, for all your hard work on Activity Streams and for helping lead MySpace's considerable efforts on the open web. We're all looking forward to more of the same at Facebook!

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-13T00:10:55Z

Stephen Mack on 14 things that can be improved about Google Buzz.

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Google Reader

2010-02-12T22:52:14Z

"Own your content on the web with WebFinger Now that all Gmail users have WebFinger enabled, its time for some real talk about why it's useful." -Brett Slatkin gets down to business and talks decentralized, user-controlled solutions to formerly centralized problems.

Buzz by Brett Slatkin from One Big Fluke - www.google.com

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-12T21:51:03Z

This is a test post on how to add Buzz feeds to FriendFeed.

1) Visit http://profiles.google.com/me
2) Copy the new URL (e.g., "http://www.google.com/profiles/dclinton")
3) Visit http://friendfeed.com/settings/services/feed?importcomment=1
4) Paste your Google profile URL (e.g., "http://www.google.com/profiles/dclinton")
5) Click "Import Custom RSS/Atom"

Enjoy? (Fingers crossed.)

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-12T19:39:52Z

You all like Buzz so much I had to take a vacation day today just to respond to everyone.

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-11T15:21:04Z

The best way to get a sense of where the Buzz API is heading is to take a look at http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/. You'll notice that the "coming soon" section mentions a ton of protocols—Activity Streams, Atom, AtomPub, MediaRSS, WebFinger, PubSubHubbub, Salmon, OAuth, XFN, etc.

What it doesn't talk much about is Google. That's because the goal isn't Google specific at all. The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle. The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.

Obviously, we can't get there alone. So we've started with open specifications—specifications like Atom, Activity Streams, and MediaRSS—and we're going to finish the remainder of this work in public [1]. Ultimately, we're just building on the strong foundation the web has already provided, and I have high hopes that this path leads to someplace amazing [2].

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-buzz-api
[2] http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-buzz-and-social-web.html

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-11T15:18:08Z

Some people were asking why Buzz didn't clone the Twitter API. The honest answer is, I'm not sure we could have. There's an ongoing thread on the Twitter developer list about API licensing [1], and it isn't clear yet whether other services are allowed to implement it. Right now the question is still open, though I believe Ryan when he says they're still looking into it.

A longer answer involves where we're hoping to go with the APIs, but I'll save that for another post.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/9f90046f6469fb7b

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-11T14:25:50Z

Following up on yesterday's Buzz about getting Buzz and FriendFeed to interop better:

First, I'm just glad to be able to have this conversation out in the open, in case other people have ideas. We're discussing what constitutes a distributed update message and how we should represent them over protocols like Atom.

Right now, if I post an update on Buzz that reads, "This is a test", the Buzz updates feed will contain a structure like [1]:

- title: Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Google Maps for Mobile
- content: This is a test

If I post the same message on FriendFeed, the feed will contain a structure like [2]:

- title: This is a test
- content: [an HTML block containing the rendered version of the whole thread]

Neither is right or wrong, but there's an obvious impedance mismatch that we need to sort out. I hoping to figure out a generic solution, so messages can flow over any two systems better.

Poking around a bit with other systems, I see that Twitter would have [3]:

- title: dewitt: This is a test
- content: dewitt: This is a test

And Cliqset would have [4]:

- title: dewitt posted a note on Cliqset
- summary: This is a test

Jaiku would have [5]:

- title: This is a test
- content: [an HTML block containing the rendered version of the whole thread]

I don't think Facebook publishes public Atom or RSS feeds for individuals, but taking look a my private friends notification feed (sorry, can't link that here), it contains:

- title: DeWitt Clinton This is a test
- content: This is a test

Live.com's update feed contains [6]:

- title: DeWitt posted a note on DeWitt's profile
- summary: [A HTML block that says DeWitt posted a note on DeWitt's profile]
- content: This is a test

So basically, people all over the map with this. Any other examples to look at that people like?

We'd be happy to change or modify what the Buzz update feed contains. In particular, I think we'll add a summary element that contains only the first paragraph or so of text, so readers that don't want to display the full post can have something shorter to display.

I'll start a wiki page with all of this information.

[1] http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/dclinton/public/posted
[2] http://friendfeed.com/dewitt?format=atom
[3] http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/dewitt.atom
[4] http://cliqset.com/feed/atom?uid=dewitt
[5] http://dewitt.jaiku.com/atom
[6] http://sup.live.com/whatsnew/rafeed.aspx?cid=B9C7FE55AEB3711F

CC @Benjamin Golub

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-10T15:59:36Z

@Benjamin Golub and I are figuring out the details of how to improve the FriendFeed/Buzz flow (which is suboptimal now) over on the new Buzz developer issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/google-buzz-api/issues/detail?id=2

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-11T04:38:23Z

"Notifies you of new messages and gives you quick access to calling and free SMS via Google Voice" -Google Voice extension for Chrome.

Seriously wonderful. I just checked my voicemail via the text transcription and replied via SMS with a popup window in the browser without even leaving the page I was on.

Best phone experience I never had.

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-11T07:09:43Z

I've been using the "Note in Reader" bookmarklet to post items to Buzz.

Follow the link to get your own.

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Google Reader

2010-02-10T21:54:12Z

"I flipped the switch to connect the Google Talk Service to the public XMPP network this morning. Google Talk users can now chat with users on other XMPP services and vice versa." -Gary Burd, Software Engineer, Google - January 17, 2006

Google Talkabout: XMPP Federation - googletalk.blogspot.com

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Google Reader

2010-02-09T21:32:44Z

Buzz, as defined by wikipedia. Shared using the Google Reader "note in reader" bookmarklet. Watching how fast this random page appears in Google Buzz.

Buzz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - en.wikipedia.org

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Google Reader

2010-02-09T21:29:31Z

Google Buzz and the Social Web - Social Web Blog

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-09T20:35:40Z

I could hug Marshall right now. But I swear, I didn't talk to him beforehand. : )

My response is an emphatic yes — that's exactly what's happening. The Buzz API is really the "let's get all of these successful open standards that you're already using to work together and do something awesome" API. And we're doing this work out in the open, at the IETF, at OASIS, on public mailing lists, etc.

Please see http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-buzz-and-social-web.html for more background on why we're doing it this way, and please join the group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-buzz-api to participate.

Also, we make a big point of not having conversations about protocol design at our desks, even to the point of going to the extreme. We often check ourselves and say, "that should be on the public list," and we stop the discussion and move it over there instead. While I'm glad to be able to work side-by-side with this team, we realize that not everyone works at the same place or in the same office (or in the same country!) and we'll do everything we can to keep this work out in the open and done transparently.

See you on the list!

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-09T19:06:19Z

Buzz APIs on Google Code. Welcome!

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-09T18:25:03Z

Grinning ear to ear right now. Go, Todd!

Buzz by DeWitt Clinton from Buzz

2010-02-09T19:09:25Z

And we're live!