The social networking scene is all a twitter about Google Buzz. It’s introduction has been a class #fail…it was forced on users with much automation turned on – automatic following, automatic public exposure of followers list, annoying buzz messages appearing in your gmail inbox…

There’s a few things I really like about Buzz. Unlike Facebook, which aims to be a one stop shopping for your status updates, messages, photos, etc., Buzz seems to integrate better with other services, including non-Google ones. I particularly like the Google Reader integration, which makes it easy to share links with followers.

Despite steps to correct privacy faux pas, Google’s Buzz introduction is still somewhat of a mess. It’s hard to find settings (why isn’t there a Buzz settings link when you have it loaded…or at least a Buzz tab in Gmail settings). The Google Profile is hard to find (click on the More link at the top of the page…do you see Profile listed?) and generally a visual disaster.

In my small circle of Buzzers, the level of activity has dropped to a trickle.

I still think that Buzz has a place in this world, but Google needs to really improve the interface to access their various modules…true integration could make this a much more powerful platform.

Apple’s scheduled to make some announcements later this month (most rumors have zeroed in on the 27th), and there is much excitement around the potential release of a new tablet platform (the “iSlate”). However, there’s also expected to be an announcement of a new version of the iPhone OS (4.0). Apple’s facing increasing pressure from Google and their Android platform and need to step up their game to stay ahead. As usual, no one really knows what they have planned, but there are some clues. I think Apple is going to try to cut in to Google’s game in a big way. Here’s the evidence:

Anyone who has used Google Maps knows that it’s not perfect and can sometimes be frustratingly wrong, particularly when searching for business. Apple purchased a map company called Placebase back in July. Expect to see a new version of the maps application NOT driven by Google maps. Location-based advertising is a huge market, and Apple is not going let themselves become a feeder for Google’s business.

Apple also recently purchased Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company – I’m sure also not a coincidence. Apple currently offers developers two options for app development: sell the app for a price via the app store, and Apple will give you 70% of the profit, or sell it for free and neither the developer nor Apple makes any money. Here’s a new potential option: include some code in your app and Apple will take care of an ad-based model, sell your app for free in the app store, and you split the profits with Apple.

This model could also work (and, indeed, may work better) for the tablet, where screen real estate will be more plentiful.

What about search, Google’s core service? What if Apple’s tablet offered a search restricted to the most useful sources: news outlets and magazines that also happened to deliver their material via Apple’s new platform? That would be a strong incentive to participate.

As you may have heard, Google had a big press conference today to launch what has become known as “the Google phone” – a.k.a. the Nexus One.

During the McCain/Obama debates, there was some discussion of the difference between a tactic and a strategy. If Google has a strategy behind their latest tactic, I don’t get it.

It’s not clear what exactly the Nexus One is supposed to be. Google’s model with Android platform has been to develop the software and give it away for free to handset makers, who use it to make devices like the popular Motorola Droid. Business model? Not clear, but one idea is that it drives use of Google’s services, which can in turn drive profit through add revenue.

Well maybe that wasn’t enough, because now they’re selling the Nexus One directly to customers. But didn’t they say they weren’t going to make their own phone? Wouldn’t this anger other Android makers like Motorola?

Google is quick to say that the handset itself is made by HTC. So what exactly is the special role Google is taking here? They had a big press conference today focused on its launch…will they do they same for other companies each time a new Android handset is launched? That’s a rhetorical question – they haven’t and the won’t.

It makes the whole point of today’s press conference, and Google’s overall Android strategy, all the more confusing. My take: they are making this up as they go along, and there’s no adult supervision driving the ship here.

One of major weaknesses of Google Wave is that you need to specifically check the site to see if any of your waves have been updated. Google Chrome extensions are available, but don’t yet work on the Mac (besides, as we’ve already established, Google Chrome is slower than Safari on the Mac).

A better solution may be the Unofficial Google Wave Notifier for the Mac. It’s a free download and, in my 2 minutes of use, seems to work pretty well. It basically sticks a little Wave icon in your menu bar and displays the number of unread messages. If you click on the menu, there’s a link to go to Google Wave, as well as a list of the Waves with unread messages.

I still find Wave a bit clunky for most uses, but this is a step in the right direction.

There’s a lot of buzz about the new Google Chrome beta, which is now available on the Mac. I had an earlier version on my machine, but decided to upgrade to see if the beta was up to snuff.

Overall, I like the tab-oriented design, which requires some hackery to emulate in Safari. Lacking is 1Password support, which essentially rules it out as a primary browser for me. The main advantage, as cited by some of my Windows-using colleagues, is speed. While tests seem to show that Chrome is quite a bit faster than most other browsers in Windows, I can’t say the same of the Mac, at least my machine running the latest Safari on Snow Leopard.

Subjectively, I can’t see much of a speed difference between the two browsers – if anything, Safari seems a hair faster. This benchmark seems to substantiate these results. I’m getting a score of 527 in Safari, but only 489 in Chrome. In comparison, Firefox 3.5.5 gives me a pathetic 149.

Chrome also lacks one of my favorite features of Safari: speed dialing (which lets you load the bookmarks on your favorites bar by typing command-#, where # is any of the number keys). It’s always nice to have another browser in the mix, though – competition is good to keep things moving.

Google Fax.

Google Voice is more useful in theory than it is in practice for me. If I had multiple phones to manage, it would be great to have one number that could ring them all, and a centralized voicemail system to unify them. While voicemail transcription is marginally useful, I don’t really get all that many voicemails, and hearing the original audio via visual voicemail is already pretty convenient. The fact is that most of my calls go to my cell anyway, so routing them through Google Voice first is not of much utility.

On the other hand, faxing seems like it should have been replaced with something better (like, perhaps, email?!?), but is still widely used despite its relatively archaic technologic foundations. Most people don’t have a fax machine of their own at home (or, increasingly, even a phone line). This requires resorting to paying someone to use their fax machine or slumming off of the work fax machine, which is clearly a suboptimal solution (even if it’s generally accepted or at least overlooked).

What would be better is an online service which could route documents to those who still rely on fax machines. Even better, this service could provide a virtual phone number (much like Google Voice does) that could receive faxes and email them to you as PDFs. Services like eFax have the right idea, but are not free and, at least the last time I tried, require a special viewer app. This is the kind of problem that Google could solve. Well, Google, are you up for it?

It looks like the New York Times has a new interface option: Times Skimmer. It’s a nice layout. I’m withholding full judgement until I get a chance to give it a full trial, but so far I think I like it better than the standard layout. NYTimes is generally my preferred news source, but I’ve never found their newspaper-style layout to work that well on the web. This seems like a step in the right direction, at least at first blush.

One thought that struck me was that it looks like it’s designed for a tablet style interface. Maybe the rumored Apple tablet? It wouldn’t surprise me if the New York Times was one of the first partners.

Speedtest.net is a nice way to make you feel less guilty about spending too much money on Verizon FiOS test the speed of your internet connection. I decided to test things out on my Mac Pro. I tested out two different setups:

As you can see, the second test was significantly faster. What’s the difference between the two?

The first test was run via my Apple Time Capsule, an 802.11n-based wireless base station. Not only was it running 802.11n, the fastest current WiFi standard, but it was running in dual-band, 5 Ghz mode.

The second test was run using the stock Actiontec 802.11g router that Verizon supplied.

The two routers are connected via ethernet and are only inches away from each other. While the Actiontec is one hop closer to the external network, it really shouldn’t make that much of a difference. The 802.11n router should be faster or, at worst, the same speed as the g router (if the external connection is the limiting factor). The best I can do to explain the fact that I’m seeing an 802.11n router perform worse than an 802.11g router is that the antenna in the Actiontec (which is external) is better than that on the Time Capsule.

I adjusted the Multicast Rate on the Time Capsule to the maximum, which in theory shouldn’t really affect the speed, but it did seem to make a difference.

However, the speed was still a bit worse than the g router.

More detective work to follow…

If you’ve recently updated to Snow Leopard, you may want to check that you’re running the most recent version of Adobe’s Flash plugin. As Apple’s installation doesn’t include the latest version, you should probably just hit this link to get the newest version, which includes some security fixes. Some have commented that this is a failure on Apple’s part, but I think the problem here is that Flash does not seem to have any sort of auto-update feature. As much as I detest Adobe’s slow and clunky updater, I think it’s use here would have been appropriate.

In the process of moving, I’ve also finally had the opportunity to switch to Verizon FIOS from Comcast. The speed increase is dramatic, and I’m currently seeing rates of 25 Mbps down and up to 20 Mbps up…an order of magnitude better than with Comcast.

Since my Comcast service terminated prior to my billing cycle being over, I ended up with a credit on my account. After receiving the first bill, I figured Comcast would either send me a check or credit the card they have on file. When I received a negative bill for the second time, I called them up to see what was going on. The rep told me that they were “waiting for me to return the modem” which is funny since I’ve owned my own modem for years, since Comcast was not charging me for a modem over the past 5 years, and since someone had already come to my place to collect all the equipment.

It’s been forwarded to their “research” department.

I’m feeling even happier about the switch.

Update: Comcast called me, apologized, and they say they are working on fixing the problem. I’ll update the post when I’ve confirmed they’re refunded the balance.

Update 2: Comcast made the rebate. Not bad.