DeWitt Clinton wants you to finger your gmail friends.  Webfinger that is.

They’ve published a service, much like the old finger protocol, for you to ping your friends. Webfinger is not yet as much funs as the older finger command.  It used to be you could post a message or bio or whatever in to your .project or .plan file.

Webfinger gives you something different:

WebFinger client screenshot

It’s basically your Google profile information. What I’d like to see is it to strip off and display your bio from the profile. Heck, why not even encourage Google to implement a .plan file setup?

I’d like you to do something, finger yourself -> Webfinger. Feel free to post your results in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you would like to see in this new tool as well.

An easy to understand video, demonstrating and describing Google’s Privacy Principles. Shows what type of data they might collect, how they’d use it, and how you can lock down the privacy of that data.

Cartoon action with voice over best describes this video. Younger audience members will be able to understand this as well.

Google Existence, because life is too short for social interaction.

How does it work?

Live happily ever after. People want to know what’s going on in your life. But all you really want is to play World of Warcraft. Xsistence is what you need!

Just add water. After you’ve initially seeded Xsistence with your social network logins and some information about yourself, it lives your life for you. Tweets about your daily commute, Facebook status updates and pictures from that great party you were at, and more!

Keep up with yourself. Xsistence sends you regular status updates about all the things you supposedly did so you know what questions to expect when you actually have to talk to people outside your guild.

Gee where can I sign up?

Found this gem via a great blog, PR Squared.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Google has finally ‘officially’ begun indexing Twitter. It’s about time.

As an avid Twitter user for years now, I’m glad to see this happen. Many things are now being shared only on Twitter. It’s a high speed, low bandwidth window on your world and the worlds of your neighbors. Everyday I see links and information shared on Twitter that will never make it to a blog or otherwise indexed page.

There is always a downside.  Now more than ever what you say anywhere will be attached to you. Thought you were lost in the crowd on Twitter? No more.  Google and other search engines will soon be making available that crude tweet you sent about your barber, ex, or that sleezy politician.

The upside? Those obscure links to your blog will now be counted. You’ll know be able to find tidbits about your favorite town or restaurant as well.  And for those addicted to p0rn, yes, it’ll get even easier.

Will this indexing ultimately change your life? Not likely. Just be aware that your stalker’s job just got easier.

@tojosan

3 Key Reasons Facebook Bought FriendFeed

Facebook buys Friendfeed, and Mashable takes a stab at three reasons it’s a great deal.

Facebook, one of the leaders in online social networking, today purchased Friendfeed.  The sum was undisclosed as well as the future of the Friendfeed staff. Why buy now?  It turns out that the desire has been there for some time.

Is it good for you? That remains to be seen.  Facebook is likely to become even more of an integration and central sharing tool.  Browser integrated sharing, already part of Facebook’s schema would seem an easy upgrade point and one the everyday user will use.

Another good possibility will be borrowing some of Frienfeed’s built in display of items instead of taking the user out of the Facebook interface.

In any case…

The full release from Facebook is below:

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Or how Scoble laments about his latest blog widget install.

Robert recently install the Google Friend Connect tool on his blog. It’s a widget I’ve installed some time back. I don’t recall struggling with it as much as he did. It’s because some of us still know the old tech side of things.

I don’t blame Robert for his struggles; I’m on his side. In this day and age, when blog plug-ins are near universally one-click installs, why does Google require FTP, copy/paste, and some other geekiness to get it’s Friend Connect in.

Of course, there are easy to use FTP tools these days, such as Cyberduck for Mac. The tools make it easy to do the FTP, but finding out the right place isn’t easy. Oh, the directory might be easy enough to determine, but how many of you know the FTP site for your blog host?

When you signed up, you likely received an email with the FTP information. If not, it’s going to be on the host site’s FAQ.

But back to the point, why is it that all plug-ins aren’t easier.  Some of them still require manipulating the actual script string or hardcoding things into the blog files.  This sort of change is just out of scope for the average blog user.  Folks like me are the exception I’ve found.

In the mean time, until Google and others catch up to today in tech, help out your friends by demonstrating the installs for them.  Go hands on if you can, but if not, give a hint or three in a blog post.

From Keith Burtis:

Skills for the Social Media Ninja – Part 1 (Monitoring): “Ninja skills
I am not listing these skills in any specific order and I am not classifying them for business or personal. However, I will say that as a person that makes his living in the social media space that it may trend towards the useful rather than the mundane. Also, there are many, many advanced paid tools that you can learn, but I will stick with a few that are available free.”

That’s the kick off for Keith’s take on the first Ninja skill for being a Social Media Ninja. Each post focusses on a specific skill and the tools to focus the skills on.

Keith mentions some tools most of us are familiar with such as Google Search and Google Blog Search. Important to me though was another tool, Social Mention. Social Mention is new to me.

Rounding up the best tools is only have the problem. Keith’s article addresses how to handle the data flow and how to use it. Though he only briefly touches on those topics.

Technorati Tags:
ninja, social media, social networking, Google, search

     So I’ve had the Blackberry Curve about a week now and the new toy feel has yet to wear off.  I purchased it as an upgrade to the Razr, by Motorola.  The driving factors included my carrier, and the application choices.

     The Blackberry Curve is one of the most popular types of smartphones on the market today.  Though the iPhone and others are giving it a run for the money, it continues to be a well respected choice.  Chief among the reasons are the full QWERTY keyboard,  great Internet access, and the wealth of applications. Among the other features I like on this phone are the 2 megapixel camera and the built in GPS.

     So what have I been using it for? Social networking of course.  You know I’m big into social networking. My top used applications are Twitterberry and Shozu.  A third runner up is the Facebook app.  Of course the beginning and root of social networking tools is the browser, and it’s also seen heavy use this past week.

     Twitterberry is one of the most popular Twitter clients for the Blackberry.  Twitterberry has a simple and functional interface that works well with the Blackberry.  When first launched, it presents a screen to update your status.  It keeps count of remaining characters as you type and has one button send when your done typing. Another key press away are your replies and direct messages.   One winning feature of Twitterberry for me is the integration to the browser.  If a link is provided in a tweet, you can select it open it in the browser.  All in all a well put together application and it’s free.

     Shozu is the Swiss Army knife of social networking for tools for smartphones. It allows posting to a variety of sites including Flickr, Facebook, and some blogs.  I’ve used it to post photos to both Flickr and Facebook and it works as advertised.  It finds files on your phone and allows sending to multiple services.  The send goes on in the background and allows you to continue working.  Another example of photo sharing that can be done is to Twitpic.  The interesting thing about this application is that all of the real set up is done on the Shozu website, where you can register all of the interconnecting services, including Blogger.

     Facebook is another free application for that Blackberry. Heck, it’s on their own site and recommended.  The Facebook application is a simple interface to a few of the common things you’d normally do on the site.  You can update your status, as well as see the status updates of your contacts.  Poking is allowed of course.  Wall writing is even available. This application is streamlined but very functional. Everything is a button slide and press away.  Oh yeah, and you can upload pictures to Facebook as well.

     There are more applications I’ve been playing with, including the Flickr application and the Google applications.  Google apps includes Maps, Docs, Mail, Reader and News.  Believe it or not, I’ve used Google Reader the most.  All of the applications are tied to your Google account.  This enables me to read my Reader feeds while I’m out and about and idle.

     Games are another story. I’ve not played one game the entire week.  Oh, the Blackberry has a slew of them to be sure, and even has some free ones that are supposed to be fun.  It’s just that I’m not all that interested in that feature.

     The features I’m most interested in, and have been using, center around keeping involved in my social networks.  Photos seems to be universally easy to share, as well as messages.  What I’ll be looking into more is ways to post to blogging type tools, such as my blogs, and Utterz.

    Utterz, Brightkite, and other sites have mobile versions to make things easier though, and I’ve used those as well as others.  Utterz might end up being my simplest ‘path’ to blogging for now.

     So what’s my conclusion after one week? The phone is a keeper. I’ve not even given any applications that require a fee or subscription yet.  Some of those should prove to be really useful.  I’ll check in from time to time to share more about the phone and our adventures together.

Friendfeed is one of the hottest information and networking sites on the net, yet many a sharer languishes in obscurity. Their pictures of cute kittens go uncommented. Their loving diatribes on the social lives of elk go uncommented. And to top it off, no one comments on their blog posts.

Lack of attention totally due to a lack of worthwhile content? Okay, if it’s about elk, probably so. Chances are though that it’s not the content but the copy that’s lacking.

The current focus for lots of blogs is about tuning the copy for search engines. Is your main blog focus elk, then you’ve taken measures making it easier for Google and Yahoo to find your content. Meta tags inhabit your headers, and there’s a liberal use of related keywords. But that’s the wrong strategy for Friendfeed.

Good strategy for Friendfeed is not about catching the random searcher. Friendfeed is about snagging the eyes of your followers. Beyond that, it’s still about snagging eyeballs, the eyeballs of your follower tree.

Interesting pictures is #1. – Here’s a great example

This sort of thing will net you more than a few eyeballs. Most responded to in my experience are women, bright and shiny things, and lastly anything out of the ordinary. Really want attention, include all three.

Exciting headlines are #2. – How about a recent one…

Mentioning a hot online service isn’t enough in it’s own. It’s about presentation. Strong declarations are key, e.g. Love, Hate, Sucks.

New services aren’t the only headline grabbers. Other hot ones include: