Google Buzz Tips & Tricks

I just wanted to quickly share some tricks with the rest of you Buzz users out there that I've picked up since Buzz rolled out. Nothing too fancy, but useful nonetheless.

First of all, you can format your text with bold, italics, and strike-through. Accomplishing this trick is simple, and most everyone has discovered the bold trick already, or if you're a regular on Google Talk, you may already know them all.

• To make text bold simply enclose the text in asterisks, *like so*. The words "like so" would appear bold in Buzz.
• To make text italicized, enclose it in underscores, _like so_. Honestly, I wish they would change this one to forward slashes (/like so/) instead, so underscores could be used to make text underlined, which as far as I can tell is not an option in Buzz.
• Make text strike-through by enclosing it with dashes, -like so-.
• You can also use combinations of these, but make sure you nest them properly. E.g. *-this is a bold strike-through-* but -*this is normal text-* (see the difference?). The first example would show up formatted as you would expect, but not the second. Or you might only achieve partial formatting, something -like this-, when you meant to also strike it out.

Another great tip that I figured out, and I hope Google decides to make this a full feature of Buzz, is to Star a Buzz. Now, in Buzz itself, there's no option to Star a particular Buzz. So what you've got to do is wait for the Buzz to show up in your inbox, and while looking at your inbox view in Gmail, you can Star it just like you would any email. This way you can access this Buzz later from your "Starred" folder without having to worry about the Buzz getting buried under other Buzz (or cluttering up your inbox).

Also, just like with your emails in Gmail, you can search through your Buzzes. If you're in the Buzz folder in Gmail, there's the search box at the top. If you just enter a word or phrase and search here, by default this searches all public buzzes, not just your own or your friends. This can make it a little harder to find what you're looking for, but again like with Gmail you can use search operators, such as "has:", "author:", "commentor:" and "is:buzz". These operators work just like you'd expect and you can even make them "exclusion" operators but prefixing them with a minus, such as: -commentor:"ch3mical fusi0n" to hide anything I already commented on.

Another great thing you can do with search operators in Buzz, is the "source:" operator. Source can be any "source" you might see a buzz from (enclose multiple-word sources in double-quotes), such as Twitter. For instance, search source:"Google Reader" to search for all Buzz from Google Reader. Don't forget: you can make them exclusions with the dash prefix.

Lastly, you can save your searches by using the Labs feature "Quick Links" which allows you to save a quick link to whatever page you're on in Gmail. Perform whatever search you want saved and then just hit "add quick link".

That's it for now. If you know any other tricks, be sure to share them with us in the comments.

(Feel free to view/comment on this post on Buzz: http://j.mp/bBwZub)

Google Chrome OS "beta" a fraud

Today I was nearly duped into installing a SUSE-based distribution claiming to be Google's Chrome OS. If you are sent a link that claims to be a beta download for Chrome OS, it's a fake, don't download it.

This is not the first time "SUSE Studio" was used to pass their fake "Chrome OS" off as the real deal. They cleverly write "Google Chrome OS" all over it, and display official Google chrome icons, etc, yet in tiny font at the bottom they disclaim it as having nothing to do with Google:

"Chrome OS is not related to Google. Service provided by SUSE Studio. See the license."

All the while they're announcing it as "Google Chrome OS beta" which is getting passed around on Twitter and various Linux blogs and news sites. They've even used Google's own Sites service to distribute this impostor for added fraudulence. This is a rather under-handed attempt at getting publicity (not to say it was unsuccessful) for their distribution. It's utterly reprehensible that these con artists are exploiting the popularity of Google to distribute their sub-par SUSE variant, and frankly it really puts me off of all versions of SUSE in general.

I ignored it when the knock-off OS first made it's rounds, but I'm really getting sick of it. Your distribution is NOT Chrome OS and never will be, so please stop trying to peddle your crap on my internets!

*Update* The fact that someone is using SUSE to distribute this is what puts me off of SUSE, not that I think SUSE is responsible, just wanted to clarify that point.

Google bookmarks goes social?

Not yet, but it needs to. I love having all my bookmarks hosted in the cloud, but I never could get into del.icio.us or similar social bookmarking sites. They just didn't have the feel I was looking for. However, I feel naked without my Google Toolbar in Firefox, but the reason I'm so hooked on it is due to the bookmarks. I have countless bookmarks in there and I can't begin to describe how many times I've been thankful I can access these bookmarks and manage them so easily from any browser anywhere.

Before I start sounding like a paid advertisement for Google Bookmarks, there are a few flaws with the service that grate on my nerves quite a bit, yet I feel I am in way too deep to switch to any other bookmarking service now. First of all, why oh why can't Google Chrome integrate with Google Bookmarks*? Why, Google? I'm sitting here shaking my fist at you. I might be glaring at my screen a little, too. The other thing, too, is that it would be nice to simply have some sharing options and possibly other social elements. Sharing at the very least though, come on. I don't want to have to manually create a list of bookmarks and send them to people, that's just ridiculous. I don't want to have to "export" my bookmarks for someone else to import, either. That's just lame. What year is this again? Wake up, Google! You're supposed to be industry leaders, yet sometimes you act like these things shouldn't be a given in practically everything you create. I'm shaking my fist at you again, Google. Hopefully these things will be addressed soon.

*UPDATE: Ars Technica just released this article detailing Google's intent to implement this very feature (plus more integration between Chrome and your Google account) last night. Excellent news!

Here are a few of the juicy tidbits:

"A bunch of us have been working on a feature to sync user data in Chromium with a Google account..."

"The Chrome synchronization framework will initially handle bookmarks, but it is designed to support other kinds of browser data in the future..."

"...more seamless than other bookmark synchronization services like Weave and XMarks..."

"...a Web interface so that users can remotely access their bookmarks from any browser by logging into their Google accounts."

To get early access to these features, keep your eyes glued to the developer update channel for the update in about a week.

Ars reports that Windows' dev channel should be getting the feature enabled first, with possibly Linux at the same time or soon thereafter, but Mac OS X currently does not have support for the sync features.

Here are some simple instructions for enabling dev channel updates, if interested: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

Talk about ironic! Can we get to work on the bookmark sharing now?