The Blog Studio

I am still reeling from the physical reality of the iPad itself, along with the deluge of applications that come along with it. Recently launched ‘Flipboard’ is causing quite a stir.  Is it set to shake things up, or do we have another Google Wave on our hands?  The personal online magazine features intuitive content, while also allowing the user to interact with his/her social media profiles. The word on the street is that ‘Flipboard’ will revolutionize the entire publishing industry. Seems like revolutions are coming along with much more frequency these days.

What do I mean by intuitive content?  Why could ‘Flipboard’ be so revolutionary? ‘Flipboard’ is a multi-faceted application with impressive RSS reader functionality, and the ability to personalize content from your Facebook friends and Twitter tweeps. The application design is so intelligent because it makes an accurate assumption that one draws from and informs themselves via their online community of friends, tastemakers and colleagues. ‘Flipboard’ calibrates the information found in your social media pages and presents content in an attractive, user-friendly and totally individualized online magazine. This means that all retweets, ‘likes’, and links will be laid out in your personalized magazine just for you. Content updates in real time, so it stays timely and fresh.

‘Flipboard’ is considered to be such a breakaway app because it makes it simple to wade through mountains of content in a short period of time. Consider the length of time involved in downloading and reading each unique newspaper or magazine application on your iPad, in addition to engaging with social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.?  ‘Flipboard’ simplifies all of this and creates a platform for the user to peruse, interact and inform themselves through an ‘eye pleasing’ magazine interface.  Best of all? It’s free!

‘Flipboard’ CEO Mike McCue released a statement last week communicating that popularity and consumer demand have grown ‘clearly beyond our wildest expectations.” Upon launch, the company introduced a ‘first come first serve basis’, which has now become problematic as demand exceeds serviceability.  ‘Flipboard’ has dealt with this prudently: they have put an invitation system in place whereby people can download the new version of ‘Flipboard (1.0.1)’ and reserve an appointment for setup.  McCue’s goal is to expand accordingly and soon disable the invitation system so that transfer is immediate.

In the meantime, you can request your invitation and keep tabs on the ‘Flipboard’ public content via @flipboard and http://www.flipboard.com.  You can also enjoy their promotional video here:

There’s been quite a bit of buzz about Google Buzz since the rollout this week. Terrible puns aside, we’re always curious to try out the latest, and possibly greatest tech toys and social media tools. Google Buzz is no exception, and we couldn’t wait to get our grubby mouse pointer all over it.

Because we’re special, important and extremely good looking, The Blog Studio team noticed Buzz pop-up in our Gmail accounts late Tuesday afternoon, so we’ve had a bit of time to take it for a test drive. The easiest way to explain Buzz, which I’m sure Google will hate, is that it’s a built in Twitter for your Gmail account. It also offers quite a bit of integration with many social media platforms, bringing them all into one easy to manage place. Buzz offers you the option to follow and be followed by the people you Gmail with. While this isn’t anything special, it is nice to use a new service that you don’t have to invite your friends to. If you’re a heavy Gmail user, your contacts are already in place. You don’t have to chase down your contacts and convince them to sign up for something new. It’s been a while since we’ve experienced that luxury.

You’ll notice a multi-colored balloon under the inbox icon in your Gmail account, which is the Buzz button. When you click the button, you’re brought to a screen that is aesthetically familiar to most Google users. You’re offered the option to use your Google Public Profile as your Buzz profile, or you can create a new one. Next, you’ll see your photo icon, with a comic book like speech bubble coming out of it. This is where the action happens.

You can type a random thought snippet, similar to Twitter, or post a picture, video, or a link. You have the option of sharing this information publicly, with your followers, or keeping it completely private. The interface is nice, and it definitely has that Gmail snappiness to it. It feels very solid right out of the gate.

Look down the page a little farther, and things start to get interesting. You’re given the option to connect other social media sites you participate in. This very simple interface allows you to link up your YouTube, Blogger, Flickr, Google Reader and even...your Twitter account to Buzz. It works like a charm. I imagine over time, Google will begin to offer support for more and more services as the number of Buzz users increases. Whenever you update one of your other social media sites, your buzz followers will see that update in their stream. It’s a social media catch all. There’s a mobile, location based sharing feature as well with features similar to Foursquare.

Google has managed to bring your entire online life into one place, with no hassle and no fuss. It’s just there. It’s like Friend Feed on steroids with great UI. You can comment on the updates of the people you follow, ‘Like’ their updates a la Facebook, or email that person, all from the same screen. In the short time we’ve been playing with Buzz, we can already say it’s extremely convenient. If you spend a lot of time in Gmail as it is, you now have access to all of your other social media networks right from your inbox. That’s a timesaver as well as a powerful sharing tool.

We haven’t really scratched the surface of all the features and potential uses for Buzz. Hey, it’s only been 48 hours, give us a chance! It’s too early to make any predictions, but we’re betting Buzz is hugely popular in the very near future. With so many built in Gmail users, and the simple to understand interface, Buzz may be what brings microblogging to the masses. We will say this: for hardcore social media geeks, Buzz is a convenient way to ride herd on all the accounts you have. What does everyone else think so far? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss. 

Google Chrome, has recently become available for OSX, and we’ve spent some time taking it for a test drive.

The first thing you’ll notice is how fast Chrome opens and launches your homepage. It starts noticeably faster than Firefox or Safari. The address bar, is by default, a Google search box. You can type in what your looking for, and Google will start displaying results in the bar. The search also feels extremely snappy, and it’s a nice convenience to be able to search without having to open an additional tab.

Chrome supports tabbed browsing, and when you open a new tab you’ll be brought to a favorites page that displays your most visited sites and recently closed tabs.  The tabs can also be dragged visually to arrange them in any order, and you can pop them out to start a tab in an entirely new window. This seems to offer a nice combination of the way Safari and Firefox handle tabs.

In our completely unscientific tests, Google Chrome does seem to load nearly every page much more quickly than Firefox, and is about as fast as Safari. Plenty of people have done head to head browser tests for speed, and Safari seems to show up as slightly faster in technical tests. We found Chrome very fast overall.

The user experience with Chrome is fantastic. It’s clean, uncluttered and very easy to find and tweak the settings. There is no fluff in the user interface, and Chrome seems built for simplicity. Either choose a favorite site from your thumbnails, or type what you’re looking for into the search bar. It all happens in one place, so you don’t need to jump around.

The Preferences pane is the most well organized we’ve encountered. It has three tabs: Basics, Personal Stuff and Under the Hood. You can change every setting that matters right here, and each setting is clearly explained. The preference panel here is much more user friendly than Firefox or Safari, where you sometimes need to dig a bit to find the setting you’re looking to change, and the function of these settings can be somewhat confusing for inexperienced users. Google has done a solid job of highlighting the setting most users need to change, and eliminating some of the more confusing setting you find in other browsers.

There’s one feature we really love and have been getting a lot of mileage out of. You can set Chrome to open up a few sites in separate tabs whenever you start the browser.  When Chrome launches, Google Wave, Co-Tweet and some of the other web apps we use open automatically. Basically, you can pop open the browser and get ready to work.  This is especially helpful when you’re trying to get used to using a new app, like Wave.

There’s also some interesting technical stuff going on under the hood as well. Each tab in the browser is it’s own separate entity. What’s going on in one tab, doesn’t effect the others, which is an added layer of malware protection.  If you have the bad luck of opening up a data stealing site in one tab, and happen to be purchasing something or looking at your bank account in another, your personal information is safe. It’s a solid security feature that is built right into the design of the browser.

The one place where Chrome for OSX fails, at least for now, is with addons. Firefox and Safari have an enormous amount of plugins, addons and hacks available that can make your life much easier. Chrome doesn’t currently support any extensions, although this is set to change in the future. If you’re a power user, who has a suite of plugins you can’t live without, Chrome isn’t the browser for you. Yet. We’ll reserve our judgement in this area until Chrome starts adding extra functionality, but it will be difficult to replicate the large hacker community surrounding Firefox, that are always adding new functions.

However, there is a hacker build of Chrome, called Chromium that addresses some of these shortcomings. Chromium has a full suite of extensions available, features daily updates and removes the Google branding from the browser. Chromium is a good choice for tech savvy power users, and does a great job of showing the future potential of Chrome.

Chrome does offer some very cool themes to change the look of the browser, including ones by Jeff Koons, Karim Rashid and Anna Sui. These are wonderful looking, but just window dressing. Very cool attractive stuff, but they don’t add any functionality.

Overall, Chrome is a very light, solid and fast browser. Safari users may be tempted to jump ship, as it seems more stable and nearly as quick. Firefox users will enjoy the speed increase Chrome brings to the table, but without the plugins, Chrome won’t be the best choice for geeks who live inside their browser. Our feeling is that Chrome is a great choice for casual web users, especially those that aren’t very tech savvy.

Chrome is still in beta. When the community expands, plugins become available, and Google tightens things up, we imagine Chrome will become the number one browser on the web in the near future.