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There’s been a lot of talk about Google’s latest attempt to enter the social networking market lately. The company just introduced a new product called Google Buzz. Google Buzz is a social networking tool akin to Facebook and Twitter: it allows you to post your status or a small text (or anything else really) in a box that will then be sent to all your “followers” who can subsequently read, comment or dismiss your post. In exchange, you can “follow” people you’re interested in (whatever the reason for that may be).

The difference with existing social networks

If you are like most people, your first reaction was: “What? Another social network! ” Everybody seems to be jumping in that “social networking” boat, but we don’t need nor want them to. Most people are happy with what they have; i.e. one, two, or sometimes even three accounts in various social networks. However, we’re all reluctant to another network being pushed down our throat. Things are complicated enough as things are, if we have to check one more website we’re sure never to get any more real work done. Ever.

However, Google Buzz is not set to compete with others simply by creating an alternative platform. Integration with Gmail, Google’s popular webmail platform, is maybe Buzz’ most predominant feature. With the information overload that we all know and fear, this may be a killer. If you leave Facebook for Buzz, you won’t even need to leave Gmail (presuming it’s already your webmail client of choice). Also, Buzz is set to become more that a network. Google hopes it will be a new means of communication. Private messages can be sent to a chosen group. This can be ideal for in-team collaboration where you want everybody to have access to the messages without necessarily flooding their inbox.

Google Buzz will also be well integrated on smartphones, notable Apple’s iPhone and Android devices like the Nexus One.

Will it work?

Networks spread through a networking effect (duh!). That means that the more people use a particular social networking site, the more it will grow. In this sense, Google is the underdog. Its main competitor, Facebook, has already gathered an estimated 350 million active users. To compete with that, Google needs to work differently. Integration with Gmail is more than just a practical feature for users. Google Buzz is (was or will be) rolled out to every Gmail user. With over 150 million monthly users, Gmail is a good platform for Buzz to grow. Most people are not convinced (or don’t care at all), but Google seems to have predicted that. Any buzz user can tag anybody (just like in twitter). Automatically, the Buzz (or comment) will be received by the Gmail user as an email. Upon opening it, the user will discover a buzz-formatted page. Where he would normally answer, the user will find a box in which he can comment the buzz. He types his thoughts inside and… voilà! He’s in the system.

Moral and practical objections

Buzz has just been released and people are already complaining. Let’s ignore Microsoft & co.’s moaning, as they’re obviously trying to discredit their competitor more than giving a candid opinion.

Buzz’ integration with Gmail is a problem. We’re living in the era where Microsoft was tried–and lost–for bundling its Internet Explorer browser with its operating system. Now Google does the same thing with Buzz. For a company that strives to obey to one core principle (“Don’t be evil“), and that loves to fight Microsoft, isn’t that a bit too much? In Google’s defense, Gmail integration is actually a feature, and a useful one for the end-user. If social networking is to be viewed as a new means of open communication, then I’d rather have it integrated into my existing communication tools, and there’s nothing more ubiquitous than the email.

The main point end-users criticize Buzz about is the fact that buzzes (or whatever we’re supposed to call them) appear in their inbox. For most people, that’s unthinkable, and they have a point. Our email inboxes are already overloaded, and nobody wants to clog them more. However, it can also be considered as a shortsighted opinion. Firstly, creating a filter is one of the easiest things you can do in Gmail (OK, not quite, but almost). Anyone can configure Gmail to automatically “archive” their buzzes and/or send them in a “Buzz” tag. Secondly, these people forget that Google Buzz will simply be integrating a feature that they’re already using and making it better. Facebook sends its users a constant stream of annoying notifications, and nobody (but me) seems to be complaining. The main difference buzz emails will have with Facebook’s email notifications is that they’re actually useful. Facebook doesn’t let you interact with its notifications, so you have to click on the link that redirects you to facebook.com before doing anything. Buzz, however, lets you interact with these buzzes as you would with an email.

Why is Google doing this?

At first look, it seems Google is getting too big for its own good. I had the impression that it was becoming another Microsoft, desperately trying to compete on every market just for the sake of it. However, a second look made me rethink. It’s often hard to understand what Google is trying to do. They seem to look ahead much more than their competitors, and their long-term strategy makes it hard to predict the next steps the company will be taking. My opinion is that Buzz is not just a desperate attempt to retrieve some market-share from Facebook. Its integration with Gmail is actually its one true innovative feature and Google is set to make people change the way they communicate. If it works.

On the medium to long term, Google is looking at Buzz as a way of linking their products together, like Picasa and Gmail, and to spread its “Public Profile” service into something that could be relevant for their search engine. Google not only wants to help us connect with our network, they want to connect us with the whole web in an efficient manner. In a way, they hope to index individuals like they indexed web pages, and however evil it may sound, it may give us easier access to individuals in our extended network; a tool not to be ignored.

Verdict

I was rather skeptical of the service at the beginning, because its power is not apparent until you really start sharing content. With some testing and afterthought, I prefer Buzz to both Facebook and Twitter combined and I actually believe that it can compete with both. However, it isn’t very attractive on first look, and many people will tend to dismiss it prematurely. Buzz could bring sharing to a whole new level thanks to its seamless integration into Gmail and its rich media features. The real question is if the users will buy it, and that, only the future can tell. I’m betting that Google Buzz will not take off right away, but that it will have an impact on the long term. Do you think it has what it takes to take off?

You can read the official announcement here

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The hardware

The iPad looks like an obese iPhone. That’s not a bad thing – the iPhone will still be in design textbooks 200 years from now – but the overall proportions do surprise me a little. First, the display doesn’t have a widescreen ratio, which has pretty much been the standard in recent years. Instead, it features a 9.7-inch 1024×768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch 4:3 ratio display with IPS technology, which means that widescreen movies will have huge black bars on top and bottom.

Second, the bezel looks really fat compared to the dimensions of the device. Apple should have made it much thinner and added one or two inches of screen real estate. On the other hand, the bezel may be explained by the fact that you do need, after all, a place to hold the device without accidentally inputting commands on the touchscreen. Globally, the iPad’s design reminds me of a photo frame, an over inflated iPod Touch.

The insides are the real surprise. The device uses an Apple-designed chip it is calling the “A4,” (Apple finally got some use out of that PA Semi purchase, apparently) which runs at 1GHz and is used for managing everything: Processing, graphics, and I/O. The system has between 16 and 64GB of flash memory, contains Bluetooth and EDR wireless connectivity, has a speaker, and microphone, and also contains Apple’s accelerometers, ambient light sensors, and digital compass with assisted GPS technologies. There is a 30-pin connector for attaching the device to computers, but it also uses Bluetooth and Enhanced Data Rate technologies for fast wireless access up to 3Mbps. The device has a powerful battery that gives up to 10 hours of usage, and nearly a month of standby time. It’s a half-inch thick—just a hair thicker than the iPhone, for reference—and weighs 1.5 pounds. Video output runs through and iPhone-type composite adapter at up to 576p and through a dock-to-VGA adapter at up to 1024 x 768. No HDMI, no DVI—not even a Mini DisplayPort. Oh, and there isn’t a rear-facing camera, nor is there a front-facing camera. This tablet is totally camera-less, which seems a bit odd. According to Gizmodo editors, who already had the privilege of using the iPad, “it’s fasssstttt”.

The software

The operating system on the tablet is based on iPhone OS, which is in turn loosely based on OSX. In other words, it’s got the same guts as the iPhone, as well as a somewhat similar interface. What this means in practical terms is that the UI is modal; you can only display one app at a time, and there aren’t windows, per se. Apparently, the iPad currently runs on iPhone OS 3.2.

The homescreen is like a mixture between the iPhone and OSX: it uses the iPhone launcher/apps metaphor, but has an OSX-style shiny dock. It feels very spread out compared to the iPhone’s homescreen, though I suspect this is necessary to keep things from getting too overwhelming. Maybe they could have fixed this by making the icons bigger? The good news is that you can apparently customize the background.

The onscreen keyboard is very similar to the iPhone’s. Typing on it is apparently a “dream,” and “almost lifesize,” by which Steve Jobs means the size of a full hard keyboard. He wasn’t typing with his thumbs, but with his fingers, as if it were an actual laptop keyboard. Navigation throughout the rest of the OS is optimized for one hand, though. This wasn’t handled very well by Apple, they could have easily innovated with some kind of hybrid context sensitive input method, but they chose to go the safe, boring and quite unpractical way.

The browser is essentially an upscaled version of Safari Mobile, with a familiar, finger-friendly title bar and not much else. It rotates by command of the accelerometer. Apparently, it doesn’t support flash, which is an acceptable shortcoming on the iPhone, but not on a larger device like the iPad.

• Email: Mail again takes its visual cues from the iPhone, but with a lot more decoration: you can preview your mailbox from any message with a pull-down menu, and preview any message from within the mailbox, with a pop-up window.

• Music: The music player is even more hybirdized, styled like a mix between the iPhone’s iPod interface and full-fledged desktop iTunes. Interestingly, Cover Flow seems to have more or less died off. The iTunes redesign looks very fresh yet familiar, I’m quite curious to see if this will come to the desktop version of the app.

• Video: YouTube is available by way of an app, iPhone-style, which can play videos in HD. iTunes content plays back in a dedicated app, just like on the iPhone, and can also play back in HD.

• Calendar and contacts: The calendar app is desktop-like, until you open organizer mode, where it looks like a literal organizer. It’s beautiful, and dare I say a bit Courier-like. I would love to see this on the iPhone.

• Maps: This one may be the most direct conversion from the iPhone, with a very similar interface through and through. It includes Street View, too, which looks amazing on the large screen. Apparently, Apple isn’t ditching Google just yet.

• Photos: The photo library app looks a lot like iPhoto, only adapted for multitouch finger input. You can view your albums as stacks, spread them out, and sync with your desktop iPhoto to get access to faces and map functionality.

Apps

All 140,000 iPhone apps will run on the iPad. Because the screen is bigger, you’ll have to choose between running the app in the center of your screen, or in “pixel double” mode, which just blows them up crudely. Any apps you’ve purchased for your iPhone can be synced, for free, to your iPad.

The iPhone app SDK has already been expanded for tablet development, including a whole new set of UI elements and expanded resolution support. The raw iPhone app compatibility is just a temporary measure, it seems—any developer who wants their app to run on the tablet will develop for the tablet. Some of the early examples of adapted apps, like Brushes, are spectacular. More on the SDK here.

Today, Steve Jobs underlined two new apps, specifically designed for the iPad.

The first one, iBooks, is Kindle’s death. Users are basically able to buy books from an online store (same system as the App store or iTunes store),  and publishers include Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette—the big boys. The demonstration was very convincing: the app features a gorgeous UI and 3D effects to simulate real books. Only time will tell if it can compete with e-paper.

The second app is iWork, specifically designed for the iPad’s multitouch capabilities. There’s a new version of Keynote designed just for the iPad, as well as new version of Pages, Apple’s excellent word processor, and Numbers, which is the spreadsheet app. The interfaces are obviously designed strictly for touch input, but from the looks of it can handle every function that the old, mouse-centric version could, plus a few more. And man, they’re so much prettier. Each app costs $10, and you can get them all for $30.

Price and Release Date

The iPad ships worldwide in 60 days, but only in Wi-Fi versions. The 3G version will be another 30 days after that. Here are the prices:

Without 3G:

• $499: 16GB

• $599: 32GB

• $699: 64GB

With 3G:

• $629: 16GB

• $729: 32GB

• $829: 64GB

Apple will ship all the iPads in 60 days—the end of March—to America, and just the Wi-Fi models internationally. It’ll be another 30 days beyond that for 3G models to be available outside our shores; Apple says they’re still working on carrier deals.

3G comes by way of AT&T, who’s offering the service without contract, for $15 a month (250MB of data) or $30 a month (unlimited). That’s why, unlike the iPhone, the iPad is actually cheaper off-contract.

Verdict

It’s hard to reach one, given the fact that I have never used an iPad, but I must admit I’m somewhat underwhelmed by today’s keynote. The tension, suspense, and expectations that originated from the iPad have led us to think the Apple’s new device would be revolutionary, but it isn’t, or at least not right now. The lack of camera may seem awkward to some, but I understand the choice: do you see yourself holding the iPad in front of you to take a shot? Kinda weird. A front facing camera for video conferences would have been nice, but I still prefer the iPad to have none and to cost only 499$. The major shortcoming, according to me, is the lack of multitasking. What’s the point of such a huge amount of processing power and screen estate if you can’t run two apps at once? Seriously Apple, this is a big letdown. Oh and did I mention you need an adapter for USB?

When the iPhone was first released, I was very skeptical. “What? It can’t even do copy and paste?” I used to ask. But as you know, the iPhone  has changed the industry thanks to its unique app store model and a few OS updates. I expect no less from the iPad.

Is it a Kindle killer? Deffinitely yes, as long as people’s eyes don’t start exploding after using the iPad. Is it a netbook killer? Maybe. Some people may need a physical keyboard, but overall, I’d go with iPad because of its incredible UI and thousands of available apps. Oh and let’s not oversee all the nice accessories, including a physical keyboard, which may help you resolve your dilemma.

The iPad seems to be suffering from what I call the Obama syndrome: expectations were so high that it is bound to fail at one point or another. Whatever Steve Jobs may have said or showed off today, people would have been disappointed  anyway. In addition to this, Apple cornered themselves and built a device that doesn’t really excel anywhere. Jack of some trades, master of none. They could have surprised us with a traditional “one more thing” at the end of the keynote: iWork / iLife 2010, iPhone OS 4.0, i7 chips in MacBook Pros, pretty doable stuff for Apple standards. But no. Steve decided to leave it there.
The iPad isn’t a bad device; in fact it’s a great device, and I want it right here, right now; but the non-Apple fanboy part of my brain is telling me to wait till iPad 2.0 or 3.0 comes out. Add flash support, multitasking, a way of organizing apps, a camera, two or three USB ports and you’ll have a winner.

Here is the official Apple video:

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Via Gizmodo and Engadget