happy new year!

omg, it’s been more than 7 years since I’ve came up with the Next Action Balls process (see the entire series). Since I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting rid of physical and digital clutter the NABs also had to go, basically I’m back to square one.

happy new year!

wow, this article on the cutting-edge physics of crumpled paper balls gives a whole new meaning to my next action balls system.

happy new year!

Here is a technique, which lets you create filtered lists right now. It’s actually quite simple:

(1) you need to build a search query for each group you want to create.

You can include people via the from:username or the author:username search operator. Make sure to put quotes around the username and to use OR between each person.

e.g.:

from:“saurier duval” OR from:“google buzz team”

will find all public buzzes from me and the Buzz team.

(2) you can refine the search by including or excluding various sources via the source:sourcename search operator.

e.g.:

source:buzz OR source:“google reader”

will find only buzzes and shared items from Google Reader.

-source:twitter -source:“google reader”

will find all public buzzes except shared Tweets and shared items from Google Reader.

from:“saurier duval” OR from:“google buzz team” source:buzz OR source:“google reader”

will find all buzzes or shared items form Google Reader from me and the Buzz team.

(3) save the combined search as a Quick Link.

One lesser known feature in Gmail (and hence in Google Buzz) is the ability to save searches. It’s called Quick Links and you have to enable it in Gmail Labs (Settings -> Labs). Once Quck Links is enabled you’ll see a box in the left column that gives you 1-click access to any search you save.

To save a search for Google Buzz you enter the query in the search field, click “Search Buzz” and then click “Add Quick Link” in the Quick Links box. You can assign a descriptive name for your group and then you’re done.

Since the process is tedious this technique is best suited for smallish lists or to highlight peope who are really important to you. But it’s also great for generating a filtered stream for oversharers.

Quick tip for being a responsible citizen of Google Buzz: Buzz lets you specify groups of addressees for each site which is connected to your Buzz. So if you don’t want to bore your lolcat-loving mom with your latest ramblings on social media, all you have to do is to define who sees what:

• go to your buzz
• click connected sites
• in the list of connected sites click Edit for the source you want to refine
• in the pull-down box choose Private and then check the checkboxes of the contact groups you want your items to see (see the pic above)
• click Done

If you haven’t set up a proper set of contact groups yet, the most convenient way to do this is Google Contacts. It takes a while, but your friends and relations will love you even more.

What’s still missing in Buzz is a way for recepients to do the same. As is the sender is in control and if he likes to share a lot or consumes a non-healthy amount of your bandwidth your only option is to stop following him at all.

But if you could define which sources to see and which to hide on a per-user basis, Buzz suddenly would become less noisy and an interesting dashboard for many of your information needs. This also would solve the ubiquitous problem of redundancy. I’m following many of my friends on Buzz on Twitter already, and I’m subscribed to their blogs and shared items in Google Reader. I suspect you do the same. I neither need nor want to see these items in Buzz again. It would be awesome to hide a noisy or redundant Twitter- oder shared items stream while still being able to see the rest. Think FriendFeed’s ‘hide other items like this one’, but more transparent and better.

happy new year!

The meaning of open – Google comes up with its own universal theory of openness. (21.12.2009)

Netvibes Wasabi Introduces a Whole New Way to Manage the Real-Time Web – Netvibes releases its Wasabi edition, which is worth a look. (14.12.2009)

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances – And Now How Much Would You Pay? – AWS provide a kind of marketplace for EC2 instances. (14.12.2009)

Google Chrome for the holidays: Mac, Linux and extensions in beta – Google Chrome finally comes to Linus and Macs. (08.12.2009)

Exploring a new, more dynamic way of reading news with Living Stories – Google introduces living stories, a cool aggregator for news. (08.12.2009)

Relevance meets the real-time web – Google introduces the Twitter intgration. Has room for improvement. (07.12.2009)

Introducing Google Public DNS – Google introduces a public DNS. (03.12.2009)

Introducing Feather: A Lighter Way to Browse Videos – YouTube provides a lightweight interface. (03.12.2009)

What's Happening? – omg, Twitter changes its tagline to What’s Happening? (19.11.2009)

Burda Media new primary shareholder of XING AG – Burde acquires 25% shares of Xing. (18.11.2009)

Announcing TypePad Micro – TypePad launches a free Microblogging tool. (17.11.2009)

Evernote raises $10 million investment – Evernote gets a nice cash infusion. (16.11.2009)