Have you heard the Buzz?

Lately, many Gmail users have noticed a new option right below their Inbox that says “Buzz”. If you’re like me, you probably read the quick Google summary and then ignored it while you took care of your email. I finally decided to investigate Buzz a few days ago, and after hearing some colleagues expressing confusion about this new feature, thought I would address a few questions I’ve heard over and over:

What is it?
Google Buzz is similar to an RSS feed, except that it integrates all of your social networking data into one area, while also serving as a messaging tool. Buzz users can share things such as status updates, comments, video and pictures, which makes it fairly similar to Facebook and Twitter. The difference? Instead of going to different apps or sites to check all of your profiles, you can combine it all in Buzz.

Why do I need it?
Those of you that use social networking sites and like integration and consolidation will get the most use out of it. If you’re already using Gmail, Buzz is right there for your convenience. It’s also handy for those who love mobile apps. However, you must have an iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, Android 2.0, Openwave or S60, for Buzz to work on your mobile device.

Side note- For those thinking of using Buzz with a supported mobile device, it can integrate your posts with Google Maps so that you can see your location and others around you using Buzz (similar to Google Latitude).

Are there privacy features?
While this is a question I’m still trying to gather all the details on, Buzz didn’t have stringent privacy features at first. However, after Google was threatened with multiple lawsuits in February, they added a few privacy features. There is an option to make your Google profile private, so that you don’t show up in directories and/or searches. You can also choose the sites that you want to link with for your contacts/followers to see, so you control the information you share. Choosing contacts is also completely in your control, and while Google will suggest people from your Gmail contact list, you have the option to add, ignore or even block them. As added value, you can also view who’s following you and choose how you want to react (add, ignore or block), so you can keep tabs on who can see your information.

What type of stuff can I integrate?
Sites currently integrated: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader and Blogger.

Can Buzz benefit an IT or Network Manager?
Sure, if you use Gmail (or want to start) and use any of the integrated sites to communicate with others for IT or networking purposes. For instance, if you notice you’re having bandwidth problems, you could Twitter about it to notify your coworkers or get advice from your followers and also upload a screenshot of your network stats to Flickr so everyone can see details. Both of those examples can be done directly from within Buzz- no need to go to the Twitter website and Flickr website separately. You could also then use Buzz to tap into your Google Reader to look for tips to help increase your network speed or manage your bandwidth more efficiently.

For those of you that love to try out new tools and software, Google Buzz is an efficient venue for sharing information and opinions quickly. Again, being able to do the majority of your sharing within one area (Buzz) is the key.

Since Google Buzz is still pretty new, the adoption rate isn’t as high as Facebook, Twitter or any other mediums of the same nature. However, as Google tweaks it and integrates with additional sites, I can see how convenient it may turn out to be. In an age of information overload, consolidation can really cure a headache!

Is anyone currently using Google Buzz? What do you think of the overall user experience? Any tips to add?

What is Fueling Future Network Growth? Your Thoughts...

What do you think is driving future network growth?According to a new Cisco study, many residential, business, and mobile IP networking trends are being driven largely by a combination of video, social networking and advanced collaboration applications, termed “visual” networking traffic.

Service provider networks are carrying a significant amount of visual networking traffic, with more than one-third of the average global broadband connection supporting video, social networking and collaboration applications each month. Maybe social networking isn’t a fad.                                                                             

Cisco VNI (Visual Networking Index) Usage Highlights:

Aggregate Broadband Findings (Q3CY09):                               

- Globally, the average broadband connection (primarily residential subscribers and some business users) generates approximately 11.4 gigabytes of Internet traffic per month.

Per connection per day, this amount is roughly equivalent to downloading 3,000 text emails, 100 MP3 music files or 360 text-only e-books.)

- Globally, the average broadband connection consumes about 4.3 gigabytes of visual networking applications advanced services such as video, social networking and collaboration) traffic per month.

Per connection per day, this amount is roughly the equivalent of approximately 20.5 short-form Internet videos or approximately 1.1 hours of Internet video, whether streamed on its own, embedded in a Web page, or viewed as part of video communications.)

- Top 1 percent of global subscribers generated more than 20 percent of all traffic.

- Top 10 percent of global subscribers generated more than 60 percent of all traffic.

Peak Broadband Usage During Internet Prime Time:

- In an average day over the reported quarter, Internet "prime time" spans from approximately 9 p.m to 1 a.m. around the world. This contrasts with broadcast TV prime time, which is generally from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. across most global markets.

- 25 percent (or 93.3 megabytes per day per connection) of global Internet traffic is generated during the Internet "prime time" period.

- A peak Internet hour has 20 percent more traffic than a nonpeak Internet hour. The peak Internet hour averages 18 megabytes of traffic per connection (per hour), while nonpeak Internet hours average 15 megabytes of traffic per connection (per hour).

The peak Internet visual networking hour has almost 25 percent more traffic than average hourly Internet traffic.

It’s one thing to imagine the amount of traffic passing through networks every day, but it’s another to actually see the numbers. My favorite statistic is the number of GBs used per connection per day compared to text messages, e-books and music. The numbers are huge! I can’t imagine sending 3,000 text messages per day, can you?

What do you think about these findings? What are the future implications? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.

Maintaining Network Awareness with Twitter…

Wanted to try a fun experiment and feed my network management alerts to Twitter instead of my email. Now let me explain, I’m using this for the alerts that are between super critical that need my instant attention (and are emailed to me) and those that can simply sit and wait all weekend or more for my attention (i.e. when I feel like looking at the NMS screen). By sending some events to Twitter (its on my phone and TweetDeck is on my pc) I can maintain “network awareness” while tweeting J or on the go.

Using the dopplerVUE network management tool, all alerts can be sent to a .Net assembly. Since Twitter has an API this part was simple – email me and I’ll send you the necessary files so you can create updates with your own Twitter account information.

Here are the steps to implement a twitter feed (takes about 5 minutes).

The ABCs of adding a twitter feed to dopplerVUE
A. Update your system with the new twitter.dll and EventService.exe.config files
B. Create a Twitter action that can be re-used.
C. Define a rule that will use the Twitter action

A – Updating the dopplerVUE system
1. Add the twitter.dll to the //systechnologies/dopplerVUE/Server folder
2. Back up your existing //systechnologies/dopplerVUE/EventService.exe.config file and replace with the new one provided.
3. Edit the EventService.exe.config file user and password lines with your actual Twitter account username and password.
4. Preference>dopplerVUE System>dopplerVUE Services Then restart the dvEventService and dvDataService

Now the Twitter action is ready to use.

B - Create a reusable Twitter action
1. Expand the NetOps> Action tree
2. Right Click on Actions and select Create Action
3. Enter an Action Name
4. Select Action Type: Custom DLL
5. Enter the assembly value of: Twitter.dll
6. Select Create.

C- Define a rule that will use the Twitter action
1. Expand the NetOps>Metric>Rules tree
2. Right click on an existing rule and select edit
3. At step 5, expand the Custom DLL folder and select the Tweet This! Action
4. Select Finish.