Will Google+ (plus) bitch slap Facebook and Twitter?  Will the king of search become the king of social too?

There are a number of ways to look at the brewing feud between Google+ and two of the most popular social media sites.  One way is to look at the numbers of registered users, another way is look at the quality of user experience, and yet another is the revenue that the sites generate — not just for itself, but for its users.

Right now, in terms of number and user experience, Google+ has a sparse landscape.  There are no page updates, no game or application notifications, no mindless tagging, no incessant and irrelevant wall posts, and no scrolling streams of updates.

Coming from Facebook or Twitter, it can feel like opening a window and finding yourself confronted with an Alaskan or Siberian landscape after all the snow in the world has fallen.

The usual question that comes to mind is, “So, what’s next?” and answering it is actually when the “fun” starts.

It actually begins when you start looking for other people that you know who are already on Google+ and start adding them in “Circles”.

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One of the hardest things to find after a very busy day of exchanging e-mails is a file attachment in your  inbox or sent folder.  On the average, hunting for files in your e-mail can consume the better part of an hour that could have been spent on useful downtime or getting something else done.

The process of hunting down an attachment usually begins by clicking on the search field of your e-mail and typing either the name of the person who you think sent you the file or the subject header of the e-mail exchange you think it is in.  It’s easy to find an attachment if it had been sent fairly recently, but when the file had been sent a hundred e-mails ago, that’s when people either decide to pore over every e-mail turned up in a search or just ask to be sent the file again.  Either way, it can mean a waste of time for you or the person who is waiting for the file attachment.

Can you imagine asking an important client or major customer to wait fifteen minutes while you or your assistant goes searching for a file he sent you months ago? It’s can make for an embarrassing moment because it makes you appear disorganized and sloppy.

Attachements.me makes it easier to find any e-mail attachments in your e-mail account, no matter how long ago it had been sent or in what thread it had been sent in.

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Ensogo. Great for bargain hunters, but how about merchants?

I’ve been receiving pretty good offers from Ensogo over the past few weeks now and I am surprised by the amazingly low prices they have.  Almost every single thing is marked down or discounted by at least 50 percent and the quality of the stuff they are offering  seems pretty good.

Ensogo, like Groupon, is a social buying site and was recently acquired by LivingSocial, one of the major Groupon competitors.

In their e-mail to me today, two things interested me immediately: an offer for a Php600 (about US $ 15.00) Berting’s Grill gift certificate discounted at P300 (about US $ 7.50) and a 3-day, 2-night stay at the Boracay Terraces Hotel going for P7,700 (about US $180) when it would normally cost twice that much.

And, having just opened up a bank account that links up with PayPal (but you can also pay via ATM Peso Pay or bank transfer), I might just buy that gift certificate from Berting’s Grill and use it to buy several orders of their fabulous barbecued chicken ass and liempo or pork ribs.  As for Boracay Terraces Hotel, well, it’s something that I really got to discuss with my wife first — but it looks like a pretty good buy.

All in all, it’s almost a revolutionary site for bargain hunters like me but it may not be all that amazing for merchants who get into social buying sites expecting “magic” to happen.  A long time acquaintance who sells organic food online clued me in on a couple of caveats and cited a couple of reasons why he isn’t a fan of Ensogo — at least, not yet. read more

The diamond water paradox ought to be revised.  These days a couple hundred shares of stock in Google or perhaps Facebook next year, can be worth more than a good sized diamond and may in certain ways be as essential as the water we need to continue living.

Of course, we haven’t reached the point where you’d actually have to log-in to your Twitter or Facebook account to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store.

image from http://www.posmarket.com.au

Then again, there may actually be companies that are planning to integrate or have actually integrated Point of Sale systems (a.k.a cash registers) with either social networking websites.  The idea behind this is that when you purchase something from these companies, your purchase shows up as an update on your social network and that will perhaps, for a time, have an impact on the “conversations” you think you may be having with the world.  It’s kind of like Foursquare in a way but more directly tied up with actual purchases.

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Despite reporting a hefty drop in sales because of stiff competition in the smartphone market, Nokia is still the world’s largest cellphone maker by volume.

With more than a third of cell phones in the world being Nokia and a sizable chunk of those units being enabled for mobile internet, it would stand to reason that there could still be a huge audience for blogs that remains untapped.

But downloading blogs on what is essentially still a cellphone could lead to a number of frustrating consequences.  With either the phone’s browser failing to download the site correctly or not being able to download the site in a readable form.

The solution to tapping this roaming audience of mobile internet users is to create a mobile app.

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Hosting often is one of the more difficult decisions to make when starting a website and our own Jonathan Bailey has written several entries on the topic already, over at BloggingPro, as part of his Blogging Pitfalls column. The main problem with hosting though is that often YMMV applies and what one thinks is a great host, could be horrible experience for the next user. I recently switched several sites to Hostgator and here’s my experience with them.

One of the main reasons why it often is difficult to decide on a host, is that the user never knows whether the server they receive space on is oversold or not. Most hosting companies, especially larger ones do oversell, in order to keep the price down. Often this results in the dilemma: “Do I go with a larger, and cheaper, host company or do I decide for a smaller company which is more expensive?”. read more

Fisher Investments, a stock market and management services specialized company, offers the sixth installment of its Fisher Investments On series, Fisher Investments On Technology. Fisher Investments On focuses on providing its readers, often individual or aspiring professional investors, the tools needed to understand and analyze opportunities. The sixth book, Fisher Investments On Technology aims at clearly defining the broad term Technology and gaining more insight in the Technology market.

Fisher Investments On Technology consists of three main parts:

1. Getting Started in Technology
2. Next Steps: Technology Details
3. Thinking Like a Portfolio Manager

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You need a logo and you need it fast. Rather than hand a box of crayons to your baby cousin, you need an image that looks professional and conveys your target message. It should be polished, relevant, and oh yeah, you needed it like yesterday!

With several awards under their belt, the experienced gang at LogoBee can get a brand spankin’ new logo in your sweaty little hands in only two business days. That’s right – 48 hours! (must order “Express” package)

With over a decade of logo design experience, LogoBee stings you with a money-back guarantee and buzzes in with a lifetime logo design support. All designers work in the same hive, which means your job won’t get shipped off to be produced in another colony.

Enough bee puns!

LogoBee has created over 10,000 company logos. And they never want a client to approve a logo unless they are 100% satisfied with the work provided. read more

After reporting about the impressive improvements regarding VaultPress’s security feature (which is available to premium users), we received an interesting comment from one of their rivals.

I have a site called http://www.ultimateblogsecurity.com which allows you to *prevent* getting hacked in the first place. WordPress exposes a number of security vulnerabilities during installation (and upgrade to new versions!) that are easy but cumbersome to fix. We allow you to fix those in one click, and the pricing is reasonable too.

Founded by Chris Neumann and Eugene Pyvovarov, Ultimate Blog Security is a service that scans your WordPress blog in order to find and close security holes and exploits that could be used by a potential hacker.

Thus far the service does not offer a backup solution like VaultPress or blogVault, although the company plans on launching one in the future in order to challenge Automattic (the company behind VaultPress and WordPress) by offering a similar service at a greatly reduced price. read more

It looks like UberTwitter (one Blackberry’s biggest tweet contenders) has made a belated entrance upon the iPhone, months after the official Twitter for iPhone client launched for iOS.

Unlike other third party iPhone apps, UberTwitter decided to release their app for free to the masses, albeit with ads near the bottom of the screen.

Although the app is fairly basic when compared against the likes of Echofon Pro or SimplyTweet, the app does pack one surprise that may make UberTwitter a “must have” tweet app for a few users. read more