GMAIL USERS: We hope you’ll join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

We’ve discussed how you can integrate Buzz with your other social networks, but what about integrating Buzz with your blog? If you use a self-hosted WordPress blog (sorry, WordPress.com users), there are already a variety of Google Buzz plugins and add-ons available.

While it’s clear that people are really taking to using Buzz to share content and communicate, the service will undoubtedly reach more users as its sharing tools are integrated into other social sites. From buttons to social stream in your side bar, here’s how you can integrate Buzz with your WordPress blog.

Google Buzz Buttons

Mashable started sporting some nifty Buzz buttons a few days ago and lots of our readers have wanted to know how to add a similar feature to their own blogs. As it stands right now, how our Google Buzz buttons work (and how the buttons other sites are using also work) is that they create a share link from that post to Google Reader. As long as Google Reader is connected with your Google Buzz account, your publicly shared items will also be shared on Buzz.

Already, a number of enterprising WordPress plugin developers have answered the call to add Google Buzz buttons to WordPress posts.

Let’s take a look:

Google Buzz Button

Internet Techies created the Google Buzz Button plugin that allows you to add a “Buzz This” button to each of your WordPress posts. That icon probably looks pretty familiar — that’s because the button was designed here at Mashable (though it isn’t the same plugin).

The plugin options are relatively limited — you can choose what “rel” attribute you include with the link (the default is “nofollow”) and you can choose to display the button before or after your post content. You can also specify the icon’s height and width. Making some changes to your WordPress theme’s CSS options, you could further customize the appearance of the button, but as it stands, it’s a pretty basic (and easy) way to add a Buzz button. If you want to add Buzz manually to only certain posts, there is a template tag that you can add to those posts.

WP Google-buzz

Another button plugin option is WP Google-buzz from Arpit Shah. This button is extremely similar to the Google Buzz Button plugin, but it adds a few more options. You can choose to show the button before or after content or to add it to posts manually, but there are also options for what style button you want to use. Depending on how you have your blog setup, you might want to use a different size or style of button.

WPBuzzer

Hameedulah’s WPBuzzer is the most robust of the Google Buzz button plugins as of right now. The style of the button is almost identical to what Mashable and the Google Buzz Button use (albeit, not quite as clean), but the options are where this plugin really shines.

You can choose where you want your buttons to appear (on posts, on pages, on the home page, in your RSS feed), whether your want the button to appear before or after the post, the target for the button (a new window or a pop-up share option) and even the CSS style. You can also choose to use a small or large button.

The biggest feature is that you can track share counts (just like we do at Mashable) if you have a Bit.ly API key and login.

Light Social

The Light Social plugin takes a slightly different approach to the Google Buzz button. Light Social is a plugin that inserts a set of social share links at the bottom of each of your WordPress posts. This way links to Digg, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all automatically at the bottom of the post. The developer of Light Social updated the plugin to include a Google Buzz icon and share link as well. If you want to add lots of social options to your posts — Light Social is a good approach.

Buzz In Your Sidebar

It’s one thing to let other people share your content to their buzz accounts, but a big advantage of Buzz is that you can aggregate your social activities into one place as well. Check out these options for adding some Buzz to your sidebar!

Google Buzz ER

If you want to share your Buzz content on your blog, check out the Google Buzz ER plugin. Google Buzz ER is extremely cool. It’s a widget that will display your public Buzz content. Just enter in your username and define how many Buzz entries you want to display and drag the widget to your designated choice in your blog.

That’s it! Now you have Buzz in your sidebar! Plus, as an added benefit, other users can click on “comment” to immediately respond to what you share. As of right now, the Buzz API doesn’t allow other people’s comments to become viewable, so only your public content is going to appear on your blog.

BuzzCounter.net

Another option for adding a Buzz widget to your blog (WordPress or otherwise) is BuzzCounter.net. Just fill in your username and you can generate the JavaScript to paste onto your website or blog!

Buzz Your Comments

There are a number of different all-inclusive comment solutions for WordPress — there’s Echo, Disqus (which we use here at Mashable) and IntenseDebate. IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com and some of the main contributors to the WordPress.org project. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s the first of the solutions to offer Buzz integration into its service.

If you use IntenseDebate on your blog, you can now easily add a Buzz It button to the top of your comment form. This won’t let people Buzz their own comments (we expect something like that will come in the future), but it adds another “Share on Buzz” option for your post to your visitors. If you use IntenseDebate, you can activate the Google Buzz This plugin by enabling it in the Plugins Directory.

Keep Your Eyes Peeled

As Google Buzz continues to evolve (remember, it isn’t even a week old), more and more integration options are going to sprout up. Let us know what sort of integration options you’d like to see in the future in the comments! If we missed one of your favorite Buzz plugins, let us know!

Tags: buzz, Google, google buzz, how to, List, Lists, Wordpress, wordpress plugins

Google Voice, which lets users consolidate all their phones under one number, archive your texts and voicemails, and much, much more, is two things to most people: vaguely promising, and totally confusing. Here’s how to make the switch, in plain English.

The Pitch

It doesn’t really help to describe Google Voice in terms of what it is—a bizarrely fragmented hodgepodge of different telecom and internet technologies, drawn together by Google—so you just have to start with what it does. In short, it can completely change how you use your phones, more or less for free.

• It can give all of your phones the same number for incoming calls. Google will assigned you a new, Google Voice-specific phone number for free, which you can forward to as many phones as you want. What always drives the point of Google Voice home for people is when I have them call my number, which causes three of my phones to ring at once. You can keep this number forever, too, without ever having to worry about porting it from carrier to carrier.
• It can give your phones the same outgoing number as well, with which you can make free domestic calls (well, sort of—more on that later), and very cheap international calls. Since Google Voice routes your calls through their phone system, they can connect you directly to cheap VoIP services to the rest of the world. It seems like you're just making a regular call, but behind the scenes you're doing something more akin to Skyping. End result: money saved.
• You can send and receive unlimited text messages for free. To make things even better, they’re all all archived in your online Google Voice account, where they’re fully searchable.
• It's got the best voicemail system in the world. Leaving a message at a Google Voice number is nothing like leaving your voice on a regular voicemail service—that is to say, it's not like sending your voice into a barely accessible technological horror pit where it might get listened to, but will probably be ignored. No, Google Voice is different: It stores your messages online, and converts them to text (which can then be sent to you as an SMS or an email). You can archive, forward, delete or save these messages from a simple interface on your phone or computer. Think of it as Gmail, except with voices. Plus, it's flexible in lots of little ways—you can change your voicemail greetings on a per caller basis, for example, or opt to listen to voicemails as they're being recorded.
• This voicemail system isn't just for Google Voice numbers, either—you essentially replace your carrier voicemail with Google Voice voicemail, without using a new number. It's brilliant.
• You have full control over your calls. You can record them for later listening, and have them transcribed into text.
• You can screen callers. You can block numbers, or have callers record their names for your approval. You can have certain contacts only forwarded to certain phones,

Each of these features is compelling enough on its own—together, they'll totally change how you use your phones, changing you from a mere mobile customer to a full-on switchboard operator, self-spy, info hoarder and telco executive. It's like you run your own little phone company, just for yourself. For free. Spectacular.

The Catch(es)

Now that I’ve got you all riled, it’s time for me to pour an icy bucket of water down the front of your pants. Google Voice, as incredible a concept and service as it is, isn’t perfect. In fact, there are a few things you need to know and accept before taking the dive, and they might be dealbreakers:

• You can't use your own phone number. At least, not in the way you wish you could. In an ideal world, you'd be able to port your old cellphone number to Google Voice, and have that—the digits people have been using to get in touch with you for years—be your new all-inclusive point of contact. You can't do this yet. For now, the closest you can come is to port your voicemail to Google Voice. That means that your T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon or Sprint number's voicemail can be outsourced to Google, but not its calls. You can unify all your phones under your new Google Voice number, but that means you have to switch. Along with the basic inconvenience of telling everyone about your new number, you’re trusting an awful lot in a beta service, the terms of which could change quickly and without notice. It’s not something I worry about, but it’s not nothing, either.

• You can’t record calls that you’ve placed, just calls that you’ve received. And every time you initiate recording, Google Voice notifies the other person on the line. This is all makes perfect moral and procedural sense, but just in case you had the impression that there were no limits on your recording abilities, well, there are.

• The mobile app situation isn't ideal. There are apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone via jailbreak, and they all work. That said, they're not perfect—they can be slow, poorly integrated, glitchy, or hard to figure out. And since they're supposed to replace the dialer on your phone entirely, this isn't wonderful. The online mobile interface is a good fallback for placing calls and sending texts, but navigating to that adds an extra step to any call or text that can get tiresome after a while.

• Lastly, the way American phones work, you’re still going to end up paying for your minutes, somehow. Just because Google Voice says you can make free domestic calls and cheap international calls doesn’t mean that you actually can: in both cases, you need to dial out to Google Voice’s external system in the first place, which means you’re still using your monthly minute allotment. There are ways around this which I’ll discuss later, but Google Voice, as good as it is, isn’t magic.

Discouraged? Don’t be. Google Voice is still well worth you time and effort, and it’s only going to get better. Now, for God’s sake let’s get started already.

The Process

Signing up. This is simultaneously the easiest and most irritating part of Google Voice: It’s still invite only. Lucky for you, “Invite” in this case doesn’t mean you actually have to wait for an individual to select you from the masses; it’s just Google’s way of saying their keeping the signup pace down at manageable levels while the service is still in beta. Just submit your address, after which Google “anticipate[s] that it will be a short wait before you receive your invitation.”

What's a short wait? My invite took about four days. Some come within 48 hours. At worst, they take about two weeks. Lots of you will have already received your invite, and just not done a whole lot with it—you guys can keep reading—while the rest of you should just bookmark this post, and come back to it once you get your invite. Protip: check your spam filters.

—

Ok, hello again, people I was talking to anywhere between two seconds and two weeks ago! How are you? Now that you’ve got your invite, you can log in to your Google Voice Dashboard. It’ll look familiar if you’ve used any Google Service before:

Logging in. Follow your confirmation link, or navigate here. Click around for a while to get a feel for the interface. This is how you’ll manage your phones from now on. It’s liberatingly simple.

Picking your number. You’ll be given a choice of numbers, which you can choose from practically any available area code. Choose wisely: this will be your primary number from here on out. Choosing your first number is free; changing it in the future will cost you $10. Boo, waah, etcetera! But really not a huge deal.

Adding your phones. This is assuming you want to forward a single number to all your phones, which is kind of the point here, so: Go to the Google Voice settings page (up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. In the first section, called “Phones,” click “Add a Phone” or “Add Another Phone.” Give it a name “My iPhone” and enter its phone number. That’s it.

Now you’ll be given a passcode, which you’ll use to authenticate your existing phone. Clicking “Connect” will call your phone from your Google Voice number, and a friendly robot will ask for you code. Enter it. That’s it!

Setting up your voicemail. Now that the phone is added, it can accept calls directed to your Google Voice number. If the call is ignored, it will forward the voicemail to Google Voice, where it will be stored online. Alternately, if you only want to use Google Voice for voicemail, you can disable the calling feature (by unchecking the box next to the phone), and set up the service to hijack your actual cellphone number’s voicemails—even when the call didn't get routed through Google Voice.

This is much easier that it sounds: Just click “Activate Google Voicemail” next to your newly-added phone, and enter the number they give you exactly as it’s written, symbols and all. Once you “call” that number, you’ll get some kind of message on your phone. On the iPhone, it looks like this.

Your voicemail has been switched—all you need to do now is set up a quick bookmark in your mobile phone to Google Voice, which provides a functional, if sparse, interface for your Google Voice messages. It's like visual voicemail, except through your browser. (Or a mobile app, which I'll get to soon.)

Choosing the rest of your settings. Now you’ll see your phone listed under the “Phones” settings tab. The other tabs contain a few pages of settings for your Google Voice account. How you toggle these is up to you, but here are the most important ones: If you want to forward SMSes to email, you’ll have to enable that in the “Voicemail and SMS” tab; call screening settings are located under the “Calls” tab; and international call credit can be added under the “Billing” tab, from a credit card.

Finding your feet. Take some time to experiment with some of Google Voice's core features now. Place a call using the button at the top left of the Google Voice homepage. Enter your recipient's number, and choose which of your phones you'd like to place the call with. Google Voice will call your phone first, which upon answering will immediately call your recipient's phone, which will think it's getting a call from your new Google Voice number. It might sound odd in writing, but once you see it work, it just kind of clicks. You can also place these calls from the mobile web interface, without a computer. Texting is more direct—you can send those directly from the web interface without any intervention from your phone.

Placing calls. The aforementioned methods is the most obvious, and it will reliably work. It’s a little cumbersome, especially if you’re used to just tapping on a contact and placing a call. Thankfully there are a few more ways to place calls from your phone, and have it routed through Google Voice:

• Apps: This is by far the best way to use Google Voice. Android has an official Google Voice app, as does BlackBerry.These automate the dialing/texting out process, so you don't need to mess with a web interface—you just opt to make some or all of your calls through Google Voice, and the app takes care of the rest. Windows Mobile has unofficial clients that do the job pretty well, as does the Pre, in the App Catalog. iPhone clients are available, but they’re not approved by Apple: You’ll need to jailbreak your phone and install them from Cydia.

• The call-in method: Simply dial your new Google Voice number from your cellphone or landline, press 2 once it’s connected, then enter the number you want to dial. This is less convenient than the web interface method, even, but it’s vital to the next one:

• The contact method: This is a little cheat to automate the aforementioned process. What you’re doing, basically, is saving your Google Voice number, a pause, the number 2 (which selects “call another phone” from the Google Voice automated menu tree), a pause, then your recipient’s number.

Adding a pause is different on each phone—on the iPhone, for example, you need to save a number as a contact, and in the number editing screen, press the "+*#" button at the bottom left of the keypad. The zero will be replaced with a "pause" button, which when pressed inserts a comma into the number. Google is your friend for this one, though most smartphones make the option available in their respective contact editing screens.

• The 406 method: Have the person you want to text send a message to your Google Voice account. When you receive the message, it will be from a number you don't recognize, with the area code 406. It will be labeled with the sending contact's name, and any replies to that number will return to the person who sent them, but the number is completely new. This is a Google Voice alias, which you can use forever: Just save it as part of your friend's contacts—perhaps as a secondary cellphone or a work number, whatever you can remember—and use it as their primary contact number when call through GV.

Sending Texts. Again, using the web interface is a great way to send texts, as are the mobile apps. But the best solution? The 406 trick listed above works for SMSes too.

The Hacks

As you've probably noticed, Google Voice is kind of a loose system—and a system that's ripe for a little gaming. There are two methods that currently work for getting truly unlimited, free calls over Google Voice. This is where things get really interesting. Interesting in a good way for you; interesting in a terrifying way for the phone companies.

• The Calling Circle Method: You know how some carriers let you designate a few contacts that don't count toward your monthly allotment of minutes, like T-Mobile MyFaves, or the AT&T A-List? By making your Google Voice number one of your friends, you can filter all your calls through Google, whether they be free domestic calls or cheap international calls. Once your Google number is added to your circle, making free calls is simply a matter of dialing into your Google Voice number and, using Google's audio menu system, dialing through to your recipient. (The contact method listed above will work too.)

To make incoming calls—including outgoing calls initiated from the Google Voice web interface—free, you'll need to change your Google Voice settings under the "Calls" tab. Select "Display my Google Voice Number" under the "Caller ID (in)" setting, and you're good to go. A full setup guide for the calling circle method can be found here.

Note: Designating Google Voice as one of your preferred contacts may be against your carrier's user policies—check with them if you're concerned.

• The VoIP method: By signing up for a number with free VoIP service Gizmo5 and adding to to your Google Voice account as a phone, you can place unlimited free calls from your VoIP number to landlines. You can also forward the calls through to Skype, if you’d prefer. This isn’t a solution for mobile phones, but it’s a great way to make yourself an effectively unlimited VoIP landline for free. Lifehacker’s got the whole rundown here. UPDATE: Registrations for Gizmo5 have been closed. Sorry!

Easing the Transition

Lifehacker has assembled a fantastic guide for easing the transition from many numbers to one, covering everything from how to convince people not to call your old numbers, to coping with voice latency.

That’s pretty much it! If you have any tips to tricks for getting the most out fo Google Voice, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides.

And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy Voicing, folks!

There are a lot of players vying to become your gateway to rest of the web: Facebook Connect, OpenID, Sign In With Twitter, MySpace ID, and Google Friend Connect just to name a few. It’s Facebook Connect however that seems to be leaving all of the other connect methods in the dust. This includes Google Friend Connect, which without a major social network to back it has floundered in terms of adoption.

Google’s not about to hand over this potentially vital market over to Facebook, however. A few weeks ago, the company simplified the Friend Connect implementation process. Today, the search engine giant has introduced an array of new features that allow users to get to know each other by adding interests, adding the ability to send private messages, and more.

The first part of the new features revolves around what boils down to social networking. For example, site owners can use Friend Connect to ask their visitors about their favorite activities and use that data to help connect people with similar tastes. It also gives the site owner a lot of valuable data.

The other part of the announcement really focuses on getting website owners to adopt Friend Connect. Google touts new options such as building custom newsletters, creating gadgets and links that target the interests of every user, and improving the relevancy of Google ads. The company can launch all the user-based features it wants, but without site owners adopting, it won’t matter.

The push by Google is smart, but Facebook’s built-in social advantage is something the search giant just cannot beat. Leveraging the data and log-ins of 300+ million users is Facebook’s huge advantage, and unless Google can find a way to parry that, these new features, while welcomed, may not help spur a new wave of adoption.

If you want to learn more, Google has created a new overview video of Google Friend Connect which explains both the basics and the new features:

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Tags: friend connect, Google, google friend connect

There’s some excitement around the web today among a certain group of high profile techies. What are they so excited about? Something called WebFinger, and the fact that Google is apparently getting serious about supporting it. So what is it?

It’s an extension of something called the “finger protocol” that was used in the earlier days of the web to identify people by their email addresses. As the web expanded, the finger protocol faded out, but the idea of needing a unified way to identify yourself has not. That’s why you keep hearing about OpenID and the like all the time.

But those standards, while open, have failed to latch on in a meaningful way with the public at large. One of the holdups is that you have to set up a website or service you use to be your OpenID. It’s relatively easy to do, and you may already have one ready to go, but just not realize it. But it’s still kind of tricky to explain to a regular web user — wait, you login with your website?

But something everyone on the web knows is their email address. And they’re conditioned by services like Google and Facebook to use it as their identifier. The problem with it has been that it’s just a string of text, nothing more. You cannot attach information to it to let others know a bit more about you — something vital for true identification. Then idea behind WebFinger is that you should be able to attach any information you choose to your email address.

The excitement today is that a group of Googlers have apparently finally not only gotten Google’s support to pursue the project, but that they have started working the technical details. As Googler Brad Fitpatrick writes today:

In other words, we’ve eliminated both technical & political hurdles. We can now work on this spec, implement, push, try, rinse, repeat…. until we’re all reasonable happy.

Googler Brett Slatkin (incidentally, Fitzpatrick’s partner in making PubSubHubbub) explains to us that while it hasn’t been turned on yet, and that there’s still a lot of work to do on the spec, the idea is to go into testing mode soon. Fitzpatrick notes that there will be a small experiment going on internally with some Googlers’ Gmail accounts.

Without knowing much about the technical details behind it, the core idea behind WebFinger immediately strikes me as a good one. It’s taking something everyone knows on the web (your email address) and making it immensely more valuable as a way to identify yourself and information about you. Exactly what kind of information? Here are some of the ideas from the WebFinger Google Code page:

• public profile data
• pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server)
• a public key
• other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each)
• a URL to an avatar
• profile data (nickname, full name, etc)
• whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com
• or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as.

This is definitely something to watch for in the coming months.

[photo: flickr/chris owens]

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One of the most fundamental reasons for Google’s success is the site’s speed — search queries typically take a fraction of a second, and most of the company’s other services are usually very snappy as well (save for Gmail, which occasionally bogs down). Part of this speed can be attributed to the company’s obsession with minimalist design and its vast server farms, but you can be sure there’s no shortage of optimization that’s going on to make sure pages load as quickly as possible on the front end, too.

To help streamline its sites, Google has been using an internal tool called Page Speed, and starting today it’s opening up the tool to the developer community. The newly open-sourced tool is a Firefox plugin that integrates with Firebug, making suggestions on how to speed up your site based on best practices.

From the Google blog post:

For example, Page Speed automatically optimizes images for you, giving you a compressed image that you can use immediately on your web site. It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn’t actually used to display the page, which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Yahoo offers a similar tool for Firefox called YSlow, which is also meant to help developers streamline their websites.

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This morning, Google announced two enhancements to their OpenID API. For end users, they have rolled out a popup-style interface for simpler logins with fewer redirects and less confusion. They also extended their Attribute Exchange to include more user data, such as first and last names, preferred language, country, and other, more personal information available via the Google Data API.

At the OpenID blog, David Recordon wrote this morning, “This means that Google users signing into sites… now have a much better user experience, one on par with Facebook Connect.” The screenshots below show the new login in action.

Sponsor

According to this morning’s entry from Yariv Adan on the Google Code Blog, the new UI “is designed to streamline the federated login experience for users. Specifically, it’s designed to ensure that the context of the Relying Party website is always available and visible, even in the extreme case where a confused user closes the Google approval window.”

The post continues with a specific use case. OpenID products company JanRain is using the new API in their RPX offering. The first step on the login page “is identical to that of the ‘full page’ version, and does not require any changes in the Relying Party UI,” read the blog.”

In addition to signing into sites using their Google accounts, users are also sharing specific data with the Relying Party website. The data shared can range from the user’s email, first and last name, preferred language, and country, to other information available through the Google Data API, including the user’s Contacts List, Web Albums, or Calendar.

Adan writes, “Google strongly believes that the data our users trust us with belongs to them and should always be available for them to use. By providing users with more secure means to share their data, they can benefit from a much more streamlined, personalized and socially relevant experience when they log in to trusted websites.”

The new process also allows a streamlined conversion process for Relying Party websites.

Discuss

Google is now making it easier for Websites to surface Friend Connect features with what it is calling the Social Bar. This is a toolbar that Websites can add to their homepage or any other page they wish, and then they can add links for drop-down gadgets that lets site visitors do things such as sign in via Friend Connect, see who else has signed in recently, check out comments, or site members, all from Social Bar. Here is an example.

Basically, the social bar is a small strip that webmasters can layer on top of any web page, either at the top or at the bottom. That way, website visitors are provided with a bit of information, and the bar also lets them interact with any social feature the site incorporates through drop-down gadgets. As Software Engineer Christopher Wren explains in the announcement blog post, this is a good way to save on pixel space and keep putting the actual content of the site forward first.

Here are some of the gadgets Websites can include in the Social Bar, from Google’s brand new Social Web blog:

• On the far left, visitors can join your site, see their identity, and edit their profiles and settings.
• Your visitors can also delve into your site’s activity stream to see what’s happening throughout your site. It includes links to recent posts made anywhere on your site, helping other visitors quickly find where the hottest conversations are taking place.
• The wall gadget can host a discussion for the whole site, a section of pages, or each individual page, letting your visitors easily read and leave comments.
• Lastly, visitors can see the other members of your site, check out their profiles to see how like-minded they really are, and even become friends.

The toolbar approach is both an attempt at ubiquity and invisibility at the same time. Google wants Friend Connect to be everywhere, but at the same time it doesn’t want to seem too pushy about being everywhere. Hence, the seemingly innocuous toolbar. But that toolbar expands with pop-down gadgets, which takes advantage of Google’s strengths with creating gadgets in iGoogle and elsewhere. Can a Facebook Connect toolbar be far behind?

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Picasa, the popular free photo management software made by Google, has finally made its way to the Mac. The application has long been noticeably absent on the Macintosh – especially given the fact that it has been available for Linux (which typically lags behind Macs and Windows) since 2006. It’s also a direct competitor to Apple’s long running iPhoto product, which has come with all new Macs for years. So how does it stack up?

In my brief testing the application seems to be very snappy (much faster than iPhoto), though it lacks the sleek look of Apple’s products. Photos import quickly, effects are easy to find and apply, and most things are intuitive, though the folder browsing can be a little confusing. It might not be as pretty as iPhoto, but I won’t be surprised if power-users make the switch (or at least consider it).

One of the biggest differences between Picasa and iPhoto is that Picasa doesn’t move or reorganize images, but instead keeps track of where your images are scattered across your hard drive and allows you to view them in one place. For users that manually manage their photos by sorting them into folders, this is a very welcome change. In contrast, iPhoto has long transfered your photos to its own library, and encouraged users to sort their photos through the app itself.

Given that iPhoto has come preinstalled on every Mac for years, Google is doing doing everything it can to make Picasa play nice with your existing library. While users can typically modify any image on their hard drive directly from Picasa, all images in iPhoto’s library are treated differently: the application will copy these images to a new location, and only then apply edits. The application also allows users to revert back to previous versions.

Picasa is a welcome alternative to iPhoto, but it’s still premature to drop iPhoto entirely. It’s highly likely that Apple will unveil a new version of iPhoto at tomorrow’s Macworld keynote, and you can be sure that it will include some significant enhancements.

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Google’s universal sign-in system, Friend Connect, which just opened to all Websites two weeks ago, now accepts Twitter IDs as a sign-in option. That means when you visit a participating Website that accepts Friend Connect as a log-in option, you can sign in using your Twitter account. If any of the people you follow on Twitter are also members of the third-party site, they will automatically be added as your friends.

Friend Connect also supports IDs from Google, Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID. For instance, I tried this on the Go2Web2.0 blog, which has implemented Friend Connect, and it gave me the option to use my Gmail or Twitter accounts (I could also use Orkut or Plaxo). I used my Twitter sign-in without a hitch. (Update: Actually, this is a little confusing, but it signs you in first using one of the four credentials above and then asks you if you want to add Twitter).

The race is on between Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, and MySpaceID to sign up the most third party sites. Adding Twitter as an issuing party is a big win for Friend Connect because sites are going to choose the sign-in system that gives their visitors the most options and broadest reach.

There is nothing stopping sites from implementing more than one sign-in system, but at some point presenting visitors with too many options becomes confusing. For instance, we use Facebook Connect, in addition to our own sign-in system. Should we add Friend Connect? Probably. MySpaceID?

It’s only been a couple weeks since these have become widely available, and already universal sign-in is anything but. Here is a list of sites that are live with Facebook Connect, and some example Friend Connect sites can be found here (if anyone has a more comprehensive list of sites live with Friend Connect, please add to comments).

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Amidst all the talk about data portability and net identity, all that end users want to know is: how can I use this, and is it any good? Now both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are open to everyone; we’ve looked into these two services to see what they offer and which one is easier to use.

So, what’s the main difference here?

In the simplest of terms, both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect let you create applications on your website that allow your visitors to interact with the site and their friends by logging in with their Google, Facebook, or OpenID credentials.

The key difference between the two services is the fact that Facebook is one social network, while Google Friend Connect is open to any site, service or social network that uses OpenID for identification. For example, with Google Friend Connect your visitors can log in using their Gmail credentials, meaning that they don’t really have to be a part of any (strictly defined) social network at all. Facebook Connect, on the other hand, is useless to anyone who’s not a Facebook user.

Available widgets

Let’s say you want to add either Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect functionality to your web site or a blog. What widgets are there at your disposal? Google calls their widgets “gadgets,” and there’s already a wide assortment at your disposal, with members of the community constantly adding more. They aren’t all Friend Connect ready, though; you can currently only choose from a small selection.

As far as Facebook Connect goes, you must create your own application, which is not that easy (see below). Logic tells me that there must be a gallery of apps you can readily add to your site, but I don’t see one; if I’m mistaken here, please correct me in the comments.

Ease of use

If you’re a web site owner, there’s a significant difference here. Both services require you to add some snippets of code to your site; however, adding Facebook Connect apps is a much more convoluted process. In short, the entire process is aimed at developers, not casual users, and it will scare away anyone without adequate technological knowledge.

This is a big, and important difference. Anyone can add Google Friend Connect to their site; as far as Facebook Connect goes, I’m convinced that many users will find the process too complicated.

On the user end of the equation, ease of use is nearly equal: a site which has either Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect enabled will have a form that lets you login with your OpenID or Facebook credentials, and the usability from there depends on the individual widgets and applications.

Two way communication

There’s one other subtle difference between Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect: the latter is much more about two-way communication than the former. A Facebook Connect application can send your activities back to Facebook; Google Friend Connect has no such central place, although in theory it can have many (e.i. all the social networks that support OpenID).

Therefore, I reckon that in general, Facebook Connect will primarily be interesting to bigger sites who will want to engage Facebook’s huge audience. Google Friend Connect will also be used by smaller sites who’ll simply want to add a fun widget to their site.

User base

If you look at these two services from an identity perspective, deciding which is better can be tricky. Yes, Facebook is huge, but Gmail and all OpenID supporters put together are bigger. Will Facebookers be more willing to log in with their credentials into a third party site than Gmail users? It’s hard to say, but in general, my opinion is that FC and GFC are tied with this regard.

Conclusion

So, there you go: although seemingly very similar services, Google Friend Connect is (currently) aimed at a wider user base, while Facebook Connect is (currently) for developers only. There’s a difference in focus, too; Facebook Connect is more about bringing data back to Facebook, while Google Friend Connect, lacks a central place to bring back data to.

If you’ve got anything to add, or you’ve tried one of these two services and want to share your experience, we’d like to hear your comments!

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, bns124

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:

Facebook Blocks Google’s Friend Connect. There Goes the Open Web.
Plaxo Moves to Support Google Friend Connect
Google Friend Connect: Try it Now on Mashable
Google Wants To Be Your Universal Profile Too; Announces Friend Connect
Google Sings Its ABCs About Friend Connect
Friend Connect And The End Of The Fragmentation Era
Facebook Connect: The News is the News