Google plus is getting popular in the social world. But, unfortunately, to fully use its functionality we need to have more friends in it. That is where it will be difficult to migrate from facebook to Google +. However, you can use the following tricks to make this easy.

How to update your Facebook status from Google Plus:

Add your facebook update email address to any circle provided that you don’t mind sharing your updates to the circle with the world via facebook. Or you can manually add it to the share box, whenever you wish to share.

This only works for status updates and will not work if you want to share photos.

How to transfer your Photos from facebook to Google +

You can use move2picasa for this purpose.

How to find your Facebook friends:

To find out if your Facebook friends are on Google+

• Create a Yahoo! Mail account
• Import your Facebook contacts
• Export your Yahoo! Mail contact list
• Import it into your Gmail account
• The imported contacts will now show up under the “Find and Invite” section of the Circles page, the ones who already have Google+ will be listed first.
• You can invite the rest.

Profiles of Google Plus users are being displayed in the search results. Google + is the new social network launched by the Internet giant Google.

It consists of photo, short description,links to other social networking site mentioned by you in your plus profile.

It will be intresting to see if Google makes public posts of users searchable as it has been hailed as a good blogging platform. Kevin Rose has even redirected his blog http://kevinrose.com to his Google+ profile.

Update: Google is indeed showing public posts in its search result. Though I had to put in an entire sentence from Scoble’s public post in the search box to find his post, it wouldn’t be long before Google gives G+ posts more weightage for short keywords.

With Google giving importance to Google Plus posts, it seems we won’t be quiting Google plus soon. I mean, who can give up the urge of commenting on some juicy posts? Google might have other failed products like Knol which it tried to resucitate by displaying it in search results, but in this case it is social+information.

Twitter just sent out emails to all their users to inform them about the change in the way twitter interacts with external applications.

From now on all twitter application will use OAuth technology that will help application log in users without directly asking password. This means applications are no longer allowed to save password you just need  to connect the account once.

All long links will be shortened using t.co and wrapping will be done  and displayed in tweets with part of domain and title page. This will be extended to all apps.

egs A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.

Delhi police have started a facebook page to help ease traffic problems in the capital city of India.

From NYT

The traffic police department started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos.

It is a cool thing here in India where red tape and bureaucracy slows down everything. A government department using Internet, especially a social networking site like facebook is refreshing.

By Lingaraj G J - Flickr

It will be interesting to see if the police allow the people to film cops breaking laws themselves.

We have seen some interesting twitter users and innovative applications and gadgets that make Twitter a fun service. But, this innovation is the most offbeat one.

According to CNN, world’s largest toy maker Mattel is making a gadget that will help puppies tweet their message on twitter.

Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that you attach to your pet’s dog collar and connect its USB receiver to your computer. Then you create a Twitter account for your dog and enjoy updates all day from Sparky or whatever its name is on your computer or smartphone.

The tag is set with several pre-recorded tweets that are triggered by the dog’s activities. So if he’s running around, you might get a tweet that says “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing and…OOUUUCHH!”

You know how much some people love their dogs and how far they would go to pamper and make them feel special. From expensive Loui Vuitton bags to diamond studded collar, some dogs have all the luck. However, this gadget is not that expensive and will cost around US$ 29.

Would you buy this for your dog? If you do make sure you give me his twitter link. Woof !!!

Twitter has evolved from being just about status update to a productivity tool for many. There are several cool apps for twitter from searching from photos and video to products.

Latest is the job search application from TwitJobSearch.com. Its algorithm searches for jobs posted by recruiters in the twittersphere.

To post jobs just tweet about the job and give the link, their robots would do the rest. You can create a profile for yourself, by signing in using twitter, for finding a job. You can post jobs to find employees, too. I think you can initially only apply for 5 jobs per day.

TweetDeck and TwitJobSearch.com have launched JobDeck a desktop app to search for jobs.

There seems to be a problem with Facebook chat bar. The small bar at the bottom of the page which contains notifications, chat and bookmarks has disappeared from homepage.

I thought this might be a problem with my browser. So I checked twitter to find people facing same problem with other browsers, too.

However, you can find this bar in any other facebook page like profile page, help page , etc. This problem is only with the homepage.

Edit: The attach option of the write message box is also missing on the home page. However, it is visible in profile page.

Love to chat? Here is the list of Free Open Source chat clients that will let you chat using many networks at same time.

Pidgin (Windows,Mac,Linux):  Pidgin is an easy to use, multi-protocol chat client client used by millions. You can connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP and more chat networks all at once. Additional features include file transfer, away messages and typing notification. You can enrich Pidgin’s  experience by increasing its  feature set by downloading plug-ins.

Digsby(windows): Digsby supports most major chat networks and has a easy to manage buddy list. It also supports web based email service providers like gmail, yahoo, etc. Plus you can connect to social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, myspace.

Adium(mac): Adium has a pleasing UI. It supports many chat networks, file transfer,etc.

Miranda(windows): Miranda is a light weight and fast chat client. It also supports various chat networks.

Meebo(online): You can chat on all major chat networks including Facebook chat. Useful if your company or educational institution has blocked you from downloading the chat clients or signing in in any of the network online egs Gchat, facebook ,etc.

So happy chatting.

Twitter is growing immensely. More and more people are joining twitter on daily basis. If you tweet daily you might have noticed growth in your followers. So as an unwritten Twitter etiquette, you follow them back. But for most of us, the number of followers is always less than the number of following.

So how to cut down the extra people we are following? It’s simple there are several twitter tools that let you mass unfollow those who don’t follow you. But that is not a solution as most of the time people don’t follow you back because your tweet does not interest them. You need to keep following the good and regular tweeters. Reply to their tweet and if possible retweet. This will help you maintain good relations and maybe after some time they might chose to follow you.

In order to reduce the number of following without losing out important one way or two way relations you can do the following things.

1. Unfollow your disinterested friends: Let’s face it most of the people join twitter due to its hype. Most of your friends might have joined it and then used its find friends through email feature to follow you. You return the favor by following them. But alas, your friends don’t go beyond the step 1 i.e. account creation. They have hardly tweeted and then they quit twitter. All you have to do is unfollow them but they would continue to follow you as they will never check their account. Hence, you can reduce the disparity between your followers and following.
2. Unfollow Celebrity tweeters: You might be following several celebrities’ tweeters from Ashton Kutcher to CNN. Are you really interested in their tweets? Due really care what Ashton is doing? These tweeters will never follow you back. Many online companies like Google have twitter accounts. Google has accounts for most of its services like Adsense, too. They make tweet several announcements. But it is same as the one made on their blogs. So, if you have subscribed to the RSS feed of their blogs, you don’t really have to follow them on twitter.
3. Unfollow spammers: Many people join twitter with the aim of promoting products so as to gain affiliate commissions. You follow them in the beginning after they follow you but then you realize that the person is just a spammer. If you are a good tweeter, doing it once a while, is acceptable. But these spammers just continue to tweet affiliate links. Unfollow them and you know what ,they would continue to follow you. Hence, you have managed to reduce your following keeping your followers constant.
4. Unfollow Trends tweeters: If you are following several tweeters who tweet trending topics on twitter then just unfollow them. If necessary, keep only one. But now since Twitter displays trending topics on your home page then it is not necessary.