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Today, Google Buzz was announced. I have been testing it for about two hours. It adds value to Google’s email service by extending this social media service with a message stream smoothly integrated into your mail user interface. Actually, you may choose to send your posts to either the public world or carefully select recipients.

What makes this new tool so interesting to me is the fact that we have another  “The Google Way of Order” the information of this world. It is easy, clear and yet efficient.

Of course, you have your stream linked to Picasa, Reader, Twitter and many more. You can access your stream from your mobile phone. And you manage your recipient groups choosing from Google Contacts. So you have an all-in-one solution.

But what is the difference between Google Buzz and Google Wave? Both are about some kind of a stream, right? Right! However, while Google Buzz is dedicated to social life, to sharing your thoughts, photos etc. with your friends, Google Wave is more like a collaboration tool targeting the business use case.

As a conclusion of my first day with Google Buzz I may say that this is really about adding value to an email service and that this will surely create much fun.

I am so thrilled by Google Books – they offer complete books with expired copyright. As far as I am concerned, these old books are more charming anyway. Even better: they offer the original scans of the books (i.e. including all paintings and the original fonts) for free and legal download as PDF and some even as ePub, the appropriate format for the eBook readers of Sony.

Again: They provide the full scans! You will experience the original charm, even though you will probably read them on some screen. I have already figured out some really beautiful ones I shall read in the near future:

• Edgar Allan Poe: “The poetical works of Edgar Allen Poe” with so wonderful, really, wonderful drawings … enhancing Poe’s gloomy stories in a way that I have never experienced from any concurrent printing
• “Familiar Lecture on Botany”: Also of minor scientific interest (taxonomy has been completely shook up since genetic analysis took over), it is still of great aesthetic value to me. Another nice example: “British Zoology”
• “An essay on archery”: I really don’t know where to find such a in-depth monograph on such a topic. If it wasn’t digitized, I wonder when this knowledge would have been lost
• “The Travels and Researches of Baron Humboldt”: Alexander von Humboldt was a great German explorer. He was the first to explore and describe South America (and Venezuela in particular) not from the master-and-slave, but from the human view. The people of Venezuela are still thankful for his work. Here, however, is some of his important work, again, with breathtaking drawings
• etc.

Apart from the personal joy one might experience when being offered such a huge library, the sheer fact that this knowledge is now available for each and everybody is, to me, another real revolution.

Again: I am thrilled …

Prerequisite

This is a summary of the steps you need to take in order to make use of Google’s services from your local client. Here is a list of software you need to download and install:

• Mozilla Thunderbird: This is a free e-mail client. Calendar and task functionality will be added by some add-ons (see next bullets)
• Lightning: This is an add-on for Thunderbird. Download it, start Thunderbird and from the menu bar select “Extras” -> “Add-Ons” and press the “Install” button. Choose the download, wait until installation has finished and restart Thunderbird
• Provider for Google Calendar: Another add-on for Thunderbird. This one enables bidirectional communication with Google calendar. Just install it
• Google Contacts 0.5.51: Another add-on for Thunderbird. This one is used to synchronize the address books of Thunderbird and Google
• Gmail IMAP Account Setup: A wizard for setting up a google IMAP in Thunderbird. Google’s IMAP account uses lables (tags) which is not so straight-foreward to cope with. This wizard not only sets up your account easily, but it also performs some optimizations. Use it rather than setting up your account manually

Set-up Google Mail

• In Thunderbird, choose “Extras” -> “Accounts” from the menu bar and press “New Account”
• Choose “Google Mail IMAP”
• Just enter your login name. The wizard will do the rest for you.

Add a Google Calendar

First, you need to get the URL of your calendar

• Go to the Google Calendar site using your internet browser
• Choose “Preferences” (top right)
• Choose “Calendar” from the tab that appears
• Click on the calendar name
• Scroll down
• Click on the “XML” button, preferably the one of your private adress
• Right click on the link and choose “Copy Link”

Now add the link within you clipboard to Thunderbird’s calendar:

• In Thunderbird, choose “Calendar” from the tab at the left bottom
• From the menu bar, choose “Calendar” -> “New Calendar”
• Choose “From Network” and continue
• Choose “Google Calendar” and paste the URL you just copied into the text field
• Finally, choose a name, a colour and you’re done
• Setup the “Contacts” add-on. It is pretty easy, you’ll find your way

Celebrate …