Gamers Unite!! Google Buzz group on Steam.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people on Google Buzz are gamers, so I thought it’d be fun to play together online some time.

I’ve created a Steam group, so we can find each other easily :)

Google Buzz community on Steam.

Feel free to add me on Steam too: rameen

Unofficial Google Buzz Gadget for iGoogle

My friend Igor Burattini and I have made an unofficial Google Buzz gadget for your iGoogle.

Get the gadget HERE.

(Thanks to Ryan Jones for the better screenshot)

Also, we’ve submitted it to the desktop gadget list, so hopefully you can use it on your Google Desktop soon!

Why I’m betting on Google Buzz and leaving Twitter

Earlier this week when Google Buzz came out, my initial impressions were quite negative.

I’ll try explain my thoughts on the service, and why I think it will be a winner.

My main gripes with the service so far:

1) Lack of friends

This is the major issue with the service. I have lots of friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Why would I spend time migrating all my friends from each service there, just to get very similar functionality?

2) Super difficult RSS integration

I tried for a few hours to integrate custom RSS feeds. It’s so straightforward on Friendfeed, why not on Buzz?

In the end I just gave up and put my Friendfeed in Buzz. Let’s just hope Facebook doesn’t pull the plug on Friendfeed until Google fixes the issue.

3) There is no standalone page

Right now you have to keep bouncing between Gmail and your Google Profile like an idiot :)

It’d be nice to have this somewhat centralized.

4) Privacy concerns?

To be honest, I stopped worrying about privacy when I started becoming more active on Facebook.

However, I’m not thrilled about the idea of receiving spam because of Buzz.

Why do I think Buzz will be a winner then?

1) Early adopters

It’s pretty impressive that most of my Twitter contacts are already on Buzz.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise though. Twitter is mostly early adopters, power users, whatever you wanna call them. As a result, leaving Twitter doesn’t seem so bad now.

2) More than Twitter and Friendfeed (but less than Facebook)

Unlike Twitter, it’s more than just text. Comments are threaded. You can reply in Gmail. You can post pics and videos. It can do pretty much all that Friendfeed can, or at least has the potential to do so.

I also like the more advanced features like search, the “people near you” feature.

3) Service integration

Buzz is integrated in Reader (that’s partly a down side as well), Maps, Gmail, Contacts, Profile.

Twitter is integrated in nothing.

4) Let’s be friends

At the end of the day, it’s not so difficult to add friends again. We’ve all done this in the past when we joined FB and Twitter. So let’s be friends :)

Blogging about Finland’s startups

I’ve been asked by Nerdstalker to make some videos of the startup scene here.

I’m going to make a series of video interview with different startups, both young and “old”, to present them to a US audience.

The idea for now is that I want to cover only -startups- (eg: young tech companies) that are international or interesting to foreign readers (maybe we can extend that later :) .

If you’ve got any requests or suggestions, feel free to contact me!

MySites – status of January

MySites speed should be back to normal now!

As I explained earlier, MySites has been getting considerably more traffic lately.

Many people have been asking me why the site has been so slow. The reason is that we weren’t ready to grow so fast.

We didn’t expect things to grow at that rate., and no matter the effort, traffic grew faster. Sorry about this.

We took the decision to slow down most of our Chinese traffic, so that our Western users get the same experience as before.

The last post I did about this was on January 10th. Here is what it looks like until January 31st.

Lessons learned:

- You always think “it’s a good problem to have”, until your users can’t get to the page and you’re not delivering them the service they expect.

- Internet growth can be unpredictably fast.

Global Game Jam (I made a video game!)

This weekend, I was at Global Game Jam.

It’s a worldwide event, in 40 countries, where people get together in small groups, and have 48 hours to create a game from scratch.

Here is our game:

The Ultimate Showdown!

You can download the game here.

It is a mixture of:

- Classic RPG battles (like Final Fantasy)

- Poker

- Rock Paper Scissors

… Mixed with Internet meme elements!

————————————————-

Credits:

Ramine Darabiha Game Designer

Marco Rapino Developer

Carl-Anthon Kranck Designer

Sanna Paananen Artist

“The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny” song used with the permission of Neil Cicierega.

Repost: Lessons learned in Silicon Valley

This morning I received an email from a student who’s enthusiastic about his new startup. He asked me about what to do in San Francisco.

I forwarded him a list of events to follow, and a video presentation about what I’ve learned during my trip there.

Since this advice doesn’t get old, here’s a link to the video :)

http://vimeo.com/8341355

MySites stats Aug 09 – Jan 10. Exponential curve

Here is a quick overview of the hits on MySites, from August 2009 to January 2010 (though January is not over yet). As you can see, we’ve been growing substantially for 3 months now. Here’s your “hockey stick” :)

This is due to a few factors:

- MySites hosts some of the most popular Google Chrome extensions

- partnership with Xihalife

- significant increase in traffic from China

We’re hoping that with the announcement of our new design and new advisors joining us (more on that soon), the trend will accelerate.

Urgent! Free game download: Medal of Honor Airborne

EA is offering Medal of Honor Airborne with every purchase at the EA store.

Thing is, there’s one game you can buy for free, and then get this game for free.

Use this tip now before they fix it :)

Steps:

Go to the EA Store.

Search for Battleforge

Click buy

At the next page, it offers to get Medal of Honor Airborne

Click buy

Get the EA download manager (needs a user name etc, it’s like Steam basically).

Merry christmas!

Who wants Wave Invites?

Oh, Google Wave.

It’s a new era of collaboration, workflow 2.0, it’s changed my life and it will make your life wonderful. *

I have 7 invites left, so send me a message with your Google Email, and first come first served!

(* none of this is true).