Over night I've had a chance to sit back and review the buzz about Google's Buzz (to avoid confusion with Yahoo! Buzz or any other social apps with 'buzz' in its name).

One thing I will say first off is that we know Google has an excellent track record overall with producing fast, usable, popular Web apps and services. There is no doubt in my mind that Gmail is in fact the best email client available* (yes, even better than any desktop client I've ever used). For example, why can't all email clients deal with meeting invites like Gmail? So, on the face of it, Gmail and Buzz looks like a great combination from a user experience perspective. The mobile client, experienced through my location aware iPhone, also feels good.

However, alas, these days I spend most of my time in a desktop mail client or my iPhone mail client, because I've got multiple mail boxes to manage (and no, I don't want to route them via Gmail). Unfortunately a lot of the really good stuff appears to take place in the client provided by Google... so are all those third-party developers going to be able to replicate that experience in the mailbox you are using instead?

This is quite a contrast to Twitter, with its generally minimalist approach that has seeded a great deal of innovation both in terms of software, but also how people have invented different ways of working around and within its constraints. Twitter works better for me as it sits separately from other identities - and in fact, using a desktop Twitter client I can manage multiple identities. I also have a slick iPhone app to go with it.

Google of course is placing emphasis on the power of analytics of overcome filter failure. However, as I signed up for Buzz via Gmail I felt it failed on the first hurdle. There was no one it suggested that I either wasn't already following some other way or didn't particularly want to follow anyway. Of course, that's just my experience. An opt in suggestion or expertise location is one thing, but scanning my Gmail address book and equating that to my socialgraph is, well, a major filter failure if you ask me.

I note that Dion Hinchcliffe wrote yesterday about the same issue and said:

"for hyperpersonal, in Buzz this is driven by underlying algorithms that filter and guide the user experience. Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, noted that Google’s insight into the early Web with the famousPage Rank algorithm drove their initial success. He went on to hint that they believe the same algorithmic insight into the Social Web will succeed with Buzz. Either way, Google has clearly used its competency in data and computation to attempt to one-up today’s online social networking services... I do think they’re generally on the right track here but the left brain approach to the Web that dominates Google’s product strategy tends to obscure the notion that social systems are also highly self-organizing and emergent.

To me, Google Buzz makes a lot of sense for people that do spend a time in Gmail and have lots of friends using Gmail and Google Chat. It will make a lot of sense if they are aiming, as they've hinted, at providing a corporate version as part of their enterprise apps offering (so, rather than Twitter being concerned, its the likes of Yammer and Social Cast that should keep an eye on Google in this instance).

If its going to fail, its because ironically it might be because its too clever for its own good.

*Ok, I admit it - its just the Ninja theme I love.

The agreement is significant to Google as it has spent more than two years trying to court the university to adopt Gmail for staff members. But the university was hesitant to move staff members on to Gmail due to regulatory and cost factors.

They were concerned that their email messages would be subject to draconian US law.

In particular, they were worried about protecting their intellectual property under the Patriot Act and Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Mr Bailey said.

"In the end, Google agreed to store that data under EU jurisdiction, which we accepted," he said.

The university had to comply with state laws, which mandated that data had to be stored in NSW.

Google was not going to build a local data centre anytime soon so Macquarie had to maintain an offline archive of data at the university, he said. In the past, Macquarie was concerned about the cost of relaying large files to and from the US, where Google's data centre resides. But this been resolved thanks to the Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARnet), which the university is a member of. "AARNet peered with Google (and Microsoft) which means it won't cost us anything more," Mr Bailey said.

A $2 million limited liability was increased to $10m in case Gmail stopped working. "You need proper recourse if your free email service stops working."

Its important to note how Macquarie Uni resolved their concerns about moving staff mailboxes to Gmail... a combination of getting their off shored data managed under a more friendly jurisdiction, creating their own archive to comply with local law, data peering and risk management through increased financial liability provisions. A good checklist for other large Australian organisations that want to go down the same path?

When you think about it, this is a natural extension of search and augment reality techniques. Goggles is more than just landmarks and places - it can be used to find information about books, contact information, artwork, wine and logos from the images you scan.

Obviously I'm disappointed you don't actually get to wear some kind of AR 'goggles' for this, but the contact lens HUD is still under development.

Meanwhile, those of us with iPhones will need to wait a little longer until we get to play with the Goggles too.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010...

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web...

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.

As I was just saying the other day... and most users won't even care that it runs on Linux - for them it will just run on the Web.