There is now a link on Google's homepage for you to try out the instant preview feature. Or you can go from here: http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/
Btw one other nice thing is that you can now use instant preview to easily see how exactly Google's crawler "sees" a web page. (Though yes Google Cache can show it too but is in HTML with broken CSS and images)
Every time I have used Flash on my Ubuntu, mostly for playing videos, I must manually use the `top` and `kill` command or Chrome's task manager to manually kill the npviewer.bin process. Flash always eats more than 50% of my CPU even long after I have closed all web pages using Flash, only killing it will bring my CPU back to idle and shuts off the noisy laptop fan. There is huge difference in power consumption between an idle CPU and running CPU, that's why for laptop it is best to keep the CPU idle most of the time to save power.
Now having to kill the Flash process manually is not user friendly at all. I'd imagine that average joes can't do anything on it and have no idea that Flash is the one that causing their laptop fan spinning, heating up, and soaking battery powers.
I have used Buzz for a month now and I'm quite satisfied with its functionality. IMHO Google Buzz is way different from what we all thought and is much more sophisticated. Buzz is some sort like Facebook operates in Twitter mode, that is, conversations and social interactions are made in Facebook style, but the social connection model is Twitter's public follower/followee style.
I feel that Google Buzz was already designed for public communication since it is launched. Currently I'm following 90 people with professional Google Profile who I think have use Buzz in the correct way. By professional I mean, these people write meaningful microblog posts that span few paragraph, share interesting links that talk about technology, and have meaningful discussion with their followers. I think the private features are just minor side features that allow some private communication, but Google is not really interested in that and the private features have proved to be more troublesome than is useful.
Google Buzz is just so much cooler than Twitter when you use it in a public way. You can post messages as long as you want, no 140 characters limit on Twitter and 420 characters limit on Facebook; You can write comment directly on someone's Buzz post and seen by everyone directly; You can embed links, photos, and videos directly in your Buzz post - no more short URL; You can "retweet" someone's Buzz post easily by clicking the reshare button. When Buzz is so powerful, I just don't see the point of using Twitter anymore.
Behind the scene, Google Buzz is also significantly different than other social networks. The protocol behind Buzz is really just the core product Google is creating, and Google Buzz is expected to be one of the providers within the decentralized Buzz social network. Google has developed various technologies such as PubSubHubbub and Salmon protocol in hope to create a public, open, and decentralized social network, but we all fail to see the true value behind Buzz. Still though, I don't really like the current Buzz protocols, and I think there are better ways to build such protocols.
Google Buzz also has significantly improve its privacy settings since its troublesome debut. When I first used Google Buzz, Buzz will notify me that the stuff that I'm doing is public whenever I first time made public actions such as posting public message, comment in public posts, follow other public profiles, like or reshare a post. And to avoid people confused on the publicy of their actions, the privacy scope is shown clearly in each and every post. It even states clearly on resharing that "X people publicly reshared this". Sometimes I even found it too annoying and thought, why don't Buzz says "X people publicly liked this" as well.
I think the biggest mistake Google Buzz has is its integration with Gmail. Google first introduced Buzz through Gmail in the hope of gaining market share through Gmail - HUGE mistake. There is a fundamental mismatch between Buzz and Gmail - Buzz is public oriented but Gmail is private oriented, and when public features are mixed into private account, disaster happens. While I am happy to have a public Buzz profile, I don't necessary want to correlate it with my private Gmail profile. That's why I created a separate Google account just for the use of Google Buzz. Now it's not that I have embarrassing stuff associated in my email account, but I want a way to clearly separate my public and private identities - albeit a weak separation that people can still find out the link if they want it bad enough because I made no effort to hide the link. We just need a way to separate identity from account - so that we can create multiple identities (persona) in one account and associate the identities with different purposes and privacy scope.
The other problem of Buzz integrated with Gmail is that the UI sux. Google Buzz is no way similar to Gmail, and forcefully cram the Buzz interface into existing Gmail interface is stupid. It would be much better to move Buzz into a separate page, to make both products less bloated.
You missed something else: you get privacy protection in public places through publicy. Although everyone can see what you are doing, you are also protected because you can see what everyone else is doing. In physical public space, it is very hard for casual stalker to stalk anyone exactly because the stalker himself don't have privacy in public space. If someone stalks you, he can be spotted easily by you or people around you and get his reputation ruined.
CCTV invades people's privacy by introducing asymmetry in publicy: Anyone including the CCTV can see you, but you can't see the person watching you behind the CCTV. This can actually be solved by increasing the public visibility of the watchers, for the watchers to be watched. If the security room itself has CCTV so that everyone else can see what the watchers are doing, we'll get back the publicy symmetry and get protected.
The same can be said to public photography including smart phone cameras and street view. Traditionally, camera was large so the photographer had increased public visibility when taking photograph. Smart phones break the publicy symmetry by making it not obvious that someone is taking a photograph. To protect our privacy on being photographed, we need to increase the publicy of the photographer to make his action of taking photograph obvious. This is why making rules like the Camera Phone Predator Attack Alert Act is better than making laws that prohibit people to take photograph in public. Though, I'll not comment on whether we really need a law to enforce this, but having a rule at least allows ethical photographers to play nice with public photography.
Google street view is just a form of intensive photography, but we can't really define how much photos taken are considered too much and thus illegal. But what we can do is to increase the publicy of the street view vehicle, so that people can notice the vehicle more easily and avoid being photographed. For example, the street view vehicle can be painted bright color, install flashing light bar, or even make noise and warning before photographing, depending on how much we're willing to trade off between visibility and annoyance. But what about those stuff that you can't move such as buildings? Well, the same as basic photography, if you refuse to move away things that you don't want to be photographed even after the photographer give full notice in public space, then the photographer has full right and to take the photograph ethically without your consent.
You said that looking into your house from places higher than your fence is illegal, what about if I view it through a nearby multi-story apartment? If I stay at the fourth floor of the apartment and I look at your two-story house through my window, does it consider illegal? How about the children who look into your house when they are in school bus going home? You made the assumption that the world is full of low density residence where there is no higher ground or public places that are higher than one story, but that is really the minority rather than norm. If seeing your house through fence is considered privacy invasive, then today we won't have skycrappers and multistory apartment that allow us to look through any window over the next block.
The Tao doesn't take sides; it gives birth to both wins and losses. The Guru doesn't take sides; she welcomes both hackers and lusers.
