Google robot cars to update street view?

I wonder if Google's robot cars are expected to update Google Street View more or less non-stop. That would be a pretty big advantage for the company, to have up-to-the-day visual data on city streets, but it could also raise some privacy concerns. Right now, Street View is updated at intervals of a few years, in Australia at least. That's at the level where getting caught on Street View is kind of a novelty and something you might even aim for. If, however, there are Street View captures every single day in some places, then you're more likely to consider it a bit of an invasion. You don't want to get caught on Street View every single day on your way to work. You don't want the only "safe" place to be inside the car itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It puts us under surveillance.
PPS - So do security cameras, but those results aren't just available to everyone.

Google feature shrink

Google is betting a lot on Google+, shoehorning in a lot of features that used to be provided by other services. Chat? Google+ Hangouts. Latitude? Google+ location tags. YouTube comments? Google+ posts. I suppose, in one sense, it's good, and I didn't use some of those services anyway, so that's more neutral. On the other hand, when they're absorbed into Google+, those services inevitably lose features, and they seem to be the features I was using.

This says one of two things. Either Google is doing a sloppy job incorporating these new features into G+, implying they might come back later, or I am significantly atypical as a Google customer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm willing to accept that I am atypical.
PPS - It seems to be the way I am.

Gmail increased image security

Gmail has taken the excellent step of increasing image safety in emails by pre-loading them and presenting transcoded images by proxy. This means it's safe for you to always show images in Gmail now, and you as a user don't need to make a security decision whenever an email contains pictures. That's good, because people are, on the whole, pretty bad at making security decisions. However, Gmail's new functionality is also disruptive to old marketing email practices.

It used to be the case that embedded email images could track who had opened an email and when, by using a unique address for the image in each individual email. Whenever that address was accessed, you could know who was looking at that email. Now that Google hides all image loading behind a proxy, you can't really rely on it any more. It doesn't tell you that an email address is valid, because Google might open that image anyway for an invalid email address, and you can't tell that a particular person opened the email either, because of the same image pre-loading. This could be pretty big.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's one of those situations where we win, Google wins and spammers lose.
PPS - Google's win here is a more usable and more secure email service.

Google+ makes YouTube comments worse

Google's algorithm for determining what is a "valuable" comment to promote on YouTube with its new Google+ integration includes how many replies it generated. This means trolls, who post exclusively for the "glory" of inciting as much rage in the general public as possible get promoted comments for it - exactly what they wanted. This makes the fetid cesspool of YouTube comments an even less desirable place to be, giving it over entirely to the trolls and ensuring that the rest of us never, ever read or bother writing any comments on videos ever again.

If Google wanted to shut down the YouTube comments section without actually taking it away, they couldn't have done a much more effective job than this.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I haven't bothered reading YouTube comments in a very long time.
PPS - It was terrible before this. Google+ just made the worst more accessible.

Google Glass picture taking UI

Just a quick thought: if the Google Glass aims to be a computer you wear on your face that stays out of the way all the time, then the command to take a photo shouldn't be "OK Glass, take a picture". That's cumbersome. It takes longer than pushing a shutter button.

In my opinion, the command to take a photo should just be "wow". It's what you're likely to say when you see something amazing, so Glass should take a photo at that prompt. Just my 2 cents.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I had a Glass headset, and you could remap the voice commands, that's the first thing I'd do.
PPS - Besides taking a self-portrait in a mirror, of course.

Google Now

At a prompt from my phone, I switched on Google Now, just to see what it was like. On a positive note, I like that it warns me in advance of traffic delays between wherever I am and home and work, as long as I remember to check. What's more, I didn't have to tell it where I work, it just figured it out, presumably from where I spend most of my working hours. That's both cool and a little bit scary. The weather alerts work about the same as my previous alert widget, so that's kind of a neutral change. The big negative aspect is what it did to my calendar reminders.

I rely on getting audible reminders from my phone about upcoming appointments, and Google Now does provide cards on that, but it does so in complete silence and invisibility until I go to check. At that point, I always see a weather alert, plus maybe a note that says I've got "other cards" to display. Tapping that button gives a several-second delay that might, eventually, tell me about the appointment I missed half an hour ago because of the silent "reminder". I found that I had to disable Google Now for my calendar, then turn reminders back on in my calendar app. I can live with that, but it seems like an odd implementation choice.

I've seen a couple of cards for nearby restaurants, which I thought was interesting at first, but now it seems more like advertising to me. "Hey, I noticed you're near the Hog's Breath Cafe! Why not stop in for a steak?" When I'm looking for somewhere to go, it might be good, but Google can't know when that is.
I've also started using the reminders system via voice commands. "Remind me tomorrow morning to call Dad". "Remind me when I'm at the shops to pick up milk". Location-based reminders are really handy, and creating them in natural speech is a huge plus.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Google Keep also does location reminders now.
PPS - You just can't set them up the same way.

Google Reader being shut down

I've learned recently that Google Reader is shutting down. This is a problem for me, and for an unknown number of other people too, because I mostly experience the web through Reader. The only tabs I usually have open in my browser are Reader, GMail and Facebook, and that's only because Facebook doesn't have a news feed I can subscribe to, as far as I know. Google says there aren't enough users to make Reader worth keeping, though exactly how many is "not enough", they're not saying.

My main problem with server-side programming is illustrated nicely by this whole fiasco. We may love a website or service, and we may even come to rely on it. It may become part of the world's ecosystem for its specific features (Google Reader was used as a sync point for a lot of desktop news readers) but in the end, it costs someone money to run it, and that money has to come from somewhere. As soon as the owner of the service decides that the service isn't worth keeping around, they'll cut it off and that's the end of the story. You can plead with them, sign petitions, complain in public, but at the end of the day its their server and their decision. It's out of your control.

Computers and the internet are meant to empower people, but lately it seems they mostly empower the people who already have power.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm looking into NetVibes and The Old Reader as alternatives.
PPS - The Old Reader is waiting to import my feeds, but the number of people "in queue" ahead of me keeps going up.

Where were you when you heard about Google?

It seems to be common among geeks to remember where you were when you first heard about this amazing new search engine called Google. How did such an event come to stick in our minds as much as events of great tragedy? For me, I didn't even get to see the website for several hours, so it wasn't a reaction to seeing it in action. What I remember is being at a party and a friend telling me that Google worked more intuitively than AltaVista. I filed away that info and checked it out later when I got home, I assume. So why did that conversation, rather than actually seeing Google in action, stick in my mind?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've checked this with my workmates.
PPS - All of them have a similar story.

Accessing Exchange from my Android phone is a bad idea

Google is retiring Google Calendar Sync, claiming that it is no longer needed, because it is possible to access Microsoft Exchange calendars from an Android device directly. I decided to give this a go.

After a short period of searching online for some settings advice, I got my company Exchange account added on my Android phone. It gave me a warning that the account administrator required some additional privileges on my phone in order to activate this account. Though I was somewhat wary, I clicked the "Okay" button and finished setting it up.

As soon as the phone tried to access Exchange, a message popped up to tell me exactly what permissions the Exchange server required on my phone to allow me to access my email and calendar. The first item? Erase all data, performing a full factory reset remotely, at any time, without warning or approval from me, the owner of the phone.

No. Absolutely not. I am not handing over that permission to my company admins, for two reasons. Number one, they will activate it, destroying my personal data along with my company contacts, email and calendar, if I ever choose to leave the company. That's what it's for. There's no arguing here that they won't actually do so, that the permission is just a precaution. They didn't have to request that scary permission, and they wouldn't unless they intended to use it. Number two, I don't trust that they won't accidentally activate it, say, when they're trying to nuke someone else's phone. Worse, there is apparently a bug in Exchange that can cause that feature to activate if you make ONE incorrect login attempt. Our passwords expire monthly. If I forget to change it on my phone when it expires, KABOOM. Factory-reset phone.

This leaves me with a problem: Google Calendar Sync was the only way I could legitimately access my work calendar on my phone, and it is no longer supported. I will not hand over the "Nuke My Phone" button to the company IT department. I am, therefore, out of options.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or, actually, out of Google-supported options.
PPS - I'm sure I could work something else out on my own.

How I Misuse Google Calendar Sync

Recently, I realised something about the way I've been using my calendar software and, specifically, the way I've kept using Google Calendar Sync (GCS) since a long time ago. When I had a standard Nokia mobile phone, I had to use something called Nokia PC Suite to manage it when I connected it to my computer. It allowed me to synchronise my calendar with Outlook, and I also used GCS to keep Outlook and Google Calendar in line with each other. Basically, I used Outlook as a halfway house to sync my phone to Google. It was a little ugly, but it worked pretty well. Because new events could come from anywhere, all sync actions were two-way.

When I updated to a Samsung smartphone, running Android, it started synchronising with Google Calendar directly over the air, but I still used GCS to get my work calendar on my phone. Because it's what I've always done, I set it to two-way sync.

But then I got to thinking: why should my personal calendar be synchronised to the office Outlook system? I don't need it there, and I don't need them to know any of that. Plus, with it there, if I have a personal appointment, there's not much I can do to hide it from colleagues who have calendar sharing set up. So I tried an experiment: I set the sync to just go one-way from Outlook to Google. I figured that eventually my personal events would drop off the radar and I'd get just my work events in Outlook and everything in Google. Unfortunately, that transition period is a bit more of a problem than it seems. If I edit an event on my phone, for instance, and it is in the Outlook calendar, too, then GCS will overwrite my changes with the original details. I can't change anything that appears on my Outlook calendar unless I do it there first.

So it seems like more trouble than it's worth. My options are either to delete all my personal events from Outlook and recreate them on Google, or turn two-way sync back on. For now, I'm taking the easy way out and using two-way sync. Maybe, when I move jobs, I can start on the right foot by using only one-way sync against their Outlook system.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apparently GCS is being discontinued anyway.
PPS - That's another story.

Google Play should have a wish list

Why can't I have a wish list for Android apps on the Google Play store? Or for music, movies and books to buy there? If you're going to provide that much for sale, you need to provide a way for people to manage their shopping for later, like Amazon does.

I'm guessing the answer is something like "everything is cheap enough for you to buy right now", but lots of cheap things makes shopping expensive. Some people like to budget.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And some people have no concept of budgeting.
PPS - I suppose they're easier to serve.

Google two-factor authentication

I have enabled 2-factor authentication on my Google account, which basically means I have a more complicated login process now for my Google services, especially those that are outside a web browser. For each one of those, including Chrome sync, I have to go to my Google account management page, generate an application-specific password, and enter it instead of my usual password.

Why have I decided to put myself through this? Well, Google services are a huge part of my online life. If someone else gained access to them, I would have some pretty big problems. Security is always important, and Google have my most important information, so it makes sense to use extra security measures there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I quickly got the Authenticator app on my phone.
PPS - It's faster and less annoying than waiting for SMS codes.

I want to like Google+

I haven't been using Google+, though I was quite interested in it at the beginning. Why not? Well, all my friends stayed on Facebook, because Google+ isn't much different. Until that changes, I'll still be on Facebook, like it or not.

But I want to like Google+, so every month or so I'll open it up and see what's up. Today I opened it on my phone, and it showed me a long list of links from "my" circles that were half made up of people I absolutely do not know. I tried de-selecting "What's Hot" and "Nearby", just in case Google+ had decided I would be interested in something without consulting me first, but every single link remained firmly in place. I closed it again within a minute. If you're curious, that amounts to approximately 0.0003% of my total time I spend on Google+, and that's after accounting for sleep time. Google is fighting a very long uphill battle with this one, and if Google is having a hard time competing with Facebook, what does that say about Facebook and monopoly status?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Someone needs to compete, convincingly, with Facebook.
PPS - I just wonder who that will be and how.

Google Chrome app store

I was puzzled for a short while about the Chrome "app store" functionality. It's distinct from the Android Market (now the Google Play Store) and installs things directly in the browser that are not (necessarily) websites, but must be written basically the same. Now I realise where it has come from. Google has plans to make Chrome a thin operating system for desktops and notebooks, which means the Chrome Web Store is how those computers would get their software. But since the advent of tablets, Android seems to be their operating system of choice. What does that mean for the future of the Chrome store and Chrome apps? Is Chrome a better fit for proper desktop computers than Android?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I had to choose a Chrome operating system or Android for my desktop, I'd probably go for Chrome.
PPS - But it would still be a painful restriction.

There's no reason to use Google+ yet

There is not yet a compelling reason to use Google+, and as long as Facebook has the critical mass, that is unlikely to change. It's "Like Facebook, but without all the people". What good is that? The people are why I'm on Facebook at all. Until they start on Google+, I have no reason to leave, and neither do they. If Google wants people to move to their platform instead of the current establishment, we require compatibility more than equivalence. That's tricky to write into software, but did you think changing the world would be easy? Rather than "if you build it, they will come", you get "if you build it second, they will ask Why Should We Change?".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a valid question.
PPS - And the answer is never implied.

Google closing in on itself

The funny thing about Google consolidating and promoting its own services is that it starts feeling like Google is shrinking. When Google was merely the search gateway to the web, it felt like it encompassed everything. Now that they are pushing and preferring their own services over others, it feels like Google is a shrinking corner of the web where if it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist. That's the problematic mindset the walled-garden services had back in the days before the proper internet took over.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - What made Google start thinking this was a good idea?
PPS - Maybe it was Android, at least in part.

Google's new look and why it's bad

Google have been rolling out a new look to a lot of their online services, including Calendar and GMail in particular. To me, something looks a little off about them. I think it has something to do with faded lines and soft text. It's much harder to read, and the individual elements don't stand out as much as they should. This design just feels bad to me, but Google must have done some user testing on it, so I don't know. Must be me. For instance, look at the new Google Calendar layout. It's all faded, soft text. On the previous layout, calendar events used to be displayed with a normal text weight. Now it seems they're half-weight, and it's much harder to read. It almost looks like they're deliberately faded out in order to bring your attention to something else, but that's all there is. The eye just wants to slide off and ignore them in favour of whatever else is supposed to be much more important, but the faded text is all there is. Even the current day highlight is very subtle, so the eye isn't drawn there either. So the whole effect is a page that you subconsciously don't want to look at and don't think is important because there's nothing to draw focus. Mokalus of Borg PS - Maybe it's my monitors. All of them. PPS - Though that seems unlikely.

Google+

I took a look at the Google+ website, just to see what it's like. Compared to Facebook, there's not much different. You have "circles" instead of friend groups, though I suspect they work a lot better, and the "spark" feed of things you'll probably like. The thing that really caught my eye was "hangout" video chats, which is an idea I quite like. The closest equivalent on Facebook is text chat, and that's a bit more attention-intrusive to my mind. You need to check who's online, see if they want to chat, and type for every sentence, which is nothing like real life.

Hangouts looks friendlier, like just turning on your webcam while you watch TV so that friends can virtually drop in and say "hi" or just sit there with a live video feed of you to keep them company. I think I've mentioned always-on video chat as the next step up from always-on internet, and this is getting to that point. Or it could be very useful for business conference calls, too, especially with the way it displays the current speaker big at the top. I approve.

The other side of this whole argument, of course, is that Facebook is well entrenched now, and it will take a giant heave to get it out of the way. Google+ might be capable of that, or it might just be a little blip. The most I am willing to hope for now is a fire lit under Facebook's collective rear ends when people ask "Why aren't you doing XYZ like Google+?" And that's a good thing. Competition is good, and Facebook has had far too little competition for far too long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The progression from one social network to another is part of their life cycle.
PPS - Maybe Zuckerberg missed his big chance to sell, like MySpace did.

Google robot cars

Google have been developing robot cars, but what for? Automatic Street View for Maps? Traffic analysis? World domination? When will they license it for commercial vehicles and how much will it cost? Will they have other demands in return, like advertising? Who will use it first? Buses, taxis, airport shuttles, freight truckers, high-end luxury cars? How would you feel about getting in a taxi where the "driver" is just an "operator" who sits passively and takes your money at the end? Would you feel safe being driven around by a robot bus?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If it made my insurance premiums lower, I'd buy one.
PPS - Initially, though, the premiums would probably go up.

Thin operating systems

With the move to more online services, are desktop operating systems likely to become "thinner"? That is, providing fewer services besides disk management, hardware drivers and network connections. It seems likely. Google is starting to market "Chromebooks" which are laptops running pretty much nothing but a web browser. So what about private data I don't want to store online? I have tens of gigabytes of pictures and videos that are way too big for cloud storage. What is Google's plan for them? And what about my apps that don't have web equivalents, like City of Heroes and my programming tools? Although Google's ads claim "you can do everything online", I don't think that's quite true yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe it will be eventually.
PPS - That does seem to be the trend.