Google is previewing their upcoming privacy policy changes, to take effect on March 1st. They're mailing the info to all Google account holders. In theory, I don't have problems with what they're collecting. It's an inevitability of the social web. This is where things are going. But I'm leery of having this data collected about me, especially through a mobile device when/if I use Google services. There is a bit of Big Brother feel to this, even though tailoring ads and creating a consistent identity for account holders across all services sounds okay.
And it's hard to complain about anything you post publicly or have in your public profile showing up across Google services. It's naive to think public posts can be restricted or have a limited audience. Public is public. I'd opted to not combine my Blogger account with Google+ because I wanted to keep my blogs more anonymous. Now, I'm not sure it it will stay that way.
As for tailoring ads, I'm mostly oblivious to advertising other than the pulsating, animated annoyances and those just cause me to immediately hit the back button. I don't pay much attention to suggestions, either. Sure, sometimes a suggested person to add to one of my G+ circles really is someone I know, but I prefer to discover such connections in person with my friends. I let people know I'm using certain services, they let me know what they're using, and we go from there. I use various services, even within Google, in different ways and I don't need, or particularly want, the kind of consistency and synergy that Google is pushing.
One thing that I'm really ambivalent about is the ability of the Google browser to figure out what you're really searching for based on your likes or previous searches, etc. So, to expand on an example they gave, if you search for Jaguar, Google can figure out if you mean the animal or the car. But what if yesterday, I was interested in the animal, but today, I'm interested in the car. If the search results are geared to yesterday's search and brings them up faster, it does me no good, though it does benefit the person checking the same use of Jaguar each time. And when I search, I would use Jaguar Animal or Jaguar Car, anyway, so I should get mostly relevant search hits and this doesn't much matter to me. But it's the sort of thing that can really start to bug me. Because I kinda resent Google using my likes elsewhere -- ie, if I mentioned liking the Jaguar Car in an email and now want to search the animal Jaguar -- to tailor my search results, as if it knows me and my interests better than I do. And if I want to share something, I just copy and paste the link into the appropriate service, be it email, Facebook, Google+. I usually have those windows open in my browser (Chrome!), anyway. And I'm not much of a mobile user, at least not for sharing stuff. Mostly for looking up things I need to know, reading email, or checking Facebook.
I'm also reconsidering my desire to buy an Android phone. I don't particularly want an iPhone, either, which leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I'm not ready to call Google "evil" as some have lately, but I'm not really happy about all this, either.
~~~o0o~~~
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Picnik is Closing
Picnik, now owned by Google, is closing in April. The editing services are now part of Google+ and that's what they're going to concentrate on. I understand the corporate decision to consolidate, but I have mixed feelings about it. Picnik was great when I was working. I could easily and quickly edit photos for free to upload on the library's website and Facebook pages by using Picnik. The library wasn't going to give me the software to do it, and the old MS Paint was gone after we got WinXP. Only the graphics department got photo editing software, so to have a good, dependable online service that let me do for free what I would otherwise need software for and didn't require me to have an account there or anywhere else, was really useful. Sure, I guess there are other free photo editing sites out there, but there's only been one Picnik. I'll miss it, even if I don't need it much in retirement since I have Photoshop.
~~~o0o~~~
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Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Stop SOPA
In typical "toss the baby out with the bathwater" form, the US government, prodded by lobbyists for studios and other content owners/providers, wants to stop piracy by controlling, even censoring the internet. The internet is dark in places to day in protest. Read about it on Wikipedia.
~~~o0o~~~
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Blogger Gets Better
Blogger now has threaded commenting! I've been wanting this for a long time. It's the best thing about LiveJournal. You need to have embedded commenting and your feed has to allow full posts, but there's nothing else you need to do. Blogger has done the rest. Now to take it for a test run.
~~~o0o~~~
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
New Way to Search
So, Google has changed search to include "your world." I'm sure this is great for a lot of people. I'm not one of them. I don't care what my friends think of something when I'm searching. If I want my friends' opinions, I can just ask them. When I search online, I want pure data, or maybe I'll look for a review... by someone I don't know, preferably, so I don't have any preconceptions about their opinions. Because, again, if I want my friends' opinions, I can ask them.
So, except out of curiosity, I probably won't use the new search features much if at all. But you might want to try 'em. You might even love 'em.
~~~o0o~~~
So, except out of curiosity, I probably won't use the new search features much if at all. But you might want to try 'em. You might even love 'em.
~~~o0o~~~
Sunday, November 20, 2011
What Scares Me
A friend on Facebook posted a status to remind everyone that no political party is all good or bad, that no police department is all good or bad. And that's true. I never have disputed it. But the majority of Republicans in office right now, especially in Congress, and especially in the House of Representatives, have me scared right now. With some embellishment for this forum, where I can be a bit more verbose than on a friend's FB wall, I posted the following.
I'm not angry. I'm scared. I'm scared of what the country is becoming. I'm scared that a political party is holding the government hostage to hold the president to one term and, I fear, might be disguised or even suppressed bigotry, perhaps unknowingly, by people who just can't accept a black man running the country and are mistakenly of the opinion or are rationalizing their opinions by thinking of it in political terms.
I'm scared that the police in my city are out of control. I'm scared that my freedoms online are being threatened and that many of the sites I enjoy, for free, might be gone, or will charge more than I can afford or would want to pay. Okay, that does make me angry. And I never thought the day would come when I'd be this scared and angry, this fearful of losing my rights, of us all having our rights violated and compromised. What's been going on in recent months is shameful. And I fear the day that I won't be able to post something like this, to voice my opinion, be it anonymously or under my full name. And that would be more than a shame. It would be a tragedy.
~~~o0o~~~
I'm not angry. I'm scared. I'm scared of what the country is becoming. I'm scared that a political party is holding the government hostage to hold the president to one term and, I fear, might be disguised or even suppressed bigotry, perhaps unknowingly, by people who just can't accept a black man running the country and are mistakenly of the opinion or are rationalizing their opinions by thinking of it in political terms.
I'm scared that the police in my city are out of control. I'm scared that my freedoms online are being threatened and that many of the sites I enjoy, for free, might be gone, or will charge more than I can afford or would want to pay. Okay, that does make me angry. And I never thought the day would come when I'd be this scared and angry, this fearful of losing my rights, of us all having our rights violated and compromised. What's been going on in recent months is shameful. And I fear the day that I won't be able to post something like this, to voice my opinion, be it anonymously or under my full name. And that would be more than a shame. It would be a tragedy.
~~~o0o~~~
Friday, November 18, 2011
Fight Internet Censorship
It's amazing how corporate entities keep trying to control the internet. They see it as a business tool for their use and their use only. They don't want people posting negative comments about their products. They don't want people making mashups of movies and tv shows and music and other derivative, yet original creations. They don't want repostings of their intellectual property.
Now, I'm in favor of intellectual property and copyright and trademark, but the internet and the people who use and post to the internet are not hurting any of that. And once censorship starts, it's hard to stop. Perhaps political censorship will be next. Perhaps you'll be subject for investigation if you post something negative about the government.
Recent years have seen attacks on freedom and civil rights. The overreaction of police and city governments to the Occupy Wall Street movement is just the latest in a long line starting with the aftermath of 9/11 in the U.S. that saw the creation of the Patriot Act and the body searches conducted by TSA agents at airports that probably don't do a bit of good. It's part of the same mentality that thinks waterboarding isn't torture and actually yields results, never mind that someone being waterboarded is as likely to tell falsehoods as they are to reveal truths because they'll say anything to make it stop.
So we need a free internet to protest such activities, and to enjoy life, share our passions, be creative. If the internet censorship law is enacted, sites like Tumblr and others could be forced out of business. Here's what Fightforthefuture.org has to say in an email I received today:
"Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill.
~~~o0o~~~
Now, I'm in favor of intellectual property and copyright and trademark, but the internet and the people who use and post to the internet are not hurting any of that. And once censorship starts, it's hard to stop. Perhaps political censorship will be next. Perhaps you'll be subject for investigation if you post something negative about the government.
Recent years have seen attacks on freedom and civil rights. The overreaction of police and city governments to the Occupy Wall Street movement is just the latest in a long line starting with the aftermath of 9/11 in the U.S. that saw the creation of the Patriot Act and the body searches conducted by TSA agents at airports that probably don't do a bit of good. It's part of the same mentality that thinks waterboarding isn't torture and actually yields results, never mind that someone being waterboarded is as likely to tell falsehoods as they are to reveal truths because they'll say anything to make it stop.
So we need a free internet to protest such activities, and to enjoy life, share our passions, be creative. If the internet censorship law is enacted, sites like Tumblr and others could be forced out of business. Here's what Fightforthefuture.org has to say in an email I received today:
"Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill.
It was eerie. The DC groups were practically screaming "this bill is the worst we've ever seen, and we can't stop it" -- while everyone else had barely heard of it. The consensus? We needed to wake people up.
Well, this week the Internet woke up. *You* woke the Internet up.
Over 80,000 Tumblr users called ther representatives. SOPA was a trending tweet in the U.S. and between the Electronic Fronteir Foundation, Avaaz, and Demand Progress (groups that are just now working together!) we sent Congress over 1,000,000 emails.
The scary part? We still might lose. Though growing fast, our coalition still isn't strong enough.
The bill is backed by an unholy alliance of Hollywood, its unions, drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce. They are pouring money into it, and they've been working on this for years. Yesterday, big players like Tumblr, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing and even 4chan came out strong on our side. Now it's your turn. We've got to dig in and go viral.
Can you tell 20 friends about the Internet Censorship Bill?"
I've signed. Here's where you can, too.
~~~o0o~~~
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