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Google+ is an identity service

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:54:00 -0700

Hoping, perhaps, to bring the curtain down on the so-called ‘nym wars’, Google chairman Eric Schmidt has discussed the advertising giant’s identity policies in a Q&A at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival.

Google+, which the outside world thinks of as another social networking service, is in fact something else, Schmidt said: “It essentially provides an identity service with a link around your friends,” he said in a transcript provided here.

Asked about the so-called ‘nym wars’, Schmidt explains Google’s policy (while sidestepping the implementation that prohibits some real names): “But we want people to stand for something, we want people to be willing to express themselves. There are obviously people for which using their real name is not appropriate, and it’s completely optional, and if you’re one of those people don’t do it. Seems obvious.”

Saying that he’s been thinking about identity for 20 years, Schmidt calls it a “hard problem”: “The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person”, he says.

A real person, Schmidt says, can be held accountable: “we could check them, we could give them things …bill them, you know, we could have credit cards and so forth … there are all sorts of reasons.”

“My general rule,” Schmidt said, “is that people have a lot of free time and … there are people who do really evil and wrong things on the Internet, and it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed them out.”

This doesn’t mean “eliminating them”, he says: “if we knew their identity was accurate, we could rank them. Think of them like an identity rank.”

He admits this is a problem in countries with oppressive attitudes to their citizens or their citizens’ communications, but adds that “sensibilities are different”.

“There, there’s no assumption of privacy, everybody assumes the Internet is bugged and that the secret police are after them.

Blogger News - Google Gives Blogger a Makeover

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:53:00 -0700

Blogger News - Google Gives Blogger a Makeover
Google has revealed that its blogging platform, Blogger.com, has been the latest Google product to receive a facelift.

Following in the footsteps of Google Docs, Gmail, Google+ and even Analytics a few months ago, Blogger is now a minimalist, white-spacey, colour flecked platform.

As Google hasn’t made any big changes to Blogger in the last few years, it has decided to completely rewrite the entire editing and management experience, Chang Kim, Product Manager, writes on the Google Blogger Buzz Blog.

Google has been testing out new features and designs for the site with a trial group behind the scenes. The feedback from the group of dedicated Blogger’s lead to a fair few improvements to the platform; including:

·        Create and edit posts for every page with an improved navigation bar

·        A new graph of your traffic numbers in the ‘Overview’ section so users can take a quick glance at how their blog is being received

·        A new list of helpful links, a feed of Blogger updates and a showcase of other blogs users may find interesting

·        An expanded and simplified post editor (below)

Google+ "analysis" - This week's useless Google+ stat: slowing time on site

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:52:00 -0700

Google+ "analysis" - This week's useless Google+ stat: slowing time on site

Ready for this week's ridiculous Google+ "analysis"? OK, don't say I didn't warn you:

Because users spent 3 seconds less on the Google+ Web site last week than they did during the peak week of July 15, "the service may struggle to make headway against Facebook," Bloomberg reports. Even though time on site has been increasing each week of August versus the week before.

[Pause as I bang head against wall several times.]

Would it have been possible to resist the lure of the sensational headline long enough to ponder why that single data point in no way justifies such a conclusion?

• It's summer vacation time, which often causes dips in Internet usage, especially for professional sites. Did anyone check to see if the same time-on-site August dip v. prior months happened to, say, LinkedIn? It's often more useful to compare year-over-year usage stats, which factors out expected seasonal changes, than week-to-week fluctuations. But of course Google+ is too new to have that kind of data history.

• The Google+ iPhone app was approved on July 19. Time spent on the Google+ Web site declined a bit since then. Why is this a surprise? Perhaps a higher percentage of power users v. casual check-ins are accessing the service on a mobile device, where Experiean Hitwise can't measure it?

• Users can read their Google+ notifications while on any other Google service such as Gmail, Google Docs or the main Google search engine. One important goal for Google+ is to integrate it with other Google services. I suspect a key stat for Google is whether Plus is helping to boost overall usage of all its offerings, not just the social network itself.

"Experian Hitwise's research methods, which rely on visits to websites, don't include mobile users or times when people access the service from the black notification bar runing across the top of Google.com," the Bloomberg story admits -- way down toward the end, far below the alarming conclusion drawn from one incomplete data point.

Actually, time spent on Google+ last week versus the prior week was up 4%, according to the story. But that "has grown more slowly in recent weeks, according to Experian Hitwise ..." which apparently is cause to wonder whether Google+ can compete with Facebook -- completely leaving out the possibility that Google+ could manage to succeed without, say, destroying Facebook.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that the Google+ news from Hitwise on Twitter was, "Avg. time spent on Google+ up 5% in last 2 weeks" -- which sounded more positive than negative, although those stats were also below the mid-July peak.

OK, this isn't quite as bad as the "83% of Google+ users are inactive" claim, which turned out to be inaccurate. But it's not a great deal better to take a single data point out of context and draw conclusions that don't stand up to even a little critical analysis.

GOOGLE+ IMAGE | GOOGLE PLUS LOGO | WALL PAPER | PICTURE

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:39:00 -0700

GOOGLE+ IMAGE | GOOGLE PLUS LOGO | WALL PAPER | PICTURE

GOOGLE+ IMAGE | GOOGLE PLUS LOGO | WALL PAPER | PICTURE
Google+, GOOGLE, GOOGLE PLUS 1, GOOGLE PLUS, NEWS , EVENTS, GAMES, APPS, GOOGLE PLUS APPS, FEATURES , GOOGLE PEATURES, GOOGLE NEWS, GOOGLE PLUS CIRCLE, GOOGLE PLUS HUDDLE, GOOGLE + HANGOUTS, GOOGLE PLUS SPEAKS, GOOGLE+ STREAM

Google's +1 for Chrome follows your Internet travels

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:25:00 -0700

The Google +1 icon is popping up across the Internet, one more button to click in the area where you go to Like, Tweet, Stumble, Share, etc., or comment on webpage. But it's still not everywhere — unless, you're using Google's Chrome browser. Yesterday, with no fanfare, the Google+ Button extension appeared in the Chrome Web Store, bringing you the ability to +1 a webpage, even if the site doesn't include +1 button in its sharing options.

The +1 Chrome extension allows you to see the total number of +1 counts a webpage has received, but unlike the +1 icons embedded in webpages, a +1 clicked through Chrome doesn't post that item in your Google+ account. Once you've added the +1 extension to Chrome however, it does send the URL you've visited back to Google — whether you've +1'd those webpages or not.

According to the +1 app description,"In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information."

Creepy, but unsurprising given that according to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Google+ isn't so much a social network but an "identity service," demanding your real name so it can use your info to improve its products, and that part that goes unsaid, ramp up its targeted marketing.

Google explains what the +1 Chrome extension does with your info it's collecting in the Privacy Guide section titled — I kid you not — How the +1 button respects your privacy.

As for those +1 buttons spreading the Internet, "Google is making plans to turn its +1 button into a crowdsourcing tool that helps it re-order search results and fight web spam," Wired reported earlier this week. "While not surprising, the move would bring Google's search engine into the social networking era, while simultaneously creating a new avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results and potentially incurring the wrath of trust-busting authorities."

Google+ | Google App Engine Price Hike Stuns Developers

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:23:00 -0700

Google+ | Google App Engine Price Hike Stuns Developers
Google says it is looking into user discussions of App Engine's new pricing scheme--in the wake of vocal outrage at the magnitude of the change.

In May, Google announced that it would alter the price of App Engine, the company's platform as a service offering, later in the year. But the published pricing model didn't make many waves because few bothered to do the math.
Now that Google has begun offering App Engine users a way to calculate the new rate and compare it with the old rate, developers are realizing their bills will rise, by a factor of 10 or 100 or more in some cases, when the pricing change takes effect in a few months.

Nokia researcher and App Engine user Russell Beattie, for example, complains that under the new pricing model, the cost of his App Engine app for one day will rise from $2.63 to $34.38--a figure that will double in November after a 50% discount expires.

Data loss is a symptom of ineffective information protection and control.
Learn how to only prevent data loss AND take control of critical information.

Santiago Lema, an iOS developer posting to Beattie's Google+ thread, echoes that sentiment. "I am stunned too," he wrote. "My (private) iPhone stats website used to cost me $0.41 per day. Now the estimate for past days is at about $7.00."

Developer Ugorji Nwoke in a blog post slammed Google. "Google has done a major disservice to its cult of developers by changing the pricing terms of App Engine ridiculously while giving developers short notice to react," he wrote. "In doing so, Google may have done severe damage to their brand and the trust that developers put in them."

A before-and-after App Engine price comparison thread in Google Groups shows similar concerns, with developers reporting increases of 50%, 100%, or much more. A separate thread has been started for developers who will be forced to leave App Engine due to the increased rates.

Developers may be able to reduce these charges through code optimization, but many of those complaining insist their code is already optimized.

Google offered a non-committal response to the outcry. "We're taking a look at the user discussions right now," a company spokesperson noted in an email.

On the App Engine website, the company says that it is looking into special programs for non-profits, educational institutions, and open-source projects.

Google has defended the price increase as a necessary business decision. "Most paying customers will see higher bills," the company says on its website. "During the preview phase of App Engine we have been able to observe what it costs to run the product as well as what typical use patterns have been. We are changing the prices now because GAE is going to be a full product for Google and therefore needs to have a sustainable revenue model for years to come."

Google developers can at least thank the company for its commitment to data portability. The company supported a project designed to reduce the risk of cloud lock-in: AppScale is an open-source framework for running Google App Engine applications on alternative cloud infrastructure and virtualization software, such as Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, KVM, and Xen. If better prices can be found elsewhere, at least App Engine users have an escape route.

But AppScale isn't necessary to jump ship. "I've moved to a small VPS cluster at RackSpace Cloud," wrote Peter Petrov, a programmer based in Bulgaria, in a Google Groups post. "I rewrote my entire app as a Node.js application (previously was GAE/Python using Kay). Very happy so far, I don't think I'll ever return to GAE."

Google and Facebook have brought the war of social networks to your Google Chrome browser

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:21:00 -0700

Facebook Adds 'Like' Button to Chrome
Google and Facebook have brought the war of social networks to your Google Chrome browser.

On Thursday, Facebook updated its "Facebook Like" plugin for Chrome, allowing you to quickly like, recommend, or share all sorts of content you've come across in your Chrome browser with the click of a mouse.

The updated extension is available now in the Chrome Web Store. Facebook quietly launched the plugin on July 22 and updated it on Thursday. Once downloaded, Facebook's blue thumbs-up icon appears next to your address bar. After logging in to Facebook, you can click on the thumb to share Web pages, images, videos (HTML5 only) and audio (HTML5 only) through your Facebook account; the plugin also shows you how many others have "liked" the page. According to the plugin description, the extension lets Facebook track your tab and browsing activity and IP address.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Google+ launched a translation extension in Chrome that adds a "translate" button next to the "comment" and "share" buttons, with support for 50 different languages. And last week Google+ added an ignore option.

In early August, comScore said Google+ had reached 25 million users since launching in beta on June 28. Facebook, founded in 2004, boasts 750 million users.

For more, see When Facebook Gets Creepy and Has Growth to Google+ Slowed?.

Also check out PCMag's full review of Google+ and the slideshow below.

iSwifter brings Google+ games to the iPad

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:20:00 -0700

iSwifter brings Google+ games to the iPad
Following the launch of games on Google+ last month, Adobe Flash streaming app iSwifter today is adding compatibility to work with those games, giving iPad users a way to play them on Apple's tablet.

The functionality is being added to iSwifter's existing application (iTunes) as a free update today, and will join iSwifter's catalog of games on Facebook.

The first thing you're probably wondering is if this means you can play Google+'s social version of Angry Birds. The short answer to that is no. It's one of the only titles I couldn't get working in a pre-release version of the software, something that's due to that version of Angry Birds being written in HTML5. iSwifter founder Rajat Gupta told me the software's back-end technology is not yet set up to run HTML5, but will eventually. In the meantime, the iPad's built-in Safari browser simply redirects users to download the native version of Angry Birds in app form when trying to access the Google+ game page.

iSwifter runs Flash games and applications on the company's servers, then streams them to the iPad, cutting out the need to have Adobe's Flash player installed--something Apple does not allow. Products like Skyfire and Photon have approached the limitation with similar solutions for Web browsing.

iSwifter launched as a paid app last September, and has since converted to a free app with in-app purchase that gets rid of a nag window and adds additional features. That change has helped fuel adoption of the app, which now pulls in some 750,000 active users, up from the 500,000 the company reported in July.

Gupta said the company is still at work on building a version of iSwifter to the Mac through Apple's App Store, but did not provide any additional details on when that would be. In late July the company told CNET it was taking aim at the Mac to compete with Adobe's own Flash Player plug-in, which does not ship with Apple's computers.

Sns google+Sns google+

monap2011@gmail.com (Mona) — Fri, 1 Jul 2011 18:37:00 -0700