71–80 of 250 posts
Definitions 1 and 2 are opposites. So, is he perturbed or not? "This is totally weird", or "this is weird, but I can so cope with it". Who knows.
Deleting the account seems to have had no ill effects. The deletion page did warn me that "third party sign on" would stop working, and I do use the Google third party login via OAuth because some sites rely on it, but nothing broke. Is there some kind of different "login with G+"?
I also moved calendaring and reminders to Fruux [1], and I have previously moved my email and contacts to Fastmail, and my notes to Evernote. I'm still on GTalk via Adium, though -- is there a good replacement for that?
Moving away from the big provides feels good. It feels liberating, in fact. Google and Apple provide whole ecosystems of services, and they really, really want you to buy into their whole integrated system, and they design their systems to stretch their tendrils as far into your computing experience as possible.
At least with Apple that's core to their long-established philosophy -- integrated devices that just work -- but I'm a big believer in decentralization. I want to pick the best possible system that integrates with everything using open standards.
I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's goal. Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to anonymously comment on youtube videos is an…
I see "improving comment quality" as the public excuse they use to keep you logged in to one universal account to make tracking you for advertising purposes easier. Binding this to a G+ account allows them to report that they have record-breaking activity on G+ every month, because everybody is technically forced to be logged into G+ to do any-goddamn-thing, and so it makes G+ seem like some tremendous success and ma…
It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various websites and contact lists This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've seen stories w…
How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old b…
I was going to use Google Code for hosting my projects, but, after this fiasco, I think I'll just use Github instead. Hey, at least I'll get to use a DVCS. :P In all honesty, though, while this won't hurt Google right now, it's going to come back and bite them in the rear end soon enough. If they keep making these kinds of changes, what's next? Having to sign in to Google+ to use Android? A Google+ feed on the Chrome…
I do both Google Code and Github. GC feels unmaintained these days, and there is no option for paid/private repositories. GC is also removing their download service - Github did the same but then later provided "releases" functionality. Github's issue tracker is terrible (try to prioritise things) while GC is a lot better. The one thing GC does really well is they let you have multiple repositories per project. This…
Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/lea…
Facebook was already doing a good job driving its own users away. All Google had to do was go under the Facebook tree, and pick up dropped users off the ground. It really didn't need to go climbing up the tree to pick them off the branches. As they're climbing the ladder, their own users are falling out of the baskets. Corny analogy aside, they're not even doing a good job integrating mail, youtube, google, google+.…
Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones. I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th" I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way…
The missing scale on Google maps is infuriating, IMO. How can you use the app to navigate around city streets if you can't easily see the distances involved? (N.b. this is on iOS, I think Android maps has a scale?)
I am mostly for the ostensible cleaning up of YouTube comments, but what got me was that any time you share a YouTube video on Google+ proper or comment in a thread where someone shared a YouTube video, it automatically cross-posts what you said back to the comments underneath the video on YouTube. And that's not just for shares/comments going forward: it's everything you've ever shared publicly, ever. I'm now gettin…
Ugh. This was my problem with Google+ too. Everything you do ripples out into the rest of the internet in a creepy way. When I was freelancing, I emailed back and forth with potential clients through the Gmail interface. One day I saw this party pic of a 20-something girl with beer in hand, identified by the full name of a receptionist I had emailed with professionally but never actually met. It was a suggestion from…
There are so many mundane variations on that theme, and then there are very serious ones: those seeking support for addiction, as survivors of abuse, or other situations that have social stigma or personal risk attached to them. Some needs are simply private in that way a vulnerable person needs secure anonymity lest the public light itself become a chilling effect, of which health concerns are a common example.
The architecture of Google+ is such that it is inherently inhuman in its disregard for privacy and for applying different "pen names" to the various situations of life.