Dear Google,
When I click on Google+ in my web browser, the first thing you show me is a list of people I might want to put into circles. Well guess what -- this is usually the same group of people you've shown me every time for the last six weeks (or however long this change has been active).
You are smart -- if I have not circled these people by now, what are the odds that I'm going to circle them now? (Hint: it is the same shape as a circle.)
Stop showing me the same list of people.
Better yet, stop showing me a list of people.
If I want to circle people, I'll go looking for people to circle. If I'm looking for Google+ , let me get to Google+ without the additional annoying click.
There are only two possible outcomes from you continuing this: either I'll just tune out the page completely and automatically click the "continue" button, or worse, I'll eventually get so mad I'll go ARGH! FUCK! and just stop coming here.
And you wouldn't want that, would you?
Didn't think so.
Love, me.
2013-04-09
Dilbert On Being The Firewall Guy
And yet, some of us voluntarily choose to be the firewall guy. Possibly because you can "accidentally" prevent people who are mean to you from getting at the internet. Not that ever happens, no, people tend to be nice to this firewall guy.
Now, anyways.
2013-04-07
Things I Learned (a continuing series)
The animators responsible for the Dire Straits video Money For Nothing, Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair, went on to found Mainframe Entertainment, who produced other ground breaking works such as Reboot! and Shadow Raiders.
2013-04-03
Being Sad: Trying A Couple RSS Options
Dealing with being sad in a post-Google Reader world has led me to try a couple of RSS feed readers.
When looking around, I automatically excluded readers which depended on the Google Reader back-end to do their data storage and feed management. I may try them after Google Reader is shut down, but right now there's no point in finding something I like only to be let down again when they don't update to another back end (either immediately or, as is the case for some iOS apps, ever).
On the iPad, I've been using Feedly. Feedly uses the Google Reader back-end, which yes should disqualify it. But they claim to be building their own back-end to replace it so that the transition will be invisible to end users. Initially I was turned off by its magazine-style flipboard which shows only a few articles per page; however I've played with the options, and a recent rebuild of the app added a mode which seems to display more stories per "page".
Feedly is painful to use in a desktop browser, though. I'm highly suspicious of these Chrome plug-in things, and Feedly wants to be one of those -- I suspect it is trying to manage a local cache of all my feeds rather than having me hit a central server for them. (Which makes me wonder how the iPad app actually works.) The real killer, though, is that Feedly seems to be littered with duplicate articles. The sorting seems haphazard, and there just isn't the same article flow that was in Reader.
So for the browser, I've set up an instance of Tiny Tiny RSS on my private server. And for a private instance it isn't too bad. And as a side-effect, I've pruned my RSS subscription list down from more than 300 to just a hair over 200 -- a few broken feeds that I decided I don't care about, feeds with no updates since 2011 (or earlier in some cases), or just plain 404-ing feeds. It works OK in the browser, and I've come to grips with the configuration options that are presented.
It'll do a number on the bandwidth usage that my server uses, though. We'll just have to wait a couple weeks to see how running the updater twice an hour will impact my data transfer numbers.
But on the iPad, the mobile interface is just plain painful. Or at least, on my iPad. There's a ton of hesitation and reloading and spit-you-back-to-the-default-page-load that makes it almost unusable. And since a non-trivial percentage of my feed reading is done on the iPad, this is a problem. And running it in the iPad Chrome browser is an order of magnitude worse than that.
Oh, I'm also a bit put off by the TTR dev's attitudes which seems to be "we're not changing TTR to be like Google Reader, so piss off". Which is fine if you like where the boat is going. And normally I would agree with them, it is just their attitude is lacking. I do think that expecting end-users to do their updates with git, claiming "the trunk is usually stable and usable," smacks a little bit of not caring about how others see your tool. The install is the first time a lot of people see your tool, if the install is rough they are more likely to give up on it and be less tolerant of other rough edges.
Downsides: I thought that I could deal with seeing articles in both TTR and Feedly, but I'm less happy with that than I thought. And there's the whole problem of managing RSS subscriptions in two places -- there's no trivial way for me to duplicate my feed trimming in Feedly from TTR.
I've been trying hard to not go back to Google Reader, since that won't be an option in the future.
I'm not sure what I'll end up doing in the long term. But I'm not exactly thrilled with how things are going right now.
When looking around, I automatically excluded readers which depended on the Google Reader back-end to do their data storage and feed management. I may try them after Google Reader is shut down, but right now there's no point in finding something I like only to be let down again when they don't update to another back end (either immediately or, as is the case for some iOS apps, ever).
On the iPad, I've been using Feedly. Feedly uses the Google Reader back-end, which yes should disqualify it. But they claim to be building their own back-end to replace it so that the transition will be invisible to end users. Initially I was turned off by its magazine-style flipboard which shows only a few articles per page; however I've played with the options, and a recent rebuild of the app added a mode which seems to display more stories per "page".
Feedly is painful to use in a desktop browser, though. I'm highly suspicious of these Chrome plug-in things, and Feedly wants to be one of those -- I suspect it is trying to manage a local cache of all my feeds rather than having me hit a central server for them. (Which makes me wonder how the iPad app actually works.) The real killer, though, is that Feedly seems to be littered with duplicate articles. The sorting seems haphazard, and there just isn't the same article flow that was in Reader.
So for the browser, I've set up an instance of Tiny Tiny RSS on my private server. And for a private instance it isn't too bad. And as a side-effect, I've pruned my RSS subscription list down from more than 300 to just a hair over 200 -- a few broken feeds that I decided I don't care about, feeds with no updates since 2011 (or earlier in some cases), or just plain 404-ing feeds. It works OK in the browser, and I've come to grips with the configuration options that are presented.
It'll do a number on the bandwidth usage that my server uses, though. We'll just have to wait a couple weeks to see how running the updater twice an hour will impact my data transfer numbers.
But on the iPad, the mobile interface is just plain painful. Or at least, on my iPad. There's a ton of hesitation and reloading and spit-you-back-to-the-default-page-load that makes it almost unusable. And since a non-trivial percentage of my feed reading is done on the iPad, this is a problem. And running it in the iPad Chrome browser is an order of magnitude worse than that.
Oh, I'm also a bit put off by the TTR dev's attitudes which seems to be "we're not changing TTR to be like Google Reader, so piss off". Which is fine if you like where the boat is going. And normally I would agree with them, it is just their attitude is lacking. I do think that expecting end-users to do their updates with git, claiming "the trunk is usually stable and usable," smacks a little bit of not caring about how others see your tool. The install is the first time a lot of people see your tool, if the install is rough they are more likely to give up on it and be less tolerant of other rough edges.
Downsides: I thought that I could deal with seeing articles in both TTR and Feedly, but I'm less happy with that than I thought. And there's the whole problem of managing RSS subscriptions in two places -- there's no trivial way for me to duplicate my feed trimming in Feedly from TTR.
I've been trying hard to not go back to Google Reader, since that won't be an option in the future.
I'm not sure what I'll end up doing in the long term. But I'm not exactly thrilled with how things are going right now.
2013-03-31
Anti-Social Media
Continuing on our theme of internet corporations making me sad, it has come to my attention that the very thing which I lauded twitter and facebook for is about to stop working: at some point in the near future, Twitter will break the Twitter-to-Facebook integration that I rely on to keep entertaining my public. This is because Twitter has decided that they are no longer just a pilot fish in the great internet sea -- they are a destination that is important in and of itself, and therefore there's nothing to be gained by letting Twitter content leak out to other social platforms where someone else can monetize it. If you want The Twitter, you can come to The Twitter, and The Twitter will happily serve you ads along with the content you desire.
For those of us further up the product foodchain, though, the question becomes: now what?
There is a temptation to just simply shift the burden to the reader and force them to charge around to the various social media sites to pick up the pieces of my communications that they care to receive. This is by far the easiest for me, as it means I can just write what I want, when I want, and where it occurs to me, and my faithful readers will of course spring to action and visit all of these lovely sites.
Yeah.
A scenario made even more unlikely due to the fact that A) none of these services let information out in RSS format and B) since Google Reader is being retired, there isn't a decent RSS reader left to read these non-existent feeds anyways.
I'm still seeking social media nirvana, where I can post something and it is automatically disseminated across all the services I use. This will never happen, since Facebook and Google are sworn enemeis, and now Twitter flatters themselves that they can sit at the same table.
Let's briefly look at the competition:
Twitter: microblogging. Not suitable for complex thought, but it is pretty interactive. The advertising is pretty unobtrusive (and currently totally absent if you use a client like Tweetdeck, although rumor has it that Tweetdeck is also going to be binned).
Google Plus: Google just loves you for your data, your sweet sweet demographics data that lets them serve advertising somewhere to.. someone. No one is really sure.
Facebook: all the privacy-violating goodness of Google, except the someone they are serving ads to is you and your readers, and the ads themselves are hilariously bad. Oh, and the chance that there's an actual audience on Facebook is only about 500% higher.
Audience-wise: I think it is a toss up between Twitter and Facebook for numbers.
I've toyed with a number of ideas: there's a service which allegedly will post from one social media platform to another, all you have to do is give it your credentials for everything (ick). Or maybe just doing everything in Blogger (hey! a fourth platform!) and trying to find some like-on-Facebook, tweet-with-Twitter, and +1 buttons and just pushing all three myself when I post something here. That'll get the word out, and drive traffic back to me here. Of course that just turns this Blogger thing into a Tumblr (hey! a fifth service!), doesn't it, so maybe I should just go there and put the buttons on posts there?
I think I still have a tumblr... I wonder if I wrote down the access credentials anywhere.
Anyways this is all forcing me to make decisions, and everyone knows how much I love decisions. So nobody is holding their breath on this.
I'm sure there will be a general announcement if and when I decide what I'm doing.
For those of us further up the product foodchain, though, the question becomes: now what?
There is a temptation to just simply shift the burden to the reader and force them to charge around to the various social media sites to pick up the pieces of my communications that they care to receive. This is by far the easiest for me, as it means I can just write what I want, when I want, and where it occurs to me, and my faithful readers will of course spring to action and visit all of these lovely sites.
Yeah.
A scenario made even more unlikely due to the fact that A) none of these services let information out in RSS format and B) since Google Reader is being retired, there isn't a decent RSS reader left to read these non-existent feeds anyways.
I'm still seeking social media nirvana, where I can post something and it is automatically disseminated across all the services I use. This will never happen, since Facebook and Google are sworn enemeis, and now Twitter flatters themselves that they can sit at the same table.
Let's briefly look at the competition:
Twitter: microblogging. Not suitable for complex thought, but it is pretty interactive. The advertising is pretty unobtrusive (and currently totally absent if you use a client like Tweetdeck, although rumor has it that Tweetdeck is also going to be binned).
Google Plus: Google just loves you for your data, your sweet sweet demographics data that lets them serve advertising somewhere to.. someone. No one is really sure.
Facebook: all the privacy-violating goodness of Google, except the someone they are serving ads to is you and your readers, and the ads themselves are hilariously bad. Oh, and the chance that there's an actual audience on Facebook is only about 500% higher.
Audience-wise: I think it is a toss up between Twitter and Facebook for numbers.
I've toyed with a number of ideas: there's a service which allegedly will post from one social media platform to another, all you have to do is give it your credentials for everything (ick). Or maybe just doing everything in Blogger (hey! a fourth platform!) and trying to find some like-on-Facebook, tweet-with-Twitter, and +1 buttons and just pushing all three myself when I post something here. That'll get the word out, and drive traffic back to me here. Of course that just turns this Blogger thing into a Tumblr (hey! a fifth service!), doesn't it, so maybe I should just go there and put the buttons on posts there?
I think I still have a tumblr... I wonder if I wrote down the access credentials anywhere.
Anyways this is all forcing me to make decisions, and everyone knows how much I love decisions. So nobody is holding their breath on this.
I'm sure there will be a general announcement if and when I decide what I'm doing.
2013-03-27
A Defense Of Jargon
Rhett Allain calls for science to stop using three words: hypothesis, theory, and law. The crux of his argument for removing these words is because the common people think they know what those words mean, and the common conceptions of those meanings is inconsistent with science's use of them.
He's wrong -- and in fact, I think his arguments are potent when arguing for more jargon in science rather than less.
Mr. Allain's issues problems with modern language are as follows:
There's no context embedded in the word, so you have to waste more imprecise words to build a context around the word which conveys the meaning that you wish to convey. And in today's world of the five second soundbite, there's no time to build that context.
The legal profession is brutal in this respect, because the vast majority of the words and grammatical constructions that they use in their communications are identical to those found in common English The problem is that in the legal world those words and grammatical constructs have precise meanings without the ambiguity that common English has. But a legal commoner like me can read a legal document, understand all of the words, and come out at the end with a completely different meaning that a lawyer would.
The medical profession gets this right in a lot of ways, because they draw from latin words to describe precise parts of the body. There's no ambiguity about what "thyroid" means or what procedure a "phlebotomy" is. The words have single meanings in common use, which means they have their own context more or less embedded in them. And better: since this context is embedded in the words, it acts as a signal to the common user that there is specific knowledge required that they may or may not have.
There is a collision here, between the media-fueled short attention span, and the increasingly complex concepts in the wider world that can't be fit into shorter and short sound bites. Inevitably people will get left behind in certain areas -- I may be well versed in systems networking, but I am incapable of reading a legal document, or understanding in depths the medical subtleties that arise from specific treatment options. I am forced to accept my specializations and follow advice from lawyers and doctors, or put aside my expertise and begin studying these other areas on my own* .
I think that rather than trying to soft-pedal this complexity in the modern world, we need to be shoving it more up the noses of the uninformed, telling them that they should either educate themselves and participate as a proper member of the community, or get out of the way of those who are.
And bending language to being more precise by embedding context into soundbites is a good first step.
---
* : And I think this is the difference between accepting advice from a scientist, doctor, or lawyer, as compared to a spiritual leader. With time and effort, I could educate myself and become a scientist, doctor, or lawyer. That knowledge can be freely gained, all you need is time and effort. (Complaining that you don't have either of those does nothing to change this fact.) The problem with spiritual leadership is that there is no impartial mechanism you can use to come to same conclusions. You can't test the first principles for yourself.
He's wrong -- and in fact, I think his arguments are potent when arguing for more jargon in science rather than less.
Mr. Allain's issues problems with modern language are as follows:
- The real world is very complex
- There are only so many words
- Therefore, context is important; and implied context king.
There's no context embedded in the word, so you have to waste more imprecise words to build a context around the word which conveys the meaning that you wish to convey. And in today's world of the five second soundbite, there's no time to build that context.
The legal profession is brutal in this respect, because the vast majority of the words and grammatical constructions that they use in their communications are identical to those found in common English The problem is that in the legal world those words and grammatical constructs have precise meanings without the ambiguity that common English has. But a legal commoner like me can read a legal document, understand all of the words, and come out at the end with a completely different meaning that a lawyer would.
The medical profession gets this right in a lot of ways, because they draw from latin words to describe precise parts of the body. There's no ambiguity about what "thyroid" means or what procedure a "phlebotomy" is. The words have single meanings in common use, which means they have their own context more or less embedded in them. And better: since this context is embedded in the words, it acts as a signal to the common user that there is specific knowledge required that they may or may not have.
There is a collision here, between the media-fueled short attention span, and the increasingly complex concepts in the wider world that can't be fit into shorter and short sound bites. Inevitably people will get left behind in certain areas -- I may be well versed in systems networking, but I am incapable of reading a legal document, or understanding in depths the medical subtleties that arise from specific treatment options. I am forced to accept my specializations and follow advice from lawyers and doctors, or put aside my expertise and begin studying these other areas on my own
I think that rather than trying to soft-pedal this complexity in the modern world, we need to be shoving it more up the noses of the uninformed, telling them that they should either educate themselves and participate as a proper member of the community, or get out of the way of those who are.
And bending language to being more precise by embedding context into soundbites is a good first step.
---
2013-03-14
Why Does Google Want To Make Me Sad?
It is all over the interweb, but I might as well pile on while the pilin' is good, so to speak. Google has announced that Google Reader will be Spring Cleaned out in early summer 2013.
The thing of it is, this is how I do most of my reading of internet content. In the old days of 2005, I used to do the bookmark-folder-full-of-links thing* , then open them all up in the morning and drive through them through the day. This got tiresome, because some websites don't update more than once a year, and others update more than once an hour. So you ended up looking at a lot of stale web sites. And missing a lot of timely news.
RSS solves all of these problems:
It got to the point where I don't follow sites that don't do RSS. I might go back periodically, but not regularly. Google drives my direct-website traffic; my list of non-work-related bookmarks is less than a dozen.
Bookmarking is boring.
Let's face it: bookmarking is the internet forcing you to do work that can, and should be, done for you. And RSS and Google Reader together do that work, and give you an interface that is sync'd between your desktop and mobile devices.
This is how I do most of my internet reading on desktops:
...and here is what my iPad's Chrome looks like most of the time:
...heck, the start page for my iPad should speak volumes about what I use it for:
Google Reader has been the way I use the internet for years, changing now won't be easy.
Having to change to something because there's something better is one thing. You are in favor of the change because you are getting something better to you that compensates for the pain of transition.
But getting turfed out into the rain because some product or service you use is getting "Spring Cleaned"...
I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll probably wait a few months and see what the internet decides is a reasonable substitute. There's no point lurching into something new now, since most of the RSS readers use Google Reader as a back-end for collection and cross-device synchronization. It will be interesting to see how many of these survive.
One can hope that the hue and cry being raised around this will persuade Google to reconsider. Frankly I doubt they will. There's no revenue generation from Google Reader, so why would they?
So, in conclusion: Google is making me sad.
---
* This was documented at the time in my Wordpress blog, the one that I customized to the point that it was un-upgradable; and later it got hacked** . It might be amusing*** to dig up the relevant post out of that archive and put it up for posterity.
** Which also made me sad. But at least it wasn't Google making me sad.
*** It might also be tedious work to dig through all that XML, so don't hold your breath.
The thing of it is, this is how I do most of my reading of internet content. In the old days of 2005, I used to do the bookmark-folder-full-of-links thing
RSS solves all of these problems:
- If a site has an update, the update shows up at the top of the list.
- If a site doesn't have an update, it doesn't show up on the list at all. So if a site goes dormant for years, then suddenly starts producing content again, I get it right away, without having to check it for years on end with no joy.
It got to the point where I don't follow sites that don't do RSS. I might go back periodically, but not regularly. Google drives my direct-website traffic; my list of non-work-related bookmarks is less than a dozen.
Bookmarking is boring.
Let's face it: bookmarking is the internet forcing you to do work that can, and should be, done for you. And RSS and Google Reader together do that work, and give you an interface that is sync'd between your desktop and mobile devices.
This is how I do most of my internet reading on desktops:
...and here is what my iPad's Chrome looks like most of the time:
...heck, the start page for my iPad should speak volumes about what I use it for:
Google Reader has been the way I use the internet for years, changing now won't be easy.
Having to change to something because there's something better is one thing. You are in favor of the change because you are getting something better to you that compensates for the pain of transition.
But getting turfed out into the rain because some product or service you use is getting "Spring Cleaned"...
I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll probably wait a few months and see what the internet decides is a reasonable substitute. There's no point lurching into something new now, since most of the RSS readers use Google Reader as a back-end for collection and cross-device synchronization. It will be interesting to see how many of these survive.
One can hope that the hue and cry being raised around this will persuade Google to reconsider. Frankly I doubt they will. There's no revenue generation from Google Reader, so why would they?
So, in conclusion: Google is making me sad.
---
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