Category Archives: google

IE10 and Do Not Track: ineffective with Amazon ads

August 28, 2012 onlyconnect 6 Comments

I set up Windows 8 on my desktop PC, accepting the default Do Not Track setting. This is still set:

However I noticed Amazon ads served by Google/DoubleClick on a third-party site that reflected my recent activity on Amazon. I clicked the Privacy link on the ad (which links to Amazon rather than Google) and found this:

Note that this is not an Amazon account setting. The wording makes it clear that it is a browser setting, which you have to make for every browser you use.

Because your selection above is managed through HTTP cookies, if you delete these cookies or use a different browser, you will have to make this same selection again.

Clearly it also defaults to “personalisation” despite IE 10 being set to request “Do not track”.

Kudos to Amazon for offering an opt-out; but no kudos for ignoring that I have already made a choice by sending a Do Not Track header.

Note there is no legal requirement to respect the Do Not Track header.

apple, google, microsoft, mobile, windows

Review: Digital Wars by Charles Arthur

May 14, 2012 onlyconnect 1 Comment

Subtitled Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet, this is an account by the Guardian’s Technology Editor of the progress of three tech titans between 1998 and the present day. In 1998, Google was just getting started, Apple was at the beginning of its recovery under the returning CEO Steve Jobs, and Microsoft dominated PCs and was busy crushing Netscape.

Here is how the market capitalization of the three changed between 1998 and 2011:

	End 1998	Mid 2011
Apple	$5.4 billion	$346.7 billion
Google	$10 million	$185.1 billion
Microsoft	$344.6 billion	$214.3 billion

This book tells the story behind that dramatic change in fortunes. It is a great read, written in a concise, clear and engaging style, and informed by the author’s close observation of the technology industry over that period.

That said, it is Apple that gets the best quality coverage here, not only because it is the biggest winner, but also because it is the company for which Arthur feels most affinity. When it comes to Microsoft the book focuses mainly on the company’s big failures in search, digital music and smartphones, but although these failures are well described, the question of why it has performed so badly is not fully articulated, though there is reference to the impact of antitrust legislation and an unflattering portrayal of CEO Steve Ballmer. The inner workings of Google are even less visible and if your main interest is the ascent of Google you should look elsewhere.

Leaving aside Google then, describing the success of Apple alongside Microsoft’s colossal blunders makes compelling reading. Arthur is perhaps a little unfair to Microsoft, because he skips over some of the company’s better moments, such as the success of Windows 7 and Windows Server, or even the Xbox 360, though he would argue I think that those successes are peripheral to his theme which is internet and mobile.

The heart of the book is in chapters four, on digital music, and five, on smartphones. The iPod, after all, was the forerunner of the Apple iPhone, and the iPhone was the forerunner of the iPad. Microsoft’s famous ecosystem of third-party hardware partners failed to compete with the Ipod, and by the time the company got it mostly right by abandoning its partners and creating the Zune, it was too late.

The smartphone story played out even worse for Microsoft, given that this was a market where it already had significant presence with Windows Mobile. Arthur describes the launch of the iPhone, and then recounts how Microsoft acquired a great mobile phone team with a company called Danger, and proceeded to destroy it. The Danger/Pink episode shows more than any other how broken is Microsoft’s management and mobile strategy. Danger was acquired in February 2008. There was then, Arthur describes, an internal battle between the Windows Mobile team and the Danger team, won by the Windows Mobile team under Andy Lees, and resulting in 18 months delay while the Danger operating system was rewritten to use Windows CE. By the time the first new “Project Pink” phone was delivered it was short on features and no longer wanted by Verizon, the partner operator. The “Kin” phone was on the market for only 48 days.

The Kin story was dysfunctional Microsoft at its worst, a huge waste of money and effort, and could have broken a smaller company. Microsoft shrugged it off, showing that its Windows and Office cash cows continue to insulate it against incompetence, probably too much for its own long-tem health.

Finally, the book leaves the reader wondering how the story continues. Arthur gets the significance of the iPad in business:

Cook would reel off statistics about the number of Fortune 500 companies ‘testing or deploying’ iPads, of banks and brokers that were trying it, and of serious apps being written for it. Apple was going, ever so quietly, after the business computing market – the one that had belonged for years to Microsoft.

Since he wrote those words that trend has increased, forming a large part of what is called Bring Your Own Device or The Consumerization of IT. Microsoft does have what it hopes is an answer, which is Windows 8, under a team led by the same Steven Sinofsky who made a success of Windows 7. The task is more challenging this time round though: Windows 7 was an improved version of Windows Vista, whereas Windows 8 is a radical new departure, at least in respect of its Metro user interface which is for the Tablet market. If Windows 8 fares as badly against the iPad as Plays for Sure fared against the iPod, then expect further decline in Microsoft’s market value.

apple, development, facebook, google, internet, itunes, javascript, mobile, Web, web authoring

Financial Times thrives on HTML 5, paywall, and snubbing Apple iTunes

March 6, 2012 onlyconnect 6 Comments

I spoke to Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.Com, shortly after Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the FT web app won an award for “Best Mobile Innovation for Publishing”.

I was interested in speaking to Grimshaw for two reasons.

First, the FT is a publication which has successfully managed the transition from print to online. The latest published results , for the first half of 2011, report that FT Group sales were up 7% and profits up 10%, “enhanced by digital subscriptions.”

Second, the FT took the initiative to bypass Apple’s app store with its onerous subscription terms by remaking its app as HTML5, as reported here .
The award “was the icing on the cake for the whole process,” Grimshaw told me. “When we abandoned the native app and stepped out of iTunes, it was a big commercial gamble, and it was a rueful moment as well because we’d created a beautiful native app and won an Apple design award.”

Was the FT move all about subscription fees, or were there other factors? “It was not all about Apple,” said Grimshaw. “Certainly their 30% tax on subscriptions didn’t make sense to us, because we already have our own platform so why pay somebody else to use their platform? Second, they would have owned the relationship with the customer. That’s important for various reasons, but for example it makes it difficult to manage churn, which is a crucial aspect of a subscription business.

“There were some other reasons. The mobile market would have been problematic if we had to keep developing all our applications for many different operating systems. The overhead is enormous. It doesn’t stop once you’ve launched the app, you have to keep ugrading and changing.

“HTML 5 offers a way out of that headache by producing code that runs across multiple platforms.

“When you add all of that together, it seems to be smart to go the HTML 5 route even though it was technologically risky because at the time nobody else had done it.”

So what has been the impact of the web app versus the native app?

“A lot of people said, if we leave iTunes we’ll disappear from the world. We haven’t found that to be the case. In the four month period after we launched the web app, from June through to October 2011, our traffic on the iPad and the iPhone increased by over 50%. 1.7 million people have now visited the web application, more than ever downloaded our old iPhone and iPad app combined.

“We have many tools and techniques which help us to promote and build audience in the browser, and they work just as effectively for the web app as they do for our normal web sites.”

Is the success of the web app a reflection of the type of app, which is content-dominated, or will web apps dominate more generally in the mobile space?

“I think that HTML 5 will dominate. The buzz around HTML 5 at Mobile World Congress reinforced that view. It feels to me that there is an unstoppable momentum behind it,” said Grimshaw, mentioning PhoneGap-style native wrappers as well as pure web apps. “The counter argument is that for some of the new features of phones and tablets you have to use native code. However, I think 90% of applications don’t need that kind of support. We produce a very sophisticated app, and HTML 5 covers all the functions that we would ever need to use.”

“Once people discover what they can do within the browser they will start thinking why would you develop in native when it creates all of these headaches.”

As form factors become more varied, do you see a convergence between what you do for mobile and what you do for the wider internet?

“I can see them coming together. I can imagine a day where a single set of HTML 5 code can power our site across the full range of smartphones, tablets and desktop. The only obstacle is that so many browsers on the desktop don’t support HTML 5 fully.

“That doesn’t make all the contexting go away. Now with our mobile development we are dividing screen sizes into four buckets, and the thinking is that we will have to design for those four screen sizes. Device manufacturers are going to carry on producing a device to occupy every possible niche, and as publishers we have to cope with that.”

How important is cloud and mobile to your business, what new opportunities does it offer?

“Mobile is incredibly strategically important. I’m personally convinced that mobile will be the main distribution channel for news in the future. People’s lives don’t stop when they leave their desks or exit their houses. They want to carry on their friendships, their business, their reading. If you have a powerful mobile device that can deliver that, you’re going to gravitate to that device, and pretty soon it does become the main channel.

“We already see the audience migrating onto mobile. About 20% of our page views now come from mobile devices. That could be over half within three years. Figuring out how to present our content, sell our subscriptions, deliver our advertising on mobile devices is hugely important.

“It’s a shift on a tectonic scale. For publishers this is a bigger shift than the shift from print to desktop, and it’s happening faster.

“It does create new opportunities as well. We have a new sales channel, we’re now selling our subscriptions through mobile devices. 15 to 20% of our new digital subscriptions every week are sold directly through mobile devices.

“It gives us the potential to reach new audiences. We’ve seen some good evidence from the mobile operators to show that our audience from mobile is much younger that our audience on desktop or on print. Devices are helping us to reach younger audiences and recruit readers who might be with us for the rest of their lives.”

What about social media and the relationship with the big web portals, Google, Facebook, Twitter?

“I see social media as a parallel trend to mobile. Mobile is the desire of people to take content with them physically. Social media is about the desire of people to take content with them virtually, and equally powerful.

“On the advertising side I find social media a little alarming because of scale. Facebook has a trillion page views a month, which makes them 400 times bigger than the BBC and 1500 times bigger than the New York Times. It’s scale which is unimaginable for most publishers, and they have tremendous insight into their audience. That’s a potent cocktail. And every time someone shares an FT article on Facebook, an extra bit of data builds up on their side that tells them about our readers.

“On the subscription side though it is all positive and they can be powerful sales channels for us. We have big communities in social media, 300,000 odd on Facebook, 1.2 million Twitter followers, and these are to some extend self-selecting marketing audiences, people who stuck up their hand and said we’re interested in the FT.

“We also believe we can find ways to allow people to consume content in the social media environment if they are subscribers. We’re working on finding ways to do that.”

What do you think of paywalls versus free content for newspapers on the web? Does the paywall only work because the FT is a niche publication, albeit a large niche?

“We are very much on the paywall side and unashamedly so, we think our content has tremendous value and people do not object to paying for it. We now have 270,000 digital subscribers and that compares to our newspaper circulation which is around 330,000, so we’ve been successful in building up a paying audience in digital which is now pretty close in scale to our paying audience. It’s been an enormously success business venture for us.

“When you look at the publishers that are giving all their content away, the reason they are giving it all away is in order to build up a bigger audience for advertising. But the scale of the competition in the advertising market is so huge that actually it is a fruitless exercise, unless you can acquire a scale which will give you billions of page views a month. It’s very hard to see how you can build a decent business just from online advertising. The numbers don’t stack up.

“My message to other publishers is not necessarily that you have got to have a paywall, but is that you probably need other ways to make money, other than online advertising.”

google, internet, open source, professional

Google’s Eric Schmidt looks forward to an Android in every pocket

February 29, 2012 onlyconnect

Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt addressed the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in confident mood, boasting of the strong growth in Android adoption and saying that the world would need to increase its population in order to sustain current rates of growth.

His keynote was in three parts. He kicked off with a plug for Chrome for Android, handing over to another Googler to show off its unlimited tabs and predictive background downloading which gives you near-instant page rendering if you pick the top hit after a Google search.

Next, he gave a somewhat political address appealing for light regulation of the Internet, on the grounds that any change to the current setup was likely to make it worse – “regulators regulate, that is what they do”. He also expressed his hope that fast internet access would be better extended to the world beyond the wealthy elite nations, noting the role of connectivity in the Arab Spring and in making public the actions of brutal dictators.

What has all this to do with Google’s business? Mainly, I suppose, that more connections means more Google searches which means more advertising income; Schmidt acknowledged that this forms the great majority of the company’s revenue, in the high nineties percentage-wise.

The third part of Schmidt’s session was the most interesting, when he took questions. He was asked for his thoughts on companies (I am sure Amazon was in the questioner’s mind) which take Android and remove all Google’s services. It is open source, he said, and that is entirely permissible; his hope is that customers will demand Google services and the Android market.

There was a revealing moment when an Iranian in the audience challenged Schmidt over his appeal for a free Internet. Chrome for Android was not available in Iran, he said, because Google, “your company”, is blocking it.

Schmidt immediately communicated with his legal team, who turned out to be sitting in the front row. Then he confirmed the block and said it was a requirement of US law, because of sanctions against Iran. “I’m with you”, he said, but Google has to comply with the law.

Another point of note was the number of references Schmidt made to privacy issues. He said that we will see increasing personalization of search and better targeted advertising, such that users will not mind it. You will be able to opt out, but according to Schmidt you will not want to. He added that personal data collection and use will continue to advance as far as society deems it ethical, a fascinating turn of phrase and one that bears further examination.

What was not mentioned? Apple, Microsoft, patents, the impact of the Motorola Mobility acquisition (he did say that that this last is not yet complete and that currently the company is managed independently).

It was an impressive keynote overall, given from a position of strength, at an event which is dominated in many respects by Android devices.

google, internet, open source, software, software development

How to brew better software: The Monki Gras in London

February 2, 2012 onlyconnect

I attended The Monki Gras in London yesterday, a distinctive developer event arranged by the analyst firm RedMonk.

This was not only a developer event, with the likes of Andre Charland and Dave Johnson from the PhoneGap team at Adobe, Mike Milinkovich the executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, and Jason Hoffman with Bryan Cantrill from cloud services (and Node.js sponsors) Joyent. It was also a serious beer event, complete with a range of craft beers, a beer tasting competition with nine brews to try, and a talk plus a free book from beer expert Melissa Cole. An unusual blend of flavours.

In charge of the proceedings was RedMonk co-founder and all round impressario James Governor. I am a big fan of RedMonk and its developer-focused approach; it has been a fresh and heady brew in the dry world of IT analysts.

The Monki Gras did seem like an attempt by a regular IT conference sufferer to fix problems often encountered. The Wi-Fi worked, the food was fresh, unusual and delicious, the coffee was superb; though brewing good coffee takes time so the queues were long. Not everything scales. Fortunately this was a small event, and a rare treat for the couple of hundred or so who attended.

That said, there were frustrations. The sessions were short, which in general is a good thing, but left me wanting more depth and more details in some cases; we did not learn much about PhoneGap other than a brief overview, for example.

Nevertheless there was serious content. Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady made the point succinctly: IT decision makers are ignorant about what developers actually use and what they want to use, which is one reason why there is so much dysfunction in this industry. Part of the answer is to pay more attention, and several sessions covered different aspects of analytics: Matt LeMay from bitly on what users click on the Web; Matt Biddulph (ex BBC, Dopplr, Nokia) gave a mind-stretching talk on social network analysis which, contrary to what some think, was not invented by Facebook but predates the Internet; and O’Grady shared some insights from developer analytics at RedMonk.

I had not noticed before that github now gets nearly double the number of commits than does Google Code. That is partly because developers like git, but may also say something about Google’s loss of kudos in the open source developer community.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi, lead for Jenkins Continuous Integration and an architect at CloudBees, spoke on building a developer community. His context was how Jenkins attracted developers, but his main point has almost limitless application: “Make everything easy, relentlessly.”

Something I see frequently is how big companies (the bigger the worse) place obstacles in front of developers or users who have an interest in their products or services. Examples are enforced registration, multiple clicks through several complex pages to get to the download you want, complex installs, and confusing information. It all adds friction. If the target is sufficiently compelling, like apps on Apple’s app store, developers will get there anyway; but it all adds friction, and if you are not Apple that can be fatal.

The Joyent guys did not speak about Node.js, sadly, but rather on the distinction between a VP of engineering and a Chief Technology Officer. Sounds dry and abstruse? I thought so too, but the delivery was so energetic that they were soon forgiven. Hoffman and Cantrill moved on to talk about management antipatterns in the software industry, prompting many wry nods of recognition from the audience. “It is very hard for middle management to add value,” said Cantrill.

Milinkovich made the point that the most valued open source projects generally make their way to a software foundation; PhoneGap to Apache is a recent example. He then gave the talk he really wanted to give, noting that as new software stacks emerge they have a tendency to re-implement CORBA, a middleware specification from the Nineties that tackled problems including remote objects, language independence, and transactions across the Internet. CORBA is remembered for drowning in complexity, but Milinkovich’s point is that the creators of exciting new stacks like Node.js should at least research and learn from past experience.

Milinkovich also found time to proclaim that “Flash is dead, Silverlight is dead, browser plugins are dead.” Perhaps premature; but I did not hear many dissenting voices.

I tweeted the conference extensively yesterday (losing at least one follower but gaining several more). Look out also for a couple of follow-up posts on topics of particular importance.

asus, drm, google, media, mobile, open source

Asus Transformer Prime update: Google video rental or unlocked bootloader, you choose

January 3, 2012 onlyconnect

Asus has responded to demands for an unlocked bootloader for its its latest Transformer Prime tablet.

It turns out that DRM is the culprit – at least, that is what Asus says on its Facebook page:

Regarding the bootloader, the reason we chose to lock it is due to content providers’ requirement for DRM client devices to be as secure as possible. ASUS supports Google DRM in order to provide users with a high quality video rental experience. Also, based on our experience, users who choose to root their devices risk breaking the system completely. However, we know there is demand in the modding community to have an unlocked bootloader. Therefore, ASUS is developing an unlock tool for that community. Please do note that if you choose to unlock your device, the ASUS warranty will be void, and Google video rental will also be unavailable because the device will be no longer protected by security mechanism.

My guess is that most modders will cheerfully unlock their bootloaders and ditch the DRM. That said, I am not clear why this should void the warranty unless it is software related.

apple, azure, cloud computing, development, embarcadero, exchange, facebook, flash, google, hp, microsoft, nokia

ITWriting.com awards 2011: ten key happenings, from Nokia’s burning platform to HP’s nightmare year

December 29, 2011 onlyconnect

2011 felt like a pivotal year in technology. What was pivoting? Well, users are pivoting away from networks and PCs and towards cloud and devices. The obvious loser is Microsoft, which owns PCs and networks but is a distant follower in devices and has mixed prospects in the cloud. Winners include Apple, Google, Amazon, and Android vendors. These trends have been obvious for some time, but in 2011 we saw dramatic evidence of their outcome. As 2011 draws to a close, here is my take on ten happenings, presented as the first ever ITWriting.com annual awards.

1. Most dramatic moment award: Nokia’s burning platform and alliance with Microsoft

In February Nokia’s Stephen Elop announced an alliance with Microsoft and commitment to Windows Phone 7. In October we saw the first results in terms of product: the launch of the Lumia smartphone. It is a lovely phone though with some launch imperfections like too short battery life. We also saw greatly improved marketing, following the dismal original Windows Phone 7 launch a year earlier. Enough? Early indications are not too good. Simply put, most users want iOS or Android, and the app ecosystem, which Elop stated as a primary reason for adoption Windows Phone, is not there yet. Both companies will need to make some smart moves in 2012 to fix these issues, if it is possible. But how much time does Nokia have?

2. Riskiest technology bet: Microsoft unveils Windows 8

In September 2011 Microsoft showed a preview of Windows 8 to developers at its BUILD conference in California. It represents a change of direction for the company, driven by competition from Apple and Android. On the plus side, the new runtime in Windows 8 is superb and this may prove to be the best mobile platform from a developer and technical perspective, though whether it can succeed in the market as a late entrant alongside iOS and Android is an open question. On the minus side, Windows 8 will not drive upgrades in the same way as Windows 7, since the company has chosen to invest mainly in creating a new platform. I expect much debate about the wisdom of this in 2012.

Incidentally, amidst all the debate about Windows 8 and Microsoft generally, it is worth noting that the other Windows 8, the server product, looks like being Microsoft’s best release for years.

3. Best cloud launch: Office 365

June 2011 saw the launch of Office 365, Microsoft’s hosted collaboration platform based on Exchange and SharePoint. It was not altogether new, since it is essentially an upgrade of the older BPOS suite. Microsoft is more obviously committed to this approach now though, and has built a product that has both the features and the price to appeal to a wide range of businesses, who want to move to the cloud but prefer the familiarity of Office and Exchange to the browser-based world of Google Apps. Bad news though for Microsoft partners who make lots of money nursing Small Business Server and the like.

4. Most interesting new cross-platform tool: Embarcadero Delphi for Windows, Mac and iOS

Developers, at least those who have still heard of Embarcadero’s rapid application development tool, were amazed by the new Delphi XE2 which lets you develop for Mac and Apple iOS as well as for Windows. This good news was tempered by the discovery that the tool was seemingly patched together in a bit of a hurry, and that most existing application would need extensive rewriting. Nevertheless, an interesting new entrant in the world of cross-platform mobile tools.

5. Biggest tech surprise: Adobe shifts away from its Flash Platform

This one caught me by surprise. In November Adobe announced a shift in its business model away from Flash and away from enterprise development, in favour of HTML5, digital media and digital marketing. It also stated that Flash for mobile would no longer be developed once existing commitments were completed. The shift is not driven by poor financial results, but rather reflects the company’s belief that this will prove a better direction in the new world of cloud and device. Too soon and too sudden? Maybe 2012 will show the impact.

6. Intriguing new battle award: NVIDIA versus Intel as GPU computing catches on

In 2011 NVIDIA announced a number of wins in the supercomputing world as many of these huge machines adopted GPU Computing, and I picked up something of a war of words with Intel over the merits of what NVIDIA calls heterogeneous computing. Intel is right to be worried, in that NVIDIA is seeing a future based on its GPUs combined with ARM CPUs. NVIDIA should worry too though, not only as Intel readies its “Knight’s Corner” MIC (Many Integrated Core) chips, but also as ARM advances its own Mali GPU; there is also strong competition in mobile GPUs from Imagination, used by Apple and others. The GPU wars will be interesting to watch in 2012.

7. Things that got worse award: Spotify. Runners up: Twitter, Google search

Sometimes internet services come along that are so good within their niche that they can only get worse. Spotify is an example, a music player that for a while let you play almost anything almost instantly with its simple, intuitive player. It is still pretty good, but Spotify got worse in 2011, with limited plays on free account, more intrusive ads, and sign-up now requires a Facebook login. Twitter is another example, with URLS now transformed to t.co shortcuts whether you like it not and annoying promoted posts and recommended follows. Both services are desperately trying to build a viable business model on their popularity, so I have some sympathy. I have less sympathy for Google. I am not sure when it started making all its search results into Google links that record your click before redirecting you, but it is both annoying and slow, and I am having another go with Bing as a result.

8. Biggest threat to innovation: Crazy litigation from Lodsys, Microsoft, Apple

There has always been plenty of litigation in the IT world. Apple vs Microsoft regarding graphical user interfaces 1994; Sun vs Microsoft regarding Java in 1997; SCO vs IBM regarding UNIX in 2003; and countless others. However many of us thought that the biggest companies exercised restraint on the grounds that all have significant patent banks and trench warfare over patent breaches helps nobody but lawyers. But what if patent litigation is your business model? The name Lodsys sends a chill though any developer’s spine, since if you have an app that supports in-app purchases you may receive a letter from them, and your best option may be to settle though others disagree. Along with Lodsys and the like, 2011 also brought Microsoft vs several OEMs over Android, Apple vs Samsung over Android, and much more.

9. Most horrible year award: HP

If any company had an Annus Horribilis it was HP. It invested big in WebOS, acquired with Palm; launched the TouchPad in July 2011; announced in August that it was ceasing WebOS development and considering selling off its Personal Systems Group; and fired its CEO Leo Apotheker in September 2011.

10. Product that deserves better award: Microsoft LightSwitch

On reflection maybe this award should go to Silverlight; but it is all part of the same story. Visual Studio LightSwitch, released in July 2011, is a model-driven development tool that generates Silverlight applications. It is nearly brilliant, and does a great job of making it relatively easy to construct business database applications, locally or on Windows Azure, complete with cross-platform Mac and Windows clients, and without having to write much code. Several things are unfortunate though. First, usual version 1.0 problems like poor documentation and odd limitations. Second, it is Silverlight, when Microsoft has made it clear that its future focus is HTML 5. Third, it is Windows and (with limitations) Mac, at a time when something which addresses the growing interest in mobile devices would be a great deal more interesting. Typical Microsoft own-goal: Windows Phone 7 runs Silverlight, LightSwitch generates Silverlight, but no, your app will not run on Windows Phone 7. Last year I observed that Microsoft’s track-record on modelling in Visual Studio is to embrace in one release and extinguish in the next. History repeats?

cloud computing, google, search, security, Web

Google and the UK Citizens Advice Bureau – an uncomfortable alliance

December 5, 2011 onlyconnect 6 Comments

I picked up a Guardian newspaper today and could not miss the full-page Google+ advertisement. Or was it? The advertisement stated that it was from the Citizens Advice Bureau in partnership with Google. The Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) is a well-respected (and genuinely useful) service which runs a network of offices in the UK where you can go for free advice for things like legal or financial problems. It is a charity funded partly by government grants.

What is it doing partnering with Google? Well, I presume it is because the theme is “how to be safer on the Internet” which is something that I am sure the CAB cares about. However looking at the advertisement it would be easy to conclude that the CAB is somehow promoting Google+, the social networking site that Google hopes will rival Facebook. Intriguing.

The advertisement says:

To find out more about how to manage your information online, pick up a booklet from your local Citizens Advice Bureau or go to google.co.uk/goodtoknow

I wanted to see this booklet, so I looked into the Holborn CAB in London.

I have to say that the aforementioned booklet was not exactly strewn about. In fact, the woman on the desk wasn’t sure if they had any. She went and looked though, and came back with the web address. Perhaps I could go there? I said I was keen to see the booklet the CAB was handing out – did it exist? Eventually I was told that they did not have any, but that the head office in Pentonville Road might. So I went there.

The man at the desk was not sure, but went away for a moment, and came back with one in his hands.

Page one says this:

We have partnered with Citizens Advice to provide tips and advice. You can get free, confidential and impartial help about everything from finances to staying safe online from your local bureau in person, on the phone or online. For in depth information on all of the topics in this booklet and more, visit the Good to Know website.

I think this is a PR triumph for Google, but I reckon the CAB has been sold a pup. It is not that I have anything against Google; but I would go to Google for impartial advice about staying safe online in the same way that I would go to a ferry company for impartial advice on cheap flights.

There is little sign of impartiality in the booklet. Personally I would say that a booklet on “how to manage the information you share online” that does not mention Facebook is in chocolate teapot territory. This booklet achieves this though; in fact the only web site mentioned is … Google.

“Keep your Google Account extra safe,” it says. But how about not having a Google account? No account, no personal details to lose.

This is stealth advertising – except that I am not sure about the stealth.

A substantial portion of the booklet is devoted to explaining why Google having my data is really good for me. “How knowing you better makes your internet better,” it says.

There is no mention of the benefits of using an ad-blocker to avoid sending data to advertisers. Nor does it include advice on simply not putting data online at all, if it might embarrass you or compromise your safety.

The reason is that Google cannot possibly be impartial about managing online information. Google wants your data, as much of it as possible, in order to target advertising. It is as simple as that.

Which is why Google is an uncomfortable partner for the CAB. I think the CAB could do with some impartial advice.

google, professional

Google’s real-time analytics, and why it gives it away

November 23, 2011 onlyconnect

The free Google Analytics has added a real-time view which is great fun to watch:

Aside from distracting bloggers, is there much value to real-time analytics? I’m not sure there is much advantage but it does demo well.

Why does Google invest so much in giving away analytics? Simple: it gets your data too. The amount of data Google receives on our web activities is breathtaking.

Here is something that annoys me. Perform a Google search, hover your mouse over a link, and note that visually it looks as if you have a direct link to the result. Even the text in the IE status bar says that you have

The truth though: the link is actually to a Google site, in this case:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=itwriting.com&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fitwriting.com%2F&ei=58HMTuC4GI3E8QO56tDqDw&usg=AFQjCNGGr8FB9ywzsmKgVeJiInfTMm0EIQ&sig2=WO6JkzqzGoGxpbdstavwOQ

This is not for your benefit! In fact, it slows down your browsing, since you now have to wait for two sites to respond, first Google and then the actual destination. Google does this though because it wants to know exactly what you clicked on its search page. I also regard the way the status bar is faked as deceptive, as well as being a weakness in Internet Explorer – this is meant to show you what the hyperlink actually targets.

Microsoft’s Bing does not do this as far as I can tell, so if you want to get to your searched destinations faster, do not use Google. Unfortunately (from this perspective) Google’s search algorithms are rather quick so you may lose as much as you gain.

cloud computing, google, professional

Google App Inventor not dead, MIT to offer public service in 2012

November 10, 2011 onlyconnect 3 Comments

Google’s App Inventor is a visual and mostly browser-hosted development environment for Android. There is a design tool:

and a "Blocks Editor” which lets you create program logic using visual blocks:

App Inventor is a great concept but in practice most developers find it easier to use more traditional tools to code their applications. Earlier this year Google said that App Inventor would close, but that the code would be open sourced in partnership with MIT Media Labs. This is a kind of homecoming, since it was Professor Hal Abelson at MIT who proposed it as a project while on sabbatical with Google in 2008.

Google now says, in an email to App Inventor users:

Sometime in the first quarter of 2012, the Center plans to provide an App Inventor service for general public access, similar to the one Google is currently running.

Since App Inventor will continue running at Google until December 2011, this may mean only a short interval during which App Inventor will be unavailable. There will be no migration of projects though, so you have to download any existing projects and later upload them to the new service.

App Inventor is inspired by Scratch, an existing open source MIT project which is used to good effect in education.

Tim Anderson's IT Writing