Google Services: Chrome, Voice, Wave, TV, Hangouts

[bucknut11]

I am surprised that no one brought this up 2 days ago.

Wow. I guess I'm blind. :crazy:

 

[OCBucksFan]

I'm surprised no one has brought up Buzz yet. Google's crack at social networking. I've turned it off. Other thoughts?

Google Buzz

It's an interesting concept, but truly tieing in your email with social networking has some privacy concerns on the net. Tech Crunch has been just piling on, it seems like Google didn't really think this one all the way through, but it's actually been a lot more popular than I had assumed. Unlike Orkut, it's actually getting used.

Google Buzz Privacy Issues Have Real Life Implications

Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble.

Google is -deservedly ? getting a lot of heat for the fact that its latest social product has a number of privacy flaws baked into it by design.

They?ve since made some improvements to the product, but that?s not where the story ends.

Some people think the complaints are unwarranted and the issues not all that bad, while some think it?s mostly annoying and others don?t even know there are issues yet (or that Google launched something new at all). And then there those whose lives are already being impacted by the privacy loopholes in Google Buzz ? and not all in a good way.

Watch Out Who You Reply To On Google Buzz, You Might Be Exposing Their Email Address

The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Google Buzz does with Gmail, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. One issue raised earlier today is that the people you follow and who follow you are made public by default on your profile page, but are based on people who you email the most in private. You can make these lists invisible, but it remains an opt-out process instead of an opt-in one.

It turns out there is another privacy flaw in Google Buzz that can expose private email addresses to everyone who follows you. Google Buzz borrows the @reply convention from Twitter so that if you want to reply to someone or direct a comment to them you simply put the @ sign in front of their name. Google autosuggests names from your contact list as you start typing. Normally, this doesn?t cause any problems if you select the Gmail account or chat name associated with that person?s public profile. It ends up posting their name, and not their email address.

But if you select a name or account that is not public, Buzz will fill in with their private email. For example, I wanted to direct a comment at TechCrunch writer MG Siegler, so I typed in ?@mg? and up came three of his different emails. I picked his TechCrunch email, not realizing that his public profile is linked to a different Gmail account. What this means is that the 231 people following me on Buzz can all see MG?s private email address in my comment even if they had no direct connection to him before. They can now send him unsolicited emails and spam galore. Now multiply that type of potential exposure by the millions of people already using Buzz, and you can see why it is a hole that should be patched up quickly.

 

[OCBucksFan]

And less than an hour after I made the previous post, this came across my rss feeds.

Google adds requested privacy features to Buzz ? Boy Genius Report

Just two days after the initial launch, Google, based upon feedback from users, is adding several requested features to their new social media platform Google Buzz. The changes, to be implemented later today, include:

- More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
- Ability to block anyone who starts following you
- More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile

As you can see, most of the improvements revolve around privacy settings; giving greater control over how and to whom your personal information is shared — a concern/criticism that was quickly recognized by blogs and users alike. Buzz, as it currently exists, looks to be Google’s answer to Twitter, with a heavy emphasis on location awareness and your Gmail address book. We’re curious as to what your thoughts are on Buzz. Are you using it? Do you like it?

 

[jwinslow]

 

[OCBucksFan]

Google-T-Mobile speculation spreads over Web

Computerworld - Web discussion: Google Inc. should buy T-Mobile USA from its German parent and distribute free Nexus One Android-based smartphones to the carrier's 33 million subscribers. The free smartphones, of course, would run location-aware Google mobile ads.

Sound ridiculous? Or not?

Well, that scenario builds on the suggestions of a few serious financial thinkers and is still a fairly hot topic among bloggers and others a week after reports surfaced that T-Mobile may sold or spun out of the parent company.

To be perfectly clear: Google buying T-Mobile is just speculation. In fact, some in the online world are just suggesting the move. Neither company will comment at all about the speculation.

Pure speculation at this point, but it's an interesting concept. Google has shown that it can give your resources, google voice for example, that aren't "virtual expenses" and still make money, but could they buy a telco company and give you a smartphone and still make money on the deal?

One thing, this would give them the exposure they wanted with their phones, OS, and an opportunity to gain a lot more location data, it would also open up a whole new realm of advertising, googles local advertising in citys would go through the roof.

It's still funny to me that the "search engine with the funny name" is even being discussed in business matters this large, with all the search engines that came before them (Lycos, Yahoo, Askjeeves, etc...) trying to become more of a news outlets and failing.

 

[OCBucksFan]

 

[Deety]

Anyone using Cooliris with Chrome while surfing BP? The extension gave my computer fits yesterday, not just on BP but it seemed to affect just the forums of the sites I was visiting. Might just be my computer, but I figured I'd inquire in case we need to report an issue.

 

[OCBucksFan]

YouTube - What is Google Chrome OS?

I have been playing with the beta, it's interesting, I am not sure the world is ready for what is essentially an online operating system. There are no real local apps, you get a web browser, essentially, this is your start menu:

The whole os is essentially the browser, you login with your gmail account and there you go.

I am kind of torn, the OS is blazing fast, but I see it's limitations as being a serious problem. It almost reminds me of the old "internet TV boxes" while the concept is good, too many people use their netbooks for music and movies on the go, I love cloud computing, but I will be interested to see how the consumer views this product, is there a way google can make this thing look like something the average consumer wants to use and own?

They have changed the OS a lot, it's now basically OpenSuse running gnome with integration and a custom build of the Chrome browser.

Pros:
They load speed is nice, it's faster than Ubuntu or Windows, but it's not that 10 second boot they claimed, but it's getting there.

Actually having media players and stuff now is nice, I was concerned about the idea of the shell being a browser.

Familiar gnome interface, they changed it a little so that it's comfortable with windows users, the apps menu is where your start button would be, clock etc are all in places that someone just moving over would understand and get quickly.

Cons:
It's just Suse, that's it, I realize this is beta but so far it's just another linux build with very few new apps.

Driver support, ugh, I would love to put this on my netbook but there's no support for my wireless driver yet.

It's nothing different yet, I feel like it's a linux build with chrome instead of firefox, which my wife runs with Ubuntu...

Still eager, they are supposed to release this year and their goal is obvious, they want to be the pioneers in the online applications market and this may be the start of that, but so far, it just looks like linux.

 

[OCBucksFan]

Well, after playing with this OS for a few hours, I am actually starting to catch the idea behind the interface and all that. See, something as small as the location of your apps is going to turn off a lot of potential users, Google is after the online application idea, true cloud based computing, and in order to make that more attractive you need to give users a stable operating system that's familiar enough to windows users. This almost accomplishes this, your apps on the lower left hand corner, clock on the lower right hand corner, you can use googles desktop widgets to give you that customized feel yet at the back end you still have linux stability. Chrome obviously runs blazing quick, the system swaps to the drive well, etc...

Issues I see them having to overcome:

1) How do you get people away from itunes? We all know apple is never going to give out an open source version of that package, (can you say cracked DRM, I knew you could)

2) Linux always has the feeling of your apps do what they are supposed do, help files are written by devs, and if you don't understand how you are supposed to use something you're often screwed, so the lack of user friendliness of applications might turn off a lot of users.

3) It's still Linux, and Linux intimidates the hell out of normal users. They can't figure out of it's a MAC or a PC and it has this reputation for being useless unless you can do command line stuff. Even though people can see it's different, they will still associate Linux with that idea.

4) The Beast that is Microsoft. With MS teaming up with Apple to fight Google you can see the concern, the whole Netbook idea was originally for Ubuntu, tiny computers that ran stable and was free upgrades for life, upgrades that would work with that hardware, once Google starts trying to push out netbooks through major distributors like Dell and Compaq MS will have none of it. Not to mention the fact that Windows 7 actually runs on a netbook and it's almost usable.

It's free, it's a clean OS, it works, so far I have been entertained playing with it. They say the OS isn't designed to take over desktops, they are after the netbook and lightweight laptop market, and the idea of the hosted apps means they work everywhere regardless of the platform. However, if it wasn't for the need to play games and a few work applications that will ONLY run in windows, I could consider running it at home.

If anyone is interested, the beta cd is public, and you'll get updates as they update.

Get Chrome OS beta

You can get virtualbox or vmware player for free, so if you're curious, check it out in a safe environment.

I have my CPU set to 1GHZ, and memory set to 512 Megs and the OS seems to fly.

 

[OCBucksFan]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZU7BOeQ58]YouTube - What is Google Voice?[/ame]

 

[MaxBuck]

Count me among those who find the idea of having all my software online, rather than in my machine, a non-starter.

 

[jlb1705]

I'm trying out the Chrome browser right now.

I was surprised to find out that not only does it work for the stuff I need it for on my job, it does some things that I haven't been able to get Firefox to do.

It's noticeably faster than Firefox (some of my work functions were notoriously slow, and Chrome has helped some). I'm able to get pretty much all of the extensions I found useful in Firefox as well.

I'm a bit disappointed that Chrome doesn't seem to support WYSIWYG. Or maybe I have that backwards - I dunno. All I know is that it's kind of annoying when I'm trying to post here. It's not a dealbreaker, it's just that WYSIWYG is a convenience I had grown accustomed to.

I love the task manager - I can see exactly which tabs and/or extensions are causing problems and kill them.

 

[jlb1705]

OK, now at home on my laptop, I've had the chance to run Chrome and Firefox 3.6 side by side. Chrome is faster without a doubt, but Firefox has improved over the last few versions. I like Chrome's speed, but I can live with what Firefox is giving me.

The most alarming thing I saw - in Chrome's task manager I can pull up the stats and if you have both browsers running it will show stats for both side by side. I appreciate the Chrome does this, but the comparison is not favorable. With five tabs running in each browser, Chrome is using about twice the memory of Firefox. For me that's no good. I already to a lot of resource hogging stuff (iTunes, audio file conversions, downloading torrents, DVD authoring) and I don't really need my browser to take up more resources than it already does.

That's kind of a shame - I really like a lot of the plugins for Chrome more than their Firefox counterparts.

 

[jwinslow]

Count me among those who find the idea of having all my software online, rather than in my machine, a non-starter.

You like buying software for each computer you own when said software titles have barely changed their main functions in years?

I'd like to purchase software for my heavy computing needs on a desktop, but cloud computing would be great for a laptop, netbook or gaming console for basic needs.

 

[MaxBuck]

You like buying software for each computer you own when said software titles have barely changed their main functions in years?

I'd like to purchase software for my heavy computing needs on a desktop, but cloud computing would be great for a laptop, netbook or gaming console for basic needs.

My software needs are fairly extensive, and I don't like the idea of being utterly without computing capability if my Internet connection goes down. Besides that, much of what I do uses public-domain software that is specific to my needs (most of it being Windows-only).

If all you need is word processing, spreadsheets and games, I can understand how this sort of thing might work for you. It won't for me.