Google Home

We have two Google Home devices in different parts of the house. These things are... fun, I guess. But they will remain little more than toys (good thing they don't cost much) until Google does a few basic things to improve them. In classic Google form, the Home device is something like 80% of what it should be. It seems Google usually development at that point with many products though.

1. "OK Google, set volume three on Home Two" works fine. "OK Google, set volume two on Home Two" results in "I'm sorry I don't understand."

2. "I sorry, the music stopped because your account is being used on another device". I hear this almost daily. It isn't true. On command, the music can be immediately restarted.

3. One of our Homes, Home One, is in a "group" we call "home group", with an audio cast device. The other home, Home Two, is not in a group. For some reason Home Two frequently lapses into casting to the home group by default, thus itself staying silent, even though Home Two has *never* been asked to play music "on home group", and the account/voice commanding it has *never* asked for anything "on home group".

4. Google's multi-voice recognition is awful. It frequently misidentify voices even when they are very different. And completely unknown voices are almost always identified as one of the just two we have set up. We know this is true because we set both of the two accounts to use different, and non-default, assistant voices, deliberately, so we could tell what account it was accessing.

5. Google Home can not play YouTube playlists (don't get me started on the chaos that is Google's subscription media strategy. It rivals their messaging software strategy).

6. While music is playing you can say "OK Google, like this" and it will say "OK I noted that you like this". I assume that this gives the track a thumbs up in Google Music.

If you say "OK Google, do not like this", or variations there of, you get either "I don't understand" or some meaningless response. Google implemented one of the commands, then got bored or distracted and stopped.

7. There is no way to control media playback volume separately from that of the assistant voice.

8. There is no way to disable selected Google ecosystem functions. I would like to disable the setting of alarms and reminders, and limit the volume to a certain level either per Home device or on an account basis (either would work).

9. Home includes a list functionality which can be handy for grocery lists. Google implemented this list from the ground up, from scratch apparently. It's not stored in Keep, nor Docs. And good luck finding the list in the Home app, they buried it deep.

10. Even the Home list functionality is half-baked. For example, it never removes anything from the list, it only checks them off as done/completed. When you add the same item again, it creates a new item and the list grows. When I finally found our grocery list (not easy), it was extremely long. Many identical items were on there, checked off, 20 or 30 times.

11. Google claims you can play your Google Music playlists through Google Home. This just flat out doesn't work. It always picks some "close" sounding track or album to play no matter how specific your list name is. I even tried scheduling the playback in the Home app so that I could type in the playlist name - no ambiguity - doesn't work.

12. I have sent "feedback" to Google on the Google Home. Turns out the only way to do this is through the app, or by voice. There is no way to send feedback by email, or otherwise use a computer. I am expected to type things like this post into my phone with my thumbs. Well, I did send some feedback at least. I got no response.

Google+

I began using Google+ a few months after it launched in 2011. I was eager to get started with it because, 1) it was a Google product, and 2) it was said to be different. I have always been a heavy user of the Google infrastructure from simple things like gmail to more obscure things like APIs and Google App Engine. I use Blogger, Photos, various Android applications, adsense, Sites and much more. I have also used a long list of now defunct Google tools like Wave, Buzz and Reader and products I can't even recall.

When Google announced it was shutting down Google+ many, including myself, were deeply disappointed and even angry. It is easy to dismiss this.

"It's free, what do you expect?"
"No one was using it anyway, it'll never beat Facebook."
"It's just another Google failure, they dump stuff all the time."

Sure... But Google+ is actually a different case, from say Wave or Google Pages, or Picasa, for one critical reason:

Google lied about it.

Google said Google+ was strategic. Google said Google+ was Google. Google said Google+ was an identity engine. Google said Google+ was a central hub for controlling all your personal content within the Google ecosystem, and beyond.

If Google+ was these things, then Google+ was never really a Facebook competitor. It was... Something else. Something new. The Google+ website itself was just a bonus, something this new strategy lead to, but did not require.

Now of course this was the initial vision, but it is what Googe told us, so I went with it. I used Google+ the way they said it should be used. And it worked. It solved so many problems, while making so many things easy... It was near a perfect solution to several awkward problems of online presence and content. It had so much promise...

As we know, that vision did not last long, not more than a year. Apparently Google+ was pulled in different directions internally, we'll likely never know the story, but problems surfaced. Those problems, mistakes in how Google presented the tool (as a new login for example), and rough interface elements, are not my complaint though. My complaint is simply this:

Google continued to lie about Google+.

Eventually the big clues to what was really happening started to come during a series of "upgrades" that removed key Google+ features. It would be one thing if these were simply the dropping of the various "discovery" mechanisms Google tried, that didn't really prove useful. But the changes we saw were more. They cut at the core of what Google+ was about, or what they said it was about.

Just one example; the removal of a way to create posts, with a photo, that also acted as a link to an album of related photos. On the surface this seems to be just an artifact of separating out Google Photos as a new stand alone system. Now I really don't care if Google Photos is stand alone. This is really just a matter of branding and Google's internal management tree, to me.  But this change was different. With this change, Google actually, willfully, did damage to the quality of Google+ content. Why would they do this? In hindsight we can think of few reasons, none of them good.

And all the while Google continued to lie about Google+.

Things went downhill from there. Further deliberate functionality reduction, malfunctioning search, inconsistent interface changes, unchecked spam, wildly incorrect statistics and more. All the while Google was telling us that everything was fine. Eventually it was clear that there were no significant development teams behind the curtain. Google+ was in maintenance mode.

For myself, I still didn't care. If I was the only user, Google+ would still meet my personal needs for tracking my watch projects. Google+ can be viewed without a login, and the interface remained simple - if a user could scroll down, they could use that single link to my watch service content. But the writing was on the wall, even as Google persisted in saying there was a path into the future.

The reality is that Google began lying about Google+ and never stopped, right up to the end.

A bug was found in the authentication code, so Google will shut down Google+ months, almost a year, into the future.

In what strange world does that story even remotely make any sense? I hardly know where to start. So let's just call it another fiction and move on.

Over many, many years I have been a big boaster of Google tools both professionally and personally. I am personally responsible for bringing dozens, maybe even 100s of new users to Google+. Today I no longer encourage or recommend the Google platform. Enterprise users should be especially concerned and tread carefully. Shuttering Google+ is different from terminating other products in a troubling way.

In Google+ Google has proved itself to be an unreliable long term partner. Because Google lied to us.

Google also made a liar out of me. I told watch owners they would be able to find their photos and comments on Google+ with a search, indefinitely. I said this because Google specifically said this would be possible - that's what Google+ was for.

I am not one of those people that now delete all their Google accounts and switch to an iPhone. Many of Google's offerings, although they are becoming more fragmented, still work together and are useful to me. So far. But simply put, I can not believe what Google says. So for example, although my main website is hosted at Google Sites, I have for a while now had a complete copy - the same site - hosted at another free service. And I maintain them. Should Google pull that rug out from under me again, I'll just make the necessary DNS changes. And by the way:

Google doesn't care about any of this.

There is no point in any sort of protest or complaining, and that's not the point of this post. If there is any doubt, consider that Google Take Out, which is supposed to allow us to get "our content" and, maybe, somehow, get it online someplace else, is hopelessly half-baked and under-featured for Google+. This problem is receiving no attention. And this just furthers my point, Google is not dependable in the long run. Especially if you are using Google services as part of a business, proceed, but proceed with caution. Do not put in stock in what Google says. Always have a plan B at the ready.

You can find my watch projects and other content here:
https://pluspora.com/people/982fc890ad7301364692005056268def

Google Photos

 

This is a screenshot from an early version of Google Photos, face search. It thought Iris was a person.

Assistant

 

By changing my selected voice of the Google Assistant on my Google Home, I was able to confirm that Harlan imitates my voice well enough to access my account!

Ok

Guess started music this morning on his Google Home all by herself!

Apple Store

One if Harlan's favorite foods is apple. She often asks for some. She also likes to say "ok Google". Today he managed to get the Google Home to tell her the locations of near by Apple stores. I don't think they have what she's looking for though.

Google Home

Hey Harlan, meet your new friend!
 

Google Photos Updated

Google Photos, on Android, had an odd bug. When in the Albums view, a search using the exact name of an album would sometimes search using image recognition and return many individual photos, and sometimes it would go directly to the album of that name. I never did find a pattern to it, but simply trying a couple times would get me to the album I wanted.

In the new update, as far as I can tell, they "fixed" the problem and now searches always use the image recognition method in all cases when it can. So... It's now no longer possible to find many albums, even exact names, if the name triggers the image recognition method. I can find albums with more unusual names though, if I know the exact names. For example I put numbers for dates in some album names.

I have read comments from some that "albums" are not a useful concept anymore. And that the search should do the job. I see the point, and that would be cool, but I have a few objections.

1) Object, person and place recognition, good as it is, isn't good enough so far - my watch pictures show up all over in some bizarre classifications.
2) Locations and dates are frequently wrong. Google provides no way to help the search out with meta data edits, tags or keywords.
3) Albums are a unit of permission when sharing photos.
4) No matter how good the search ever gets (and I expect it to get increasingly brilliant), it can simply never know my exact motives for grouping a particular set of photos and wanting to do something with that set later.

Google Photos and Photos in Google

I thought of something today that I'd like to do with a couple photos I have. The photos are in Google Photos in an album created about a year and half ago. I'd also like to add a photo to that album.

Now, I keep local copies of all my camera-taken photos, and always have. But phone-taken photos often end up just uploaded. I don't have time to get them onto a PC from my phone. I take 20-50 photos everyday with my phone, it's just way too much. So I don't have a local copy of this particular Google Photos album.

Remarkably, as near as I can figure, there is no way to do what I wanted to do, using either mobile or desktop Google tools. There is no way to search for an album. Even if you find a photo that is in that album, there is no way to get to the album from there. Even if you find the album in the infinite scrolling list, which would take all afternoon, there is no way to open it and add a photo. Even if you get past all that somehow, you can still only do actions on photos one at a time.

I can find old Google+ posts that have each photo, but I can't get to the album from there either. Nor can I do much with the one photo. Other than download it I guess...

So... Out of luck. I can not create the series of posts I had in mind. It's simply impossible to do the most basic tasks with Google Photos. Not hard. Not inconvenient because of menu arrangements (it has those problems too), but literally impossible.

I'm thinking we all are headed toward a brick wall of sorts. I have many years of photos in Google storage. Most I have local copies that I can use elsewhere as Google renders itself useless. But for others, there is simply going to be no way to access and use them!

So there is no misunderstanding, I do not rely on Google for storing and organizing photo files. I have 5 or 6 copies or my entire archive on multiple media types. I also have photos stashed on three other "cloud" services, in additional to Google Drive.

Google and others have over the years provided tools that made additional things possible. For example, I was servicing watches, and taking photos of them, before Google+ existed. But Google+ allowed me to share more, a lot more, using a convenient mobile phone camera - which I didn't use until Google made it convenient. It is easy to grab my phone and take photos while working, and have these "magically" appear online.

It is ironic that after so many years and so many tools, I am right back were I began. On my own, with locally managed photos, and no practical way to share many. Even as Google backs out of support for photos, I'll keep taking pictures, just not nearly as many, not while I'm working, and I won't have the photos to share online. And as for the ones already out there on Google+, as I say above, those are already rendered useless so the point is moot. As for Google Photos, it is becoming an unordered, unorganized, unsearchable heap in service of day to day shares to Google tools (including blogger), and nothing else.

Google, Google+, and The Numbers

When Google featured my Watch Projects collection, it had about 30-31k followers. This is because I created it with the auto-follow option and at the time that is how many people had me circled. Of course an awful lot of those accounts are fake or inactive, or both, obviously. Also a thousand or so had followed it without circling me, as I recall, at that time. The number in the collection was a bit higher than then number Google says have me in circles.

Since Google featured the Collection, it gains 200-300 followers a day. It's over 70k last time I checked.

A few days ago, as I sometimes do, I posted to the collection a mention of the Vintage Watch community. The community has similar content, in a different form, and it is of course a good place for folks to post about their own watches or ask questions. You would think some of the 70k follower of the collection, or at least some of the 40k that have come along in the past few months, would be interested in the community too, right? The population of the community has hardly changed in a long time, so it should be noticeable.

In 48 hours the Community had gained 3 (three) new members.

I don't trust Google's numbers, at all. There's something really fishy about the whole thing.

https://plus.google.com/+JeffSexton/posts

Photos and Google

I have been asked about how I do various things here on Google+ with regard to photos. So, here is the current workflow. It's as simple as I can make it, and doesn't require moving things by sneaker-net. Keep in mind that this is what works today, Google has been regularly pulling the rug out without warning, and will not (ever) tell us how things work. So these steps may not last long... This only works with the "classic" interface. The new Google+ interface can't do most of this.

1) Use the Google Photos mobile app with auto-upload turned on.
2) Take photos while work is in progress.
3) In Google+, classic interface, select post photos. A photos screen appears.
4) Select more than one photo from the recently uploaded. It has to be more than one. This doesn't work if you pick just one. Seriously.
5) This goes to an "organize" screen. Don't do anything on this screen. This doesn't work if you touch anything here. Seriously. Just hit "add" or "done" or whatever it is.
6) Next appears the post dialog. Type in "Did some work today today", and select who to share with, whatever... I select my Watch Projexts Collection, and + select the email address of the watch owner (the new Google+ interface can't do this). There is also an "organize" button. Click that.
7) The same organize screen appears again. It looks the same, but it is not. NOW you can arrange and rotate photos, select a cover photo, etc. Also, drop down the album button at the top left and enter the name of a NEW album to create. I create an album with the watch serial number as the name.
8) Hit done, and the dialog post appears again. Again, here you can enter text, Community, a Collection, people and Circles to share with.
9) Post.

This creates a post with images and a link to the new album. If you don't do it exactly like the above, it turns out differently.
Now to add more photos...

1) Take more photos and wait for them to upload
2) Hit the post photos button.
3) Select one, or more photos. It's OK to select just one this time.
4) The "organize" screen appears. This time you can do whatever you want now, at this point.
5) Hit the album drop down and select the album just created (or any album). This is an un-orderable, unsearchable infinite list so there is no way to do this with older albums. You just can't find them. The list appears to be in order of the latest exif date of images in each album.
6) Done, and post.

Later.......

I take good photos with a Nikon D70 and upload these full size to +Google Drive. I name the folder with the date and owners name. I send these images home with the watch on a CD.

Later still..........

I go through old Drive folders and each day:

1) Rename one to include the watch serial number (I rename it so I know which ones have been through this part).
2) I search Google+ for the job number, and find a post with the link to the album (as created above).
3) I get into the album. This is the last remaining way to get to the old Google+ Photos interface where there is still some functionality. I select "add photos" (the new interface can't do this).
4) I select to add "from Drive" (Google Photos can't do this).
5) I search for the name of my Drive folder created above and add the photos of that watch to the album.
6) This shares the new photos, so a Google+ post dialog is created. I go ahead and share it to the Vintage Watches Google+ Community, with a link to my online database information for that grade (for Elgins anyway).
7) I then go to Google Blogger. Blogger can search what it calls "Picasa Web Albums" for photos to add to a blog post. I search for the name of the Album I just added to and create a blog post with all the photos, included the formal ones copied over from Drive (note: it can take a couple of minutes for the for ones to be visible to Blogger)
8) Blog post...
9) I add, if I want, the better photos as "extra photos" for that grade (for Elgins) to my serial number database. I add URLs for Drive images. There is an important trick to this.
9a) Make sure the Drive folder permissions are either public or public with link. An easy way to do this is to set that permission on a higher level folder. Every sub-folder you create will have the same permission.
9b) Click the share icon for an image.
9c) Click "advanced"
9d) A URL appears in the next dialog. Copy it.
9e) Paste it where you what the image, for example in an img html tag or in some app (like blogger) that can take a URL to an image. BUT the URL is a link to a Drive viewer. To get to the content itself you have to edit the URL like the following example. Change this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-qOxVSisTnKN2c5MFl5bGJocDA/view?usp=sharing

To this:
https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B-qOxVSisTnKN2c5MFl5bGJocDA

The result is a reference to an image itself.

And there it is. I don't know how much longer this will work. Google is taking away functionality at a remarkable pace. Any post could be the last...

Links (where you can see the results of this process):
Example serial number database page:
http://home.elgintime.com/elgintime/GnumLookup/239.html
Sample serial number page with images stored in Drive:
http://home.elgintime.com/elgintime/SnumLookup/24847610.html
Projects Collection:
https://plus.google.com/collection/EX-8V
Vintage Watches Community:
https://plus.google.com/communities/105032863651771032397

On The Life and Death of Google+

There's been a lot of talk lately about strategic changes at Google, and the "failure" of Google+.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/25/a-personal-reflection-on-google/

From where I am sitting, +Google+ is working just fine.  It does what it does, and it's useful to me.  Is this happening because it doesn't have a billion users yet or something?  Did they seriously think that would happen?  I just hope development doesn't halt, because I have nothing to replace this with.

I started a Facebook account and a Google+ account within days of the same time in July of 2011.  I posted the exact same content to both for close to a year.  I have lost track of how many new customers I have gained through Google+, it's well into double digits.  Through Facebook that count was, and remains to this day, zero.  I don't use Facebook at all anymore, and haven't for years.

I have met new people on Google+.  On Facebook people I went to grade school with came out of the woodwork.  And no one else.  I don't use Facebook.  It's a poor website, and more significantly, it does nothing for me.  Google+ has been completely different on the other hand.

Google+ can be great without being everywhere and everything to everyone.  It can generate valuable information for Google, and a valuable experience for it's users.  I don't know what's happening at Google, I suspect very few people do, but I hope there's no cause for alarm.

Google Music Beta

I've been trying to use Google Music for awhile now.  I want to like it, I really do, but it's just not working out.

When I first started using it, there was a bug in the mobile app (on my Droid 2) that caused the first song in a playlist, album or other sequence to repeat.  After advancing from that first song manually, one time, the sequence would continue normally automatically on to each track.

At some point this bug has gotten far worse.  As it stands now, the mobile app will not advance to the next song in a sequence automatically, at all, ever.  I always have to manually tap the forward icon when a song ends, as it just repeats the same song again.

Needless to say this pretty much renders the music application unusable.  It's too bad.  Music is a hot area, and Google, ever ADD, seems to have forgotten Google Music and moved on.  But if Google doesn't get it all working, one of the other services is going to capture the users.

UPDATE: Yesterday my phone updated itself to Android 2.3.3 and the Google Music problem went away.  It works fine now.  I'd be willing to bet this problem had something to do with the old built in music app previously included in the distribution.

Still More Buzz About Google+

Image via WikipediaIt's been a few days now since I got access to Google+.  It remains the case that no one I know has received this access inspite of my adding them to Circles and sharing items with them in Streams.   Yesterday I found out that one person I know does know someone else that has access - that's the first and only such person I have heard of.

I don't understand what Google is doing.  Google+ is full of crickets and the occasional tumbleweed rolling past.  It's a lonely place.  The "nearby" section of the Stream on the mobile app has looked the same for 3 or 4 days.  This isn't a slow roll-out, this is a no-roll-out.

At any rate, here are a few more observations...

1) As far as I can tell there is absolutely no functional difference between Buzz and the Stream in Google+.  Are these two going to become one?  If that is the case, why isn't my Buzz history in the new Stream?  The interface on Google+ for Streams is quite a bit better than the interface for Buzz via gmail.

2) There is also no difference between "+1" and "Like".  Why do both of these exist?

3) At first I thought I would really dislike the mobile app uploading photos automatically, but I've changed my mind. It's handy and allows for some cool functionality (now if only my real camera could do that!).

4) Google+ confuses your browser if you have multiple logins and one is a Googel Apps or Enterprise account (which is not supported by Google+, likely because those accounts do not have profiles).

I like the look of Google+ and I think I like what it hints at for the feature integration of Google features.  I also think people will like it more than Facebook - but I also think that's not the point.  Google is up to something much more with this.  Google is making application use flow from the user identity, rather than having users pick and choice from unconnected facility. 

But it sure is dull in Google+ so far. 

More Google+

One thing I like is what they have done to leverage Picasa Web Albums (instead of reinventing something).  Google+ makes good use of Web Albums, and makes some slight changes to the way Web Albums works which I think are improvements.

When you get started with Google+ it's helpful to try a few things relating to photos and albums, then bounce over to your Picasa Web Albums and check out what it's doing.

In addition, the Google+ mobile application offers additional new, and much improved, ways to interact with photos in your albums.

Google+

I got into Google+ today.

Ok Google, let me know if I'm leaving anything out.  If I find something I think is interesting on the internet (that happens now and then), I need to:

1) eMail a link to people I know
2) Note the page in my shared items feed so people see it in Google Reader
3) Post the link to Google Buzz
4) If it's Google blog I need to "Friend Connect" it
e) "+1" it
6) Again if it's a blog, add the RSS feed to my Reader subscriptions
7) I'll just leave out Wave...
8) Post the link on my own blogger blog where it will show up in Reader for those that either Friend Connect or RSS subscribe
9) "Like" the page via Buzz or Reader or ...

And now I can also post it in Google+ !  Well, all this should only take about 10 minutes.  Much less if I practice browsing to all the various websites...

Oh but to do all this I will need to maintain groups in contacts for email and Buzz posts, and now Circles also since they do not interact.

I was also nothing less than astonished that Google+ includes a checkin feature (another checkin feature) that, yes, believe it or not, appears to have no relationship to Latitude, Places, Buzz or Offers.  Wow.

Google, these things are so obvious that they should not have to be mentioned, but here it goes...

A) I need to be able to add an RSS feed to Google+ so it can replace Reader, or I need to add Google+ items to Reader via an RSS feed (there's *no* RSS feed on Google+?!  Seriously?!).

B) I need to be able to add Google+ to the feeds I share into Buzz, or, well, see above...

c) why does gmail exist as a separate interface?  Why are not all the features (filters) of gmail implemented on  Buzz, Reader and Google+ as one unified service?

D) Google, you really and truly did not tie this together with Latitude, Places and Offers?  Really???

E) One, count them, one, mechanism for organizing contacts please.  I actually had to type in some names, even though my gmail contact list is all set and organized.  Why didn't groups I've created in gmail become circles?

F) Offer an RSS feed for publicly shared Google+ items so readers can read them in Reader.

G) There would appear to be no functional difference between "Like" and "+1", and even though here are sometimes both available, yet there are separate and do not completely overlap.  Does that make sense to anyone?

H) There's almost no functional difference between Buzz and Google+ posts.  Why do both of these exist?  At the very least items posted to Google+ should be available as an additional feed to Buzz followers.   People that follow items I post/blog/email/share will not check 4 different places for new content.

I) Related to Buzz...  Why does Buzz history, shared items and comments, migrate over to Google+?

J) I see there is a "chat" in Google+, is that Google Talk, or yet another and different chat/IM/XMMS/whatever?

There seem to be people that exist only and fully with both feet in Facebook and never look at anything else.  I think this is strange, but people like that do exist.  For those people, Google+ may be easier and more fun.  They might switch.  But for those of use trying to organize and control a more robust online existence, a service that is yet-another-service isn't going to help.

Thank you though Google, keep up the work.  And thank you for the de-facto additional space in web albums.

Google+

As everyone and their pets has heard, Google has introduced a new competitor to Facebook called Google Plus.  It sounds good.  They have an intriguing set of walk throughs up, and we all know a Facebook that isn't Facebook is long over due.  If anyone could do this, it would be Google.

But something doesn't add up here.

Within hours of "launching" this invite-only beta of Google Plus, invites were cut off citing "insane demand."  As I write this, invitations have not resumed.

I know a lot of techy people.  And they all know a lot of techy people.  But no one seems to know anyone that has access to Google Plus.  No one.  Not a soul got an invitation.   Google+ has created a huge "buzz" on the internet.  A "latest" results search on Google for Google+ reveals a steady stream of chatter.  But does anyone outside of Google employees and a few select journalists actually have access to the new service?

It doesn't make sense...  Is Google doing this just to generate that chatter?  They don't need to do that.  Anyone would know that anything that offers a Facebook alternative would generate a massive "wave" of interest.  Google does not need an artificial scarcity campaign to get attention.

So did Google get genuinely overwhelmed with a response their new system was unprepared for, and have to cut it off?  That makes no sense either.  Again, who wouldn't know that the sort of response this was likely to get?

Yes, I'm sure Google would want to be very cautious about this roll out.  No one would want to see them pull a Sony and have the system flat on the floor the first day, as the PSN was on its triumphant return.  But Google appears to have pulled the plug on signing up for Google+ almost instantly.  And not a soul I know, nor any they know got their foot in that door.

Fishy.

So I'm calling it, it's vaporware.  A social service no one can use, is a service that doesn't exist.

I very much look forward to something like Google+ could be, might be, whatever.  But at this time, it's definitely not there.  I'm sure they are working on it though.

Link Rodeo

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-me-coming-this-fall/2458
"What’s interesting to me is that this doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a stand-alone product — it appears the plan is to weave some social goodness into Google’s existing product base. Squeezing social stuff into their already successful products is probably Google’s best shot at getting widespread adoption — as I imagine it would be extremely difficult to get 500 million users to see the value in a competing service, and then decide to switch."

* * *

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/library-desk-made-from

A creative library creates a desk made from old books...

* * * 

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/15/gorgeous-mid-century.html
One awesome computer case...  I may have to build something like this.

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http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/09/200lb_octopus_cake.html
A 200 pound octopus cake.  Sort of speaks for itself.

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http://nilno.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
 "This site provides the highlights for construction of a CNC table with a 250 watt laser used to cut sheet metal. It includes an overview of the system and a description of the laser, its optics and how the laser is controlled. The system also has an X-Y table with CNC software."

Oh to have the time for such a project...

Google Features and Changes I'd Like to See

Image via Wikipedia

1. I'd like to be able to share items in Buzz with selected groups of my contacts much like is allowed in Google Docs.

2. Some sort of notification should be available from Google Wave to Google Buzz. Wave is notably absent from subscriptions that can be added to Buzz.

3. Gmail and Google Reader share many elements of interface style. Why doesn't Buzz look the same way?

4. Google Wave would be a useful addition for Google enterprise accounts.

5. Using Google Buzz can make the "People you follow" feed in Google Reader unnecessary. Why can't I turn it off?

6. Why can't I make a PDF file public in Google Docs the way I can a spreadsheet, for example?

7. Making Gmail-like filters available in Google Reader would be nice.

8. There really needs to be a way to collapse and expand items in Buzz, again, this it something Gmail does.

Blogger and Escaping HTML

Image by grebo guru via Flickr

While attempting to create a blog post containing a couple of XML fragments, I ran into a surprising problem with Goggle's Blogger editor. It is staggeringly difficult to get greater-then and less-then signs into you text!

I Goggled up this other blog post that sums up the problem nicely:
http://justfreakingwork.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-cant-blogger-escape-special.html

It's a little hard to believe in this day and age that Google has made such a mess of this.