Google

5 Reasons Google+ Is A Privacy Accident (Disaster?) Waiting to Happen

July 22, 2011
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5 Reasons Google+ Is A Privacy Accident (Disaster?) Waiting to Happen

1. You think it has better privacy controls This is number one, hands down, the biggest reason its a problem waiting to happen. The pure enthusiasm for a new product and your belief that you are “safer” will lead to you to share more believing that you have better control. 2. It’s still in Beta.  Beta means beta, which means there are bugs that haven’t been worked out. It also means that this isn’t the finished product, things could change. 3. The follow vs friend vs circle confusion. Anyone can “follow” you by adding you to a circle even if you don’t reciprocate.  This is weird hybrid of Twitter & Facebook. We already know people don’t understand complicated privacy settings. Twitter: your account is either public or private and you know which one it is.  Yes it’s possible on Twitter to repost a tweet from a private account. Facebook: you must request a reciprocal agreement of friendship. If I deny that request you can’t follow me.The default settings for posts and status updates is “friends only”. So let’s say I intend to post my “party friends” but inadvertently post to all. Eek! Yep that’s bad, but it still only goes to the people I’ve allowed

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Does the average Joe really need to know what a browser is?

June 18, 2009
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Jessamyn West shared this yesterday “A team from Google interviewed dozens of people in Times Square the other day, asking a simple question: What’s a browser? This was in an effort to understand and improve the customer experience of Google’s own browser, called Chrome. Turns out that over 90% of the people interviewed could not describe what a Web browser is.” Watch the video I don’t think any of my non-techie family or friends could answer this question. I’m not sure I could adequately if a microphone was put in my face while I was out shoe shopping (its hard to swtich from thinking about a stacked heel to properly defining browser)  My parents use Firefox because I told them to, I don’t think they have any idea why. But does it matter?  I know nothing about how my car works, I have no idea what’s actually involved in making it go, other than I turn a key, shift gears and apply the brake.  Does the average Joe need to know what a browser is or just how to get online?  I’m sure  a car enthusiastic will tell you my Saturn is not so hot, but I don’t care it

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What do you think of Google Flu Trends?

November 12, 2008
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What do you think of Google Flu Trends?

I’ll admit it, I’m sucker for Google products – Reader, Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Chrome and I know on some level the dangers of that.  I have lots of bookmarks in delicious about it.  This morning while I was watching the news  I heard mention of something new – Google Flu Trends.  According the the site: We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States. I’m not certain why this disturbs me, I think I want to know how Google knows where I am when I search.  If I go into a computer in my library

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photo by Beth Tribe

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