The Refined Geek

I’m probably one of the few geeks that doesn’t try to aggressively block all the ads that come to them via the Internet. I don’t find the majority of them intrusive to my browsing, especially if they’re the typical Google text blocks that sit nonchalantly beside the other wall of text that I’m staring at. Even the video ones, well mostly the ones on video sites like YouTube, are pretty tame and if they’re overly long you’re usually able to skip them after 10 seconds or so. My primary reason though is that I know that these ads support the websites that they’re on and the least I can do is let them show them to me.

I often get asked why I don’t run ads here on The Refined Geek. For the most part it’s laziness as the way I want to show ads isn’t exactly simple to set up. If I was going to show ads now I’d only want to show them to a subset of my readers (people coming here from searches and those who haven’t commented) and there’s no simple solution for that. Additionally right now I’m not really getting enough visitors to justify it as hosting this blog is cheap and I’m not exactly struggling financially. Once I reach a certain threshold of readers though you might see ads that are there to keep the site running, but that’s a little way off for now.

However recently I’ve noticed a trend with the ads that get presented to me. They’re all the damn same.

Now I do a lot of Googling, almost all of it when I’m logged in under my Google account. This means that Google knows quite a lot about me, enough to serve me some pretty targeted ads. In the past they’ve actually been helpful in tracking certain things down, especially if I’m looking to purchase something. However lately I’ve noticed that for certain sites I’m only getting served the exact same ad over and over again. This isn’t a caching issue or anything like that because it follows me between work and home. The most annoying part of it too is that I’m getting products advertised to me that I was already interested in buying or have already bought.

I have 3 examples of this which is what has made me think there’s something more to this than just dumb luck. The first I noticed a couple months back when I did a search for synthetic diamonds, wanting to see how far they’ve come in the past couple years. Now on certain sites all I’ll get is an ad for a particular online diamond store, over and over again. The second was for the GoPro HD Hero 2, a great little camera that I’m looking to take with me when I do Tough Mudder in just over 6 weeks. The third and final one is for Fat Gripz, an exercise accessory that came recommended to me from my brother in-law. I’d say about 50% of the ads I see online are these and they’re getting to the point where I want to block them entirely.

The explanation behind this is mostly likely that these are the highest paying ads that the site can display when I visit the site. The way AdSense works is that advertisers bid for the space by putting up their cost-per-click price and then Google will show the best ad for the slot. The diamond store, GoPro and Fat Gripz likely have high CPCs due to their products having a decent margin in them (Fat Gripz especially) and thus they can afford to pay a lot more than others to get the same advertising space. Still you’d think after I’ve seen the ad 100 times and not clicked on it they’d get the idea and start rotating out other ads, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

This is mostly just me whining about something that’s not much of an issue but as someone who’s trying to be a good netizen I feel like I’d hope my experience wouldn’t be bad enough to turn me to blocking them completely. Reddit et. al. gets this with many of the ads being rotated out for thank you pictures for those of us not running ad block. It’s not much but it does go a long way to help stem the flow of people to using things like AdBlock Plus. For now I’ll probably leave everything as is but if this trend continues I’ll soon be joining the ranks of my ad-block brethren.

Google is one of the biggest proponents of an Internet that’s unencumbered by proprietary standards, patents and non-neutral traffic routes. That’s been a great boon to us Internet users as their advocacy on our behalf means that as long as they stay in business we’re likely to continue to have an Internet that stays true to those ideals. Of course like any company they’re not entirely perfect, at times attempting to forward their own agenda under the guise of openness, but overall their contribution to keeping the Internet free and open has been positive. It seems rather odd then that Google has an obsession with Adobe’s Flash product, to the point where I wonder if there’s something going on that I don’t know about.

Back in March last year Google announced that they were integrating the Flash plugin directly into their Chrome browser. This was at the height of the web standards war that was raging between Apple and Adobe so it was easy to construe Google’s support of Flash as them taking Adobe’s side in the matter. That notion was further reinforced by the fact that Google’s Android platform fully supported Flash as well. This level of support for a proprietary plug-in for a company that prides itself on being a big supporter of open standards seems rather hypocritical, but there are some reasons as to why they’re doing it.

One of Google’s main objectives in developing the Chrome browser (and subsequently releasing the vast majority of its source code) was to improve the Internet experience for the end user. A lot of effort was focused on developing a much faster JavaScript engine, dubbed V8, that would significantly speed up many of the JavaScript heavy websites that now dominate the web. The integration of Flash into Chrome then was the next step in making the Internet as a whole more usable as the liberal use of Flash on many websites can bring even the most powerful PC systems to their knees. The same sites wreck absolute havoc on mobile handsets so it was definitely in Google’s interest to get more closely acquainted with Flash, if only to make it more usable.

Recently though it appears that Google’s support of Flash was actually leading up to a much more ambitious goal, transitioning the web from Flash to a HTML5 future:

Google is enabling developers who use the Adobe Flash Professional developer tool to convert their animations to HTML5 via an extension based on Google’s Swiffy conversion technology.

…

“One of our main aims for Swiffy is to let you continue to use Flash as a development environment, even when you’re developing animations for environments that don’t support Flash,” said Esteban de la Canal, Google software engineer, in a blog post. “To speed up the development process, we’ve built the Swiffy Extension for Flash Professional. The extension enables you to convert your animation to HTML5 with one click (or keyboard shortcut).”

Now it’s interesting that Google would go ahead and do something like this when Adobe had already made their play in this field with their Wallaby product. The big difference here is that Wallaby was specifically targeted at Flash Ads only and didn’t support many of the features that made Flash so versatile, like ActionScript. Swiffy on the other hand does support ActionScript and several other features that weren’t present in Wallaby. It would seem then that Google thinks they can do better than Adobe at their own game which they very well could especially when Adobe just recently announced that they weren’t working on mobile Flash any more.

Of course the transition from native Flash to Flash rendered through HTML5 doesn’t necessarily mean we’re looking at a future web that performs better. The main problem with Flash wasn’t so much the platform it was the developers on that platform. The Flash ads were the biggest culprit, often laden with gobs of unnecessary and bloated code that were the source of the performance problems people encountered. Transitioning such ads to HTML5 won’t make that code go away (there is a chance to optimize, but automated tools can only go so far) and the result will more than likely be just as bad as the original Flash it came from. It’s a step in the right direction yes, but it’s not going to be an all roses future like some would have you believe.

It’s quite interesting to see the kind of games that Google plays in order to make the web better for everyone. At times they may seem to be on the wrong side but it’s becoming clear that they’re playing the long game for a better web for everyone. It will be interesting to see how common Swiffy converted Flash files become and whether they’re still the performance hogs that their predecessors are but knowing Google they won’t let it lie until they’ve optimized it to the nth degree. Adobe’s reaction to Swiffy will be telling as well considering they’re now competing directly with Google on their home turf. The end result will be a better, more open Internet for us all something I think we can all agree is a good thing.

In the mere months that it has been released Google+ has managed to accumulate quite the following, grabbing 40 million users. It’s still quite small compared to the current incumbent Facebook (who’s users outnumber Google+ 20 to 1) but that’s an incredible amount of growth, more than any other social network has ever been able to achieve before. Google has finally got it right with this attempt to break into the social networking world and it’s paying off for them in spades. What’s got everyone talking now is where Google is heading, not just with Google+ but also with the rest of their vast service catalogue.

Over the past 6 months or so, ever since co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO of Google, there’s been a rather interesting/worrying trend that’s been developing at Google. For as long as I can remember Google had a habit of experimenting openly with their users, cheerfully opening up access to beta products in order to get the wider public interested in them. However most recently they’ve begun to shutter these types of projects with the first signal that this trend could end coming with the closing down of Google Labs. In the months that followed many of Google’s other ancillary services, like Google Health and Google Power Meter, have been shut down with many more facing the chopping block.

For anyone following Google the writing had been on the wall ever since Page announced back in July that they were going to be focusing more closely on their core services. What’s really interesting however is that the direction that Google’s now heading in is not Page’s thinking alone, but one that was heavily influenced by the late great Steve Jobs. Just before Page took the top job at Google he placed met up with Jobs to get some advice on what he should be doing and it’s easy to see where Page’s motivation for cutting the fat from Google had come from:

Jobs didn’t mince words when Page arrived at Jobs’ Palo Alto home. He told Page to build a good team of lieutenants. In his first week as Google’s CEO, Page reshuffled his management team to eliminate bureaucracy. Jobs also warned Page not to let Google get lazy or flabby.

“The main thing I stressed was to focus,” Jobs told Isaacson about his conversation with Page. “Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out adequate products that are adequate but not great.”

Just over a week ago Google announced that another 5 services (Buzz, Code Search, University Research, iGoogle Social and Jaiku) would be shut down in favour of the features of those applications being taken over by Google+. Indeed any Google service that has some sort of social bent is getting integrated under the Google+ umbrella, with many of the sharing features in things like Google Reader being moved out to Google+. For Google this is done to both encourage people to use their still nascent social network as well as reducing their large application portfolio. Integrating everything they can into Google+ may seem like a desperate move to try and grab more market share away from Facebook but Google is betting a lot on the Google+ platform, and I believe it will pay off for them.

The momentum that Google+ has gained over the past few months has shown that Google can do social and do it well. After nailing that down it makes a lot of sense to combine services, especially those ones that are considered core to a social network, under the Google+ umbrella as that builds out the product and makes it far more enticing to end users. It’s sad to see some other services get completely shut down but that does open up the market to start-ups who can take up the slack that Google leaves behind as they increase their focus on their core products. 

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of my Samsung Galaxy S2, mostly because the specifications are enough to make any geek weak at the knees. It’s not just geeks that are obsessed with the phone either as Samsung has moved an impressive 10 million of them in the 5 months that its been available. Samsung has made something of a name for itself in being the phone manufacturer to have if you’re looking for an Android handset, especially when you consider Google used their original Galaxy S as the basis for their flagship phone the Nexus S. Rumours have been circulating for a while that Samsung would once again be the manufacturer of choice, a surprising rumour considering they had just sunk a few billion into acquiring Motorola. 

Yesterday however saw the announcement of Google’s new flagship phone the Galaxy Nexus and sure enough it’s Samsung hardware that’s under the hood.

The stand out feature of the Galaxy Nexus is the gigantic screen, coming in at an incredible 4.65 inches and a resolution of 1280 x 720 (the industry standard for 720p). That gives you a PPI of 315 which is slightly below the iPhone 4/4S’ retina screen which comes in at 326 PPI which is amazing when you consider it’s well over an inch bigger. As far as I can tell it’s the highest resolution on a smart phone in the market currently and there’s only a handful of handsets that boast a similar sized screen. Whether this monster of a screen will be a draw card though is up for debate as not all of us are blessed with the giant hands to take full advantage of it.

Under the hood it’s a bit of a strange beast, especially when compared to its predecessors. It uses a Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 processor (dual core, 1.2GHz) instead of the usual ARM A9 or Samsung’s own Exynos SOC coupled with a whopping 1GB of RAM. The accompanying hardware includes a 5MP camera capable of 1080p video, all the usual connectivity options with the addition of NFC and wireless N and, strangely enough, a barometer. The Galaxy Nexus does not feature expandable storage like most of its predecessors did, instead coming in 16GB and 32GB variants. All up it makes for a phone that’s definitely a step up from the Galaxy S2 but not in every regard with some features on par or below that of the S2.

Looking at the design of the Galaxy Nexus I couldn’t help but notice that it had sort of regressed back to the previous design style, being more like the Galaxy S rather than the S2. As it turns out this is quite deliberate as Samsung designed the Galaxy Nexus in such a way as to avoid more lawsuits from Apple. It’s rather unfortunate as the design of the Galaxy S2 is really quite nice and I’m not particularly partial to the rounded look at all. Still I can understand why they want to avoid more problems with Apple, it’s a costly exercise and neither of them are going to come out the other side smelling of roses.

Hand in hand with the Galaxy Nexus announcement Google has also debuted Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android OS. There’s a myriad of improvements that I won’t go through here (follow the link for a full run down) but notable features are the ability to unlock your phone by it recognizing your face, integrated screen capture (yes, that hasn’t been a default feature for this long), a NFC sharing app called Android Beam and a better interface for seeing how much data you’re using that includes the ability to kill data hogging apps. Like the Galaxy Nexus itself Ice Cream Sandwich is more of an evolutionary step rather than being revolutionary but it looks like a worthy compliment to Google’s new flagship phone.

The Galaxy Nexus shows that Samsung is very capable of delivering impressive smart phones over and over again. The hardware, for the most part, is quite incredible bringing features to the table that haven’t yet been seen before. Ice Cream Sandwich looks to be a good upgrade to the Android operating system and coupled with the Galaxy Nexus the pair will make one very desirable smart phone. Will I be getting one of them? Probably not as my S2 is more than enough to last me until next year when I’ll be looking to upgrade again, but I can’t say I’m not tempted

Whilst Android has been making solid inroads to the tablet market, snapping up a respectable 26.8%, it’s still really Apple’s market with them holding a commanding lead that no one’s been able to come close to touching. It’s not for a lack of trying though with many big name companies attempting to break into the market only to pull out shortly afterwards, sometimes in blaze of fire sale glory. It doesn’t help matters much that every new tablet will be compared to the iPad thus ensuring every new tablet attempts to one up it in some way, usually keeping a price parity with the iPad but without the massive catalogue of apps that people have come to expect from Apple products. 

Apple’s got a great game going here. All of their iDevice range essentially made the market that they’re in, grabbing enough fans and early adopters to ensure their market dominance for years to come. Competitors then attempt to mimic Apple’s success by copying the essential ideas and then attempting to innovate, fighting an uphill battle. Whilst they might eventually lose ground to the massive onslaught of competitors (like they have to Android) they’ll still be one of the top individual companies, if they’re not number 1. It’s this kind of market leading that makes Apple products so desirable to John Q. Public and the reason why so many companies are failing to steal their market share away.

Rumours have been circulating for a while now over Amazon releasing a low cost tablet of some description and of course everyone was wondering whether it would shape up to be the next “iPad killer”. Today we saw the announcement of the Kindle Fire: a 7-inch multi-touch tablet that’s heavily integrated with Amazon’s services and comes at the low low price of only $199.

As a tablet it’s something of an outsider. Foregoing the traditional 9 to 10 inch screen size for a smaller 7 inch display. The processor in it isn’t anything fantastic, being just a step up from the one that powers the Nook Color, but history has shown it’s quite a capable system so the Kindle Fire shouldn’t be a slouch when it comes to performance. There’s also a distinct lack of cameras, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity meaning that the sole connection this tablet has to the outside world will be via your local wifi connection. It comes with an internal 8GB of storage that’s not upgradeable, favouring to store everything on the cloud and download it as required. You can see why this thing wouldn’t work with WhisperNet.

Also absent is any indication that the Kindle Fire is actually an Android device with the operating system being given a total overhaul. The Google App store has been outright replaced by Amazon’s Android app store and the familiar tile interface has been replaced by a custom UI designed by Amazon. All of Amazon services: music, books and movies to name a few, are heavily integrated with the device. Indeed they are so heavily integrated that the tablet also comes with a free month of Amazon Prime, Amazon’s premium service that offers unlimited free 2 day shipping plus access to their entire catalogue of media. At this point calling this thing a tablet seems like a misnomer, it’s much more of a media consumption device.

What’s really intriguing about the Kindle Fire though is the browser that Amazon has developed for it called Silk. Like Opera Mini and Skyfire before it Silk offloads some of the heavy lifting to external servers, namely Amazon’s massive AWS infrastructure. There’s some smarts in the delineation between what should be processed on device and what should be done on the servers so hopefully dynamic pages, which suffered heavily in this kind of configuration, will run a lot better under Silk. Overall it sounds like a massive step up for the usability of the browser on devices like these which is sure to be a great selling point for the Kindle Fire.

The more I read about the Kindle Fire the more I get the feeling that Amazon has seen the game that Apple has been playing and decided to not get caught up in it like their competitors have. Instead of competing directly with the iPad et. al. they’ve created a device that’s heavily integrated with their own services and have put themselves at arms length with Android. John Q. Public then won’t see the Kindle Fire as an Android Tablet nor an iPad competitor, more it’s a cheap media consumption device that’s capable at doing other tasks from a large and reputable company. The price alone is enough to draw people in and whilst the margins on the device are probably razor thin they’ll more than likely make it up in media sales for the device. All those together make the Kindle Fire a force to be reckoned with, but I don’t think current tablet manufacturers have much to worry about.

The Kindle Fire, much like the iPad before it, carves out its own little niche that’s so far be unsuccessfully filled. It’s not a feature laden object of every geek’s affection, more it’s a tablet designed for the masses with a price that competitors will find hard to beat. The deep integration with Amazon’s services will be the feature that ensures the Kindle Fire’s success as that’s what every other iPad competitor has lacked. However there’ll still be a market for the larger, more capable tablets as they’re more appropriate for people seeking a replacement for their laptop rather than a beefed up media player. I probably won’t be buying one for myself, but I could easily see my parents using one of these.

And I’m sure that’s what Amazon is banking on too.

Google+ has only been around for a mere 2 months yet I already feel like writing about it is old hat. In the short time that the social networking service as been around its had a positive debut to the early adopter market, seen wild user growth and even had to tackle some hard issues like their user name policy and user engagement. I said very early on that Google had a major battle on their hands when they decided to launch another volley at an another silicone valley giant but early indicators were pointing towards them at least being a highly successful niche product at the very least, if for the only fact that they were simply “Facebook that wasn’t Facebook“.

One of the things that was always lacking from the service was an API that was on the same level as its competitors. Both Facebook and Twitter both have exceptional APIs that allow services to deeply integrate with them and, at least in the case of Twitter, are responsible in a large part for their success. Google was adamant that an API was on the way and just under a week ago they delivered on their promise, releasing an API for Google+:

Developers have been waiting since late June for Google to release their API to the public.  Well, today is that Day.  Just a few minute ago Chris Chabot, from Google+ Developer Relations, announced that the Google+ API is now available to the public. The potential for this is huge, and will likely set Google+ on a more direct path towards social networking greatness. We should see an explosion of new applications and websites emerge in the Google+ community as developers innovate, and make useful tools from the available API. The Google+ API at present provides read-only access to public data posted on Google+ and most of the Google+ API follows a RESTful API design, which means that you must use standard HTTP techniques to get and manipulate resources.

Like all their APIs the Google+ one is very well documented and even the majority of their client libraries have been updated to include the new API. Looking over the documentation it appears that there’s really only 2 bits of information available to developers at this point in time, those being public Profiles (People)  and activities that are public. Supporting these APIs is the OAuth framework so that users can authorize external applications so that they can access their data on Google+. In essence this is a read only API for things that were already publicly accessible which really only serves to eliminate the need to screen scrape the same data.

I’ll be honest, I’m disappointed in this API. Whilst there are some useful things you can do with this data (like syndicating Google+ posts to other services and reader clients) the things that I believe Google+ would be great at doing aren’t possible until applications can be given write access to my stream. Now this might just be my particular use case since I usually use Twitter for my brief broadcasts (which is auto-syndicated to Facebook) and this blog for longer prose (which is auto shared to Twitter) so my preferred method of integration would be to have Twitter post stuff to my Google+ feed. Because as it is right now my Google+ account is a ghost town compared to my other social networks simply because of the lack of automated syndication.

Of course I understand that this isn’t the final API, but even as a first attempt it feels a little weak.

Whilst I won’t go as far as to say that Google+ is dying there is data to suggest that the early adopter buzz is starting to wind down. Anecdotally my feed seems to mirror this trend with average time between posts on there being days rather than minutes it is on my other social networks. The API would be the catalyst required to bring that activity back up to those initial levels but I don’t think it’s capable of doing so in its current form. I’m sure that Google won’t be a slouch when it comes to releasing new APIs but they’re going to have to be quick about it if they want to stem the flood of inactivity.

I really want to use Google+, I really do it’s just that the lack of interoperability that keeps all my data out of it. I’m sure in the next couple months we’ll see the release of a more complete API that will enable me to use the service as I, and many others I feel, use our other social networking services. 

It was just under 2 years ago when I wrote my first (and only) post on smartphone virtualization approaching it with the enthusiasm that I do with most cool new technologies. At the time I guessed that VMware would eventually look to integrate this idea with some of their other products, in essence turning user’s phones into dumb terminals so that IT administrators could have more control over them. However the exact usefulness was still not clear as at the time most smartphones were only just capable of running a single instance, let alone another one with all the virtualization trimmings that’d inevitably slow it down. Android was also somewhat of a small time player back then as well having only 5% of the market (similar to Windows Phone 7 at the same stage in its life, funnily enough) making this a curiosity more than anything else.

Of course a lot has changed in the time between that post and now. Then market leader, RIM, is now struggling with single digit market share when it used to make up almost half the market. Android has succeeded in becoming the most popular platform surpassing Apple who maintained the crown for many years prior. Smartphones have also become wildly more powerful as well, with many of them touting dual cores, oodles of RAM and screen resolutions that would make my teenage self green with envy. With this all in mind then the idea of running some kind of virtualized environment on a smartphone doesn’t seem all that ludicrous any more.

Increasingly IT departments are dealing with users who want to integrate their mobile devices with their work space in lieu of using a separate, work specific device. Much of this pressure came initially from the iPhone with higher ups wondering why they couldn’t use their devices to access work related data. For us admin types the reasons were obvious: it’s an unapproved, untested device which by rights has no business being on the network. However the pressure to capitulate to their demands was usually quite high and work arounds were sought. Over the years these have taken many various forms, but the best answer would appear to lie within the world of smartphone virtualization.

VMware have been hard at work creating full blown virtualization systems for Android that allow a user to have a single device that contains both their personal handset as well as a secure, work approved environment. In essence they have an application that allows them to switch between the two of them, allowing the user to have whatever handset they want whilst still allowing IT administrators to create a standard, secure work environment. Android is currently the only platform that seems to support this wholly thanks to its open source status, although there are rumours of it coming to the iOS line of devices as well.

It doesn’t stop there either. I predicted that VMware would eventually integrate their smartphone virtualization technology into their View product, mostly so that the phones would just end up being dumb terminals. This hasn’t happened exactly, but VMware did go ahead and imbue their View product with the ability to present full blown workstations to tablet and smartphones through a secure virtual machine running on said devices. This means that you could potentially have your entire workforce running off smartphones with docking stations, enabling users to take their work environment with them wherever they want to go. It’s shockingly close to Microsoft’s Three Screens idea and with Google announcing that Android apps are now portable to Google TV devices you’d be forgiven for thinking that they outright copied the idea.

For most regular users though these kinds of developments don’t mean a whole lot, but it is signalling the beginning of the convergence of many disparate experiences into a single unified one. Whilst I’m not going to say that anyone one platform will eventually kill off the other (each one of the three screens has a distinct purpose) we will see a convergence in the capabilities of each platform, enabling users to do all the same tasks no matter what platform they are using. Microsoft and VMware are approaching this idea from two very different directions with the former unifying the development platform and the latter abstracting it away so it will be interesting to see which approach wins out or if they too eventually converge.

Whilst we’re still in the very early days of Google’s latest attempt to break into the social networking scene they’ve still managed to create quite the stir, at least with the technically inclined crowd. The combination of a decidedly non-Google-esque interface coupled with the simple fact that it’s not Facebook was more than enough to draw a large crowd of people over to the service, to the tune of over 25 million in the short time its been made available to the public. The launch has been mostly trouble free for Google with their rock solid engineering providing a fast, bug free experience and its straightforward privacy policies. There has been one sticking point that’s been causing quite a stir however, enough so that some users don’t see it as a viable platform.

That issue is the fact that you have to use your real (legal) name on Google+.

Now for most of us this isn’t much a problem, especially if you’ve been on a social networking site before. For the past 4 years or so I’ve been using my real name or some abbreviation thereof online for the simple fact that it helped build my online presence, rather than hiding it behind a thin curtain of a pseudonym. That’s because for the most part I haven’t had the need to hide behind a curtain of anonymity (thanks to living in Australia, for the most part) since if I feel the need to express my opinion online I also feel the need to attach my name to it. Of course I still have pseudonyms that I use (Nalafang and PYROMANT|C are the 2 most prolific) but they’re more part of my gamer heritage than anything else, as I don’t really use them in any other context.

Still I understand that many people have built relationships and authority based upon their pseudonyms rather than their real names and this is where Google+ struggles. A great example of this is Digg’s top user MrBabyMan, who has quite the following thanks to his heavy involvement in the news aggregator, has a much smaller following on Google+ due to the restriction that he use his real name. Of course dedicated followers are able to suss this out but the point remains that people are far more aware of his online presence as MrBabyMan than they are as Andrew Sorcini. The question then is why is Google being so pedantic about real name use on their new social network?

You could trace it back to Google attempting to mimic what Facebook has, where it’s almost a given that anyone on there is using their real name. Of course many people don’t use their real name (for many reasons) but Facebook doesn’t seem to take much of a stance when they do, and will even let you change your name on a whim should you feel the need to do so. Google’s stance, at least according to CEO Eric Schmidt, is that they built Google+ primarily as an identity service not the social network that everyone is making it out to be. That’s an interesting notion but, for me at least, doesn’t answer the question of why Google won’t let people use pseudonyms on Google+.

There are many people who want to use Google+ as another platform for their online presence and for some this means using it under the guise of a pseudonym. Now whilst the case can be made that people will tend towards being fuckwads when given some degree of anonymity many have their online identities closely tied to the pseudonyms which they created. If Google was really serious about being an identity service then these sorts of people should have no issue since their identity, at least online, is their pseudonym. The question then becomes what’s the benefit of forcing them to use their real name rather than the one that they have so much invested in and whether this could become a big issue for Google’s new identity service.

For Google the benefits are pretty clear. Since your Google+ account is heavily intertwined with all other Google services the second you opt into their social network all those other services, nearly all of which are pseudonym supporting, now have your real name attached to them. Whilst Google already had a pretty good profile of you built up already thanks to those other services they now have a vastly more critical bit of information that ties them all together. There’s nothing particularly sinister about this motive however, it’s mostly so they can more expensive ads targeted at you, there’s a non-zero benefit to Google requiring your real name on their social network.

Those seeking to join the network under a pseudonym are at a distinct disadvantage however as they’re basically leaving their current online identity at the door. Of course the argument could be made that they’ll transition fine and it’s just that Google+ is still in its nascent stages, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Google is doing potential users a disservice by not allowing pseudonyms. There’s a happy middle ground for both Google and potential users in the form of verified accounts (which they’re already doing for celebrities) or say letting users have a nickname displayed whilst having the real name hidden but Google doesn’t seem to be amenable to these ideas, at least not yet.

For a social network that’s basically been issue free since day one it’s a real shame to see Google get stuck on something that’s been so ingrained in the Internet community since it’s inception. I don’t think it will be the nascent social network’s undoing, but it’s definitely not getting them any positive press and has the potential to keep many power users away from the service. It will be interesting to see how they deal with this going forward as right now their focus is (rightly) on growing their network, rather than dealing with edge cases like this. However they could win themselves a lot of good press by simply allowing pseudonyms on their network, whether they will do that or not is something only Google can answer.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of what Google’s done with their latest product, Plus. Initial impressions of the service were good with the interface being clean and apart from the Huddle app experiencing some technical difficulties it was essentially bug free. It also seemed to be quite the hit with it gathering 10 million users in just 2 weeks, no small feat even for a tech giant like Google. I’ve been using the service ever since it launched to the public and now that we’re starting to get to the tail end of the honeymoon period for Google+ I’m starting to see some similarities to other social networks I once used, and that’s not a good thing.

When I first saw Google+ the first thing I thought of, and I wasn’t the only one to think this, was how persuasive Google could be in order to drag my friends across from Facebook. Now initial numbers were pretty good, with about 20% of my friends signing up in the first few weeks. They were all my somewhat technically inclined friends and I had expected the majority to come across in the early adopter wave. However the rest of my social network hasn’t shown any traction at all and in fact mentioning the fledgling social network to them draws blank stares. Thus whilst I was quick to see a good chunk of people come across the inertia for the regular user to jump ship is, at least at this point in time, still way too high.

It’s also become apparent that even these early adopters seem to value Google+ as a second rate candidate for their social networking. Whilst both my Twitter and Facebook feeds see dozens of updates every day I can’t say the same for Google+, sometimes going days without seeing anything new on my front page. I’ll admit that I too barely post anything to the service as most of my activities are automatically syndicated by way of in built APIs. There are of course solutions to this but unfortunately unlike WordPress, Twitter and Facebook which have rather elegant solutions anything involving Google+ at this point feels rather hacky. This may change once Google releases an official API and allows native apps ala Facebook, but since all my other technical friends aren’t syndicating their streams it makes me wonder if they’re that engaged with Google+ in the first place.

My anecdotal experience however doesn’t explain why Google+ is seeing such explosive growth. They hit 10 million in just a fortnight and managed to more than double that to 25 million just two weeks after that. By all rights that would seem to be an impressive number of people who were looking for an alternative to Facebook (around 5% of their users, give or take) but still a tiny number comparatively. Realistically it’s still way too early as whilst such traction is impressive it’s still very early days for Google+ and the real test will be if they can capture any semblance of that exponential growth in the next 6 months.

Google, to their credit, hasn’t been resting on their laurels since launching just a month and a half ago. Just recently they launched the games section of Google+ which includes a fair number of familiar titles. Whilst I haven’t had a play around in that section yet it does seem to be an almost straight up port of the games section of the Chrome Web Store. This isn’t a bad thing as it means that those looking to develop for the Google+ platform can already do so, just that it seems like a bit of duplication of effort even if Google+ and Chrome target different markets. Still initial reviews of the games service aren’t entirely positive but there is hope for future iterations that have tighter integration with the Google+ platform.

Google+ also seems to be sticking to its guns when it comes to being clear of privacy with it managing to avoid any scandals in that area. There has been the rather sticky issue of those users who didn’t want to use their real name getting booted from Google+ and subsequently losing everything attached to that Google account. This is really the only major issue that Google has faced with their network and whilst I can understand their position their reaction to those users has been rather heavy handed. Considering nearly all other Google services allow you to operate under a nickname many were under the impression that they could do the same on Google+. Whether Google will change this policy in the future remains up for speculation.

The next few months are going to be crucial for the ongoing success of the Google+ platform. They’ve definitely managed to make a product that a lot of people want however the competition they are going up against has a long head start, enough that such explosive growth looks like a drop in the bucket to them. Fortunately Google does seem committed to the platform with it being under heavy active development and it’s those improvements and additions to the service that will determine whether or not it becomes a viable alternative to Facebook.

If you haven’t yet got an invite to Google+ you can click here to get yourself an invite. 

Nothing can create a stir in the technical press more than when one tech giant decides to buy out another one. The last such buy out I can remember is when Microsoft said they were going to buy Skype which spurred a good week of articles from all my usual sources. There was also a whole bunch of people blaming Microsoft for ruining Skype as the service hit some troubles soon after the deal was announced, forgetting that the deal still hadn’t been finalized and Microsoft still had no say in how it was operated. Today’s buyout news has triggered a veritable tsunami of news, blog posts and speculation and this time around it’s not just all fluff.

As it turns out Google is going to be buying Motorola’s wireless division (and what then shall we call them: Googorola, GoogMo or maybe Gotogola?).

The news flooded my feed reader with dozens of articles ranging from simple regurgitated press releases to full blown analysis and speculation of what this will mean for both companies’ futures. I then spent the next hour or so devouring and digesting these articles to see if I could make sense of the massive reaction that this proposed buy out has triggered. From what I can tell it boils down to three key issues: Motorola Mobility’s patent war chest, Google’s desire to be a handset manufacturer and the effect that this is going to have on the Android platform. These are all rather meaty issues and whilst I might not have the cred of the larger blogging institutions I felt like I should throw my hat into the ring anyway.

The issue that everyone seems to mention at least once is Motorola Mobility’s rather impressive collection of patents, with 17,000 granted and 7,500 currently pending. The trove includes such pearlers as the mobile phone itself and patents that already have licenses with some of their biggest rivals (namely Nokia and Apple). On the surface acquiring the vast patent archive of Motorola Mobility seemed to be a reaction to Google losing the recent bidding war for the Nortel patents that were up for sale. Indeed Google did complain rather vocally that the partnership of mega-corps that did get those patents (some direct rivals, some users of Android) were only doing so in order to take down Android. However Google never appeared to be totally serious about acquiring those patents anyway, bidding strange amounts like pi and other mathematical constants. They were also apparently approached by the winning consortium to bid along with them (by Microsoft no less) which they turned down and sparked a rather public flamewar between them.

It then follows that Google, whilst not happy that it could have several companies breathing down its neck, didn’t just up and buy Motorola because of it. In fact it looks like Motorola has been under some pressure to monetize it’s vast patent cache for some time, even courting other big names like Microsoft. In the end they settled on Google as Motorola Mobility will retain some level of autonomy whereas Microsoft, still fresh from minting their deal with Nokia, was really only interested in their patents. Had Motorola gone with Microsoft in that instance it would’ve been a massive blow to the Android platform as a whole, as Motorola commands a respective 29% of that market. Motorola’s patents then are more a defensive barrier than anything else but that’s not the sole reason Google bought Motorola Mobility.

Google’s attempt to revolutionize the handset market, whilst commendable in their own right, has faced some problems when trying to break current industry norms. The Nexus One was meant to be sold unlocked for a mere pittance, as low as $99 outright,  but the carriers would have none of that leaving Google handcuffed and the Nexus One made available at industry level prices. Their follow up phone Nexus S, whilst an impressive handset in its own right, suffered the same fate and it seemed that Google’s hope of changing the mobile game was just pure fantasy.

However with their acquisition of the Motorola Mobility section they now get the ability to manufacturer handsets themselves as well as getting all the carrier relationships which, up until now, they have sorely lacked. This means that Google now has a lot more leverage when it comes to negotiating with carriers and they could possibly use this in order to see their original dream of cheap, unlocked handsets realised. I doubt that we’ll see anything like that for a while to come yet (the deal has to pass a lot of scrutiny before it’s official) but the potential for such a thing to happen is far greater with Motorola under Google’s belt than it was without it. 

The final issue that everyone has picked up on is what this acquisition means for the greater Android platform. Now you’d be forgiven for thinking Motorola isn’t that big of a deal, I certainly haven’t considered any of their phones and that holds true for my social group anecdotally. However they are indeed a powerhouse when it comes to Android, commanding some 29% of the market placing them second only to HTC at 35%. Google’s acquisition of them then means that they now have a direct influence over a sizable chunk of the Android market and this has had some speculating that this would mean trouble for other handset manufacturers.

For the most part though the other Android handset manufacturers have been positive about the acquisition and Google has stated that it wants Motorola to operate mostly independently. This is probably the best idea for Google as Android’s popularity can be easily attributed to those handset manufacturers and upsetting them in favour of Motorola would do far more harm than good. Many analysts have also speculated that the Googorola partnership will mean that Motorola will get preferential treatment over other manufacturers but I can’t see Google being that short sighted. The Motorola acquisition seems to be more of a defensive move to save the wider Android platform, not Google’s first steps into dominating the platform that others have helped make popular.

The Motorola Mobility acquisition looks like a positive move for Google, Motorola and the Android platform. With Motorola’s extensive patent chest Google will be able to defend the Android platform against any other mobile player that would seek to dethrone it. They also now have enough power to be able to realise their dream of cheap, unlocked handsets for the masses, leveraging off Motorola’s deep carrier relationships. Of course we’ve still got a while to wait before this deal is finalized and we start to see the fruits that this relationship will bear but I’m positive this will lead to good things for everyone involved.