Almost absurdly rich in buzzwords, but real insights into Google’s troubles with social networking and the successes of Twitter, Foursquare, etc.
Wed 14 Jul 2010 | Posted by rocketpilot
Almost absurdly rich in buzzwords, but real insights into Google’s troubles with social networking and the successes of Twitter, Foursquare, etc.
Fri 11 Jun 2010 | Posted by rocketpilot
Via Daring Fireball, a pretty smart analysis of Apple’s so-called “anti-competitive” moves in restricting third-party advertisers accessing user data for their analytics.
Fri 11 Jun 2010
benw:
White 2000×1500
Please forgive me, but I’m going to be an unrelenting bitch about this Google background thing for just a moment longer:
When you eventually figure out how to get a white background back on Google.com (once the background picker tool eventually loads—it will probably force you to log in again first—look under ‘Editors Picks’, and then ‘White’) you may notice a few things:
- On a white background, the text is still white, so you’ll be reading everything by shadow shape. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer (which has shitty support for
text-shadow) are screwed (screenshot.)- ‘White’—which you and I and everyone else would just consider a colour—is in fact still served up by Google as an image.
- That image is named ‘White-2000×1500’.
- Sounds large, right? Don’t panic, the actual image dimensions are 1600×1200.
- Which is still an extra HTTP request and 11KB over the wire.
- And it’s loaded as an
<img>element, rather than a background image.- And that
<img>doesn’t have any alt text, so screen readers are going to try and infer what it might mean. Like, they’re going to read out: “http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fxkujw2mA9U/TA79kGonjWI/AAAAAAAAAO8/wgt1U7ogm0k/e365/white-2000x1500.jpg”.Where was Steve Sounders when they shit this one out?
Who implements background customization with only support for images anyway?
What‽
It appears that Google’s gone completely barking mental.
Thu 18 Mar 2010 | Posted by rocketpilot
Google has declared itself as the champion of the “open web” while maintaining a moat around its cashcows, search and advertising, which it guards in the most un-open way possible. Google funnels billions from its proprietary and closed businesses into a systematic effort to commoditize myriad industries with free products to lure users into its perfectly commercial sphere of personal-data-for-advertising-dollars exchange. That Google has been able to persuade the technorati to swallow this under the glow of ‘open web’ is all the more remarkable.
Sun 14 Feb 2010 | Posted by rocketpilot
I don’t see how people could ever have thought it wasn’t perfect,” said Google marketing marketer Todd Jackson. “We’ve used it in-house for ages, and our test group of white male engineers all working inside a single corporation think it’s the best thing ever! So of course we didn’t see the need for any user testing or opt-in.
When you look at the range of competing products and services — some bought just to be shutdown or reworked into oblivion, some created internally — that Google has released over the last few years, you have to wonder if there’s a plan anymore.
Take Buzz, their new Twitter-ish option built into Gmail. Can the Google Wave team possibly be happy about something that replicates lots of its more useful functionality and in some ways implements that functionality better? Why did this feature appear fully formed suddenly a day ago, when new Gmail features are traditionally worked out and developed through the Gmail Labs function? Why do you have to wander through numerous Google control panel back-waters just to fix the application’s serious privacy flaws? And while we’re at it, why is Google Contacts (a core service that interfaces with Gmail, Buzz, Wave, and numerous other tools) so hideous and clunky?
I guess the question, really, is this: Is Google in danger of becoming a hopeless mess of conflicting and confusing services, or is it already a hopeless mess?
Thu 12 Nov 2009 | Posted by rocketpilot
Google’s “suggest” feature is a sociological feast. And slightly terrifying. Via Gruber, via Kottke.
Wed 4 Nov 2009 | Posted by rocketpilot
So let’s get this straight. In a discussion about perfect pitch, someone mentions the website perfectpitch.com. They don’t repost any materials from the site. They don’t even link to the site. They don’t really say anything particularly disparaging. But it all takes is for the owner of perfectpitch.com to abuse the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act with a spurious complaint and just like that, Google removes the discussion from its search index.
If you have a blog or other personal publishing platform, perhaps you would like to write a post titled Perfect Pitch? Feel free to republish anything from this post, which is also coincidentally titled Perfect Pitch. And feel free to republish the contents of the original discussion on The Session titled, you guessed it: Perfect Pitch.
Happy to oblige, Mr Adactio!
Wed 4 Feb 2009 | Posted by rocketpilot
Collecting links to explore the Google Books problems.
Nick Caldwell is a professional web designer and unprofessional writer who thinks far too much about aesthetics, the contemporary sociopolitical condition, video games, Doctor Who, and spaceships. This is his Tumblelog.
