Ten years of Gmail

I don't remember my first email message. It was some time during the early 1980s when I was working at DEC. For most of that decade, email was all internal, sent from one DEC-owned computer along DEC networks to another DEC-owned computer.
As the 80s closed, there were a bunch of email protocols and messaging schemes. It wasn't until the early 90s that I started using the name@company.com format on a regular basis.
My first non-work email address was through a local provider, now defunct, called iii.net (It's now a parked domain held by a Chinese company.) It was run by a weird, fanatically pro-smoking guy named Joe Something-or-other whom I knew from DEC. We used that for a couple of years and then switched to Ultranet before buying my own domain and hosting services in 2001.
When Gmail came along in April 2004, it was invite-only. Google handed out invitations to a few folks and let those new subscribers invite others. It took until August for someone in my circle of friends to have invitations available. I signed up on August 25, 2004.

They promised a gigabyte of free storage, five to 10 times what other providers were offering. They discouraged people from deleting messages. They did this in part so that they could have more information to search and thus give you ads and also to change our thinking about online storage. Cloud storage is, for most folks, effectively unlimited. I long passed 100K messages. (At this writing I have 113,481 conversations, individual messages plus replies. I am using 11Gb for email and other Google services such as photos and docs.
Threaded messages were confusing to some people at first. In threaded email messages, the original messages and its replies are grouped together. It's much easier to keep track of discussions, but it can be disorienting for people who were expecting each email to be delivered in a discrete chunk.
Some of my friends distrust Google and/or cloud services and prefer to download all of their email to their local computer. Others dislike the Gmail interface, the appearance of ads, and Google in general. Good for them.
For me, the convenience of having an email service that I can use on any device anywhere far outweighs the worries.
Gmail changed the way that we think about email. No other product has come close to having that kind of impact.

Dear Google, let me Google that for you

Google has chosen Amherst NH as the Granite State's eCity. There's just one problem.

Emily Dickinson was born, lived, and died in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Let me Google that for you.

On Google maps and education

At lunch today, I talked with a former professor about some of the issues that he sees with his students. This, by the way, is at Amherst. The students who get in there did so because they knew how to present themselves to their high school teachers and admissions boards. They knew how to win.
Many student wrote papers that were focused on a narrow topic, crisply-defined, but with little connection to other ideas or domains. These students did well well because they showed a clear answer to a specific, albeit esoteric, question. Their research skills were limited to delivering a precise answer with no ragged edges.
If you ask Google Maps (or any GPS system) for turn-by-turn directions, you get good results. Using those directions will get you where you intend to go, but with a curious side effect. You are delivered as in a tunnel, without context.

Time was, we studied maps and knew not only the path, but also the frame of reference. Recently, I had to travel to a part of a nearby town that was unfamiliar to me. The person I was visiting said that his street is right near the so-and-so school. I used Google Navigation. It made no mention of the school as a prominent reference point. Instead, it said, "in 600 feet,  turn left." I got where I was going, but Google told me nothing of the fact that this family lived near a school.
It turned out that living near a school was very relevant to this person and his wife because his kids could walk to school. Google told me what was true, but not what was meaningful.

Google Drive nixed

It took Google a long time to release its Google Drive product. People had come up with work-arounds involving storing files as attachments to Gmail messages. When it was finally released earlier this year, it was almost too late. Products such as Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft's SkyDrive (variously named Live and other monickers) had filled the file-sharing, synchronization, cloud storage void.

Google Drive is an evolution of Google Docs, an online authoring environment for documents, spreadsheets, and presentation. Spreadsheets can have a form-based front end. Recently, I used this form/spreadsheet interface to build an online survey used by a couple hundred folks.

By allowing any type of file to be stored in then-Google Docs, Google's online file service became a handy way to store and share files among teams. You can share individual files or an array of folders, sub-folders, and files with one person, many, or the world. You can even use it to host your web server content.

In parallel, I decided to move back to Linux. There are some tools that I need to use and, I hope, develop, work that is more easily done on Linux.

To my surprise and disappointment, I discovered that I can't access non-document files that are stored on Google Drive when I'm using a browser running on Linux. In this case, I had stored some executable files in a tools folder on Google Drive. I wanted to download them to my Linux installation.

No joy.

In order to download non-document files, you need to have an application running on your system. Google makes its drive application for Windows, Mac, and various portable devices, but not Linux. Note that the error message is so broken that the link to the image is missing.

For today, I'll need to switch back to Windows. Longer term, I will have to move many of my files to Dropbox, which does make a Linux client.

 

Best Buy, dead store walking

Let me start by saying that I really want Best Buy to succeed. I want and need a local store where I can pick up a gadget or accessory on short notice.

That said, and related to my previous post, I was hoping to pick up a Bluetooth keyboard for my Nexus 7. Colleague Mitch Wagner suggested the Logitech 920-003390 Tablet Keyboard for Android.

Amazon offers the keyboard, available for 2^nd day delivery, at $49.00.

I checked Best Buy online:



This page doesn't show the price. It's $69.99  so that  I can have it shipped to one of the stores in 7-10 business days.

Living and working in a tech news bubble

While the tech press is all tangled up with the upcoming Microsoft, Apple, and Google product announcements, it's time for for a marketing reality check. What are consumers generally hearing about these new products?

It turns out that the mainstream media isn't covering this and so, we can assume, most folks aren’t receiving much reason to get excited. Local newspapers and television stations and even a few national channels give only passing mention to topics such as the Microsoft Surface tablet, iPad Mini, or Nexus 7, or Windows 8.

I chose several Boston-area television and newspaper web sites along with a couple of national resources: WBZ (CBS), WCVB (ABC), and WHDH (NBC), Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Worcester Telegram (a nearby, mid-sized daily), CNN, PBS, and Fox News. For each site, I searched for articles with certain keywords in the title.

Note: I would have used Bing on IE for searching in an effort to replicate what a typical non-technical user might use. Bing, however, doesn’t support date-filtering of its search queries.

The Microsoft Surface tablet is a hot new product second only to Windows 8 in terms of company impact. The people who are cover Microsoft and Windows products for a living are having a hard time understanding, let alone explaining the difference between a Windows 8 tablet and a Windows RT tablet, both due for the release this week. The average news consumer is troubled by a surfeit of news to confuse. On average, people have been offered one story about the Surface in the past month. Most sites, in fact, hadn’t reported on the Surface after the June announcement and the recent scheduling of the product release.

The Nexus 7 is a fun product that's receiving a lot of good coverage in the trades. In our local media survey, however, only one site, the Boston Globe, had a story about Google’s breakout tablet.

Apple has an announcement scheduled for October 23. Most people who speculate about such things expect that we’ll learn about a 7-or-so-inch iPad that’s generally been called the iPad Mini.

Meanwhile, all of the chatter about the iPhone 5 hasn’t made clear just what Apple released. I sat with a person recently while an ad for the refreshed iPod line showed up on TV. Seeing the brightly colored bouncing devices, she asked, "Is that the new iPhone?"

Microsoft is betting the company on its radical redesign of the user interface in Windows 8. While the tech press has been covering each of the nooks and crannies, Windows 8 has received scant coverage in our press pool. We found an average of fewer than four stories in the last month. During the same period, the sites averaged more than 27 stories about Big Bird. CNN and the Boston Globe provided peak coverage while PBS, home of our faithful feathered friend, posted just one. After the spike following the October 3 debate, Big Bird’s gone back to quieter corners while Windows 8 coverage continues its slow climb.

The results for Windows phone, including the much anticipated Windows Phone 8 release, were too small to measure.

If you search the web for these products, you’ll find lots of coverage. Google news search provides a much higher return on tech news, so it’s not surprising that these terms are more visible in Google news sites. Most folks, however, aren’t searching for news about gadgets and software. Google Hot Trends shows the current topics in high demand. People are interested in sports, celebrities, and a few disasters and tragedies. Their lives are uncluttered by commentary about tech in general and new product releases, unless it’s something from Apple. Watch the trends in the days after Apple’s announcement.

For those of us in the tech marketing trades, it’s good to spend an afternoon with people who don’t give a damn about this stuff. It’s good to remember that, for people are buying these products, technology is a tool and not a goal.

 

Welcome to Babel fish

Fans of the Douglas Adams six-part trilogy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will remember the  Babel fish. When inserted in the ear, the Babel fish allowed the recipient to understand any and all languages. Note that understanding the languages does not necessarily lead to understanding the person.

Anyway, we're on our way. Using Google Translate on my phone, I can type a phrase in English and have it return a credible spoken version of the translated phrase.

[caption id="attachment_3838" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Click on the image to hear the translation.[/caption]

 

A Google/Android/firewall mystery

A few days ago, my Galaxy Nexus (ICS, 4.0.2) stopped syncing my Gmail. I could get to Gmail and fetch new mail, but push mail wasn't working. I could wait hours and not get new messages that were appear just fine on my laptop. I could use other services just fine, such as search, browsing, Twitter, etc. My home WiFi signal was strong; no other device was having problem connecting or browsing.

It also synced properly when I was away from home, either out in the wild or connected to another WiFi access point.

The forums weren't much help, although they did point me in the right direction, kinda sorta.  When sync was working, the signal icon was blue.

When I was connected to my WiFi, it was gray.



It was my WiFi firewall. I'd temporarily set up a VPN connection, closed it, and left the firewall enabled.

I haven't figured which port setting is enabling/disabling the synchronization connection to Google's servers. If anyone has any clues, I'd welcome them

Two news stories divided by a common language

The Obama administration has release a white paper outlining online privacy goals. The 60page  report, Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World, is available here  (PDF).

Here's how the New York Times Bits blog reports it:

Meanwhile, the Register, a UK tech site, brings us the story in proper English:

Sheriff's website protecting us against information overload

Read how the Worcester County Sheriff's Department website is showing us life before Google. See Sheriff's website protecting us against information overload on my Telegram Towns blog.

Google and Facebook - too smart to help you

Try to find the link to the online help for Facebook. Hint: it's at the bottom of the page. Just press the Page Down key on your keyboard until you get there. Go ahead. I'll wait.
...
Found it yet? Probably not. Facebook thinks that you're much more interested in the musings of your friends to want to see what's at the bottom of the page. (By the way, here's the link to Facebook Help Center. You might want to bookmark it.)
Facebook has achieved phenomenal growth with a frequently-changing user interface, a complex process for setting privacy options, and no customer service. If you discover a problem, wander through the help pages until you're satisfied that it isn't addressed anywhere, Facebook is glad to have you report it.

via My bug is not listed above. - Facebook Help Center

Just don't expect an answer.
You won't get an email if they agree that it's a bug. At most, it might be listed on the  Known Issues on Facebook page.If your problem is fixed, what you tried to do before will just work when you try it again later.
The folks who built Facebook and Google are very smart. They're so very smart that they'd prefer to devote engineering resources toward fixing problems rather than responding to your email queries. In I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, Douglas Edwards recounts a conversation with Google co-founder, Sergey Brin. Edwards told Brin about the problems of the lone Googler responsible for customer service. The poor guy, noted Edwards, couldn't respond to all of the emails.

Sergey offered a useful perspective. "Why do we need to answer user email anyway?" he wanted to know.
To Sergey's thinking, responding to user questions was inefficient.. If they wrote us about problems, that was useful information to have. We should note the problems and and fix them. That would make the users happier than if we wasted time explaining to them that we were working on the bugs.

See? It took two people to write, review, and send a reply to your complaint. Those talents could have been better spent fixing the problem without interference from you.
Something that doesn't work as expected one time will, by the wizardry of very smart people, work properly at some time in the future. The classic pop-culture definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Facebook and Google invite and, to some extent, require this kind of insane behavior.
It's not an oversight. It's their business model. At last check, there are three Googlers and one Facebooker in the Forbes top 50 richest people in the world.

Google and Facebook - too smart to help you

Try to find the link to the online help for Facebook. Hint: it's at the bottom of the page. Just press the Page Down key on your keyboard until you get there. Go ahead. I'll wait.
...
Found it yet? Probably not. Facebook thinks that you're much more interested in the musings of your friends to want to see what's at the bottom of the page. (By the way, here's the link to Facebook Help Center. You might want to bookmark it.)
Facebook has achieved phenomenal growth with a frequently-changing user interface, a complex process for setting privacy options, and no customer service. If you discover a problem, wander through the help pages until you're satisfied that it isn't addressed anywhere, Facebook is glad to have you report it.

via My bug is not listed above. - Facebook Help Center

Just don't expect an answer.
You won't get an email if they agree that it's a bug. At most, it might be listed on the  Known Issues on Facebook page.If your problem is fixed, what you tried to do before will just work when you try it again later.
The folks who built Facebook and Google are very smart. They're so very smart that they'd prefer to devote engineering resources toward fixing problems rather than responding to your email queries. In I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, Douglas Edwards recounts a conversation with Google co-founder, Sergey Brin. Edwards told Brin about the problems of the lone Googler responsible for customer service. The poor guy, noted Edwards, couldn't respond to all of the emails.

Sergey offered a useful perspective. "Why do we need to answer user email anyway?" he wanted to know.
To Sergey's thinking, responding to user questions was inefficient.. If they wrote us about problems, that was useful information to have. We should note the problems and and fix them. That would make the users happier than if we wasted time explaining to them that we were working on the bugs.

See? It took two people to write, review, and send a reply to your complaint. Those talents could have been better spent fixing the problem without interference from you.
Something that doesn't work as expected one time will, by the wizardry of very smart people, work properly at some time in the future. The classic pop-culture definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Facebook and Google invite and, to some extent, require this kind of insane behavior.
It's not an oversight. It's their business model. At last check, there are three Googlers and one Facebooker in the Forbes top 50 richest people in the world.

Google does many things right, but not these

1. The latest version of Google Docs appears to have removed the ability to add words to the spell-check dictionary.
   
   
2. The Google Docs spreadsheet doesn't have a simple way of displaying just the month and year of a date. You can write a formula that will do that, but Excel allows you to specify custom display fields easily.
3. Google Chrome doesn't allow you to use multiple Google accounts for email and other apps. Firefox has a nifty extension, called GMail Manager that monitors as many GMail accounts as you want, including those in different Google domains.
   There are reports that Google is rolling out a feature that allows you to log in to multiple Google domains and keep those logins active simultaneously. See Google Tests Multiple Accounts Sign in. I've not seen that feature in my account(s) yet.