Plus And Minus

You may have seen that Google+ was recently shut down.  You may also have forgotten what Google+ was; it was Google's attempt to cash in on the social network gold rush. It wasn't too successful. Too bad, we could use some new blood in the Social Media field. Facebook is still making a fool of itself on the privacy issue, and Twitter is still dragging its feet on the should-we-allow-nazis issue.

And frankly, this is the sort of thing I wish Google would put more effort into. My complaint about them in recent years has been that they are choosing which business to enter on a whim, rather than the classic business basis of find-a-problem-and-fix-it. We needed a good search engine, and they built one. We needed a competitor for iOS and they built one (well, bought and nurtured one, but close enough.)

Then they started going off the rails with Chrome. If they'd released it a decade earlier to counter the dominance of Internet Explorer, that would have been great. But doing it after Firefox had managed to - improbably - break the monopoly, Google just looked like bullies. Now they're bringing out a game streaming service, despite the fact that the gaming world is already a crowded business, and that people are starting to get leery of the everything-is-a-subscription juggernaut. Oh, and rural folks keep trying to point out that they're not okay with streaming everything on their antiquated broadband. And hey, that's just the sort of problem Google could solve and win lots of kudos, instead of suspicion.

So if you're not too pleased about Google's game streaming plans, just remember that it might be another Google+ instead of a Chrome. After all, I wasn't even going to comment on the passing of Google+, except that they somehow set things up so that if you had a Google+ account when you signed up for Blogger, it lost the connection with your Google account, so I just had to have a panicked run through FAQ's and message boards to try to get signed back in. And this post is my combined test/scream-of-frustration

My Reputation Precedes Me

There's a lot of talk about how much advertisers know about us. Of course, there's not a lot of respect for privacy, and companies want to assemble as much data about us as possible so they can give us the most targeted ads. My response is that I wish my ads were targeted to me. No, I don't want to download Candy Crush! What have I ever done that would make you think I want to play that? Being human sure, but the point is, it's not really a good use of the data about me.

But on the other hand, there's plenty of data out there that we hand out voluntarily. When I tried using Microsoft's new Edge web browser, I was shocked to find that it presented me with a list of recent scores of my favorite sports teams. How did it know? My phone knows my favorite teams, since I put them into the "Google Now" feature to get updates on them. But that's a Google product, and they don't talk to Microsoft.

 
So here I was, worried that my laptop had hacked my phone, all in an effort to please me. But then I remembered that had inputted my favorite teams into Windows 8.1 to get scores in one of those squares in that weird tile interface. Of course, like most people, I tried to avoid using that interface, so I forgot all about what I'd told it about myself. But apparently, in some Microsoft computer somewhere, there's a notation that I'm looking for Raptors scores. And that my affinity for Minesweeper somehow translates into a desire for Candy Crush. (Completely ridiculous - Minesweeper is true strategic, intellectual timewasting.)

But this brings up a question: how much other information have I left out there. I can't count how many sites I've signed up to, or created a log in for, but no longer use. I remember using a movie recommendation site in the nineties. So somewhere out there a computer knows all about the movies I liked as a twenty-something. But we've probably all left a digital impression of ourselves behind us. I don't know if anyone tries using that data, perhaps trying to link the info in abandoned accounts with the information they have about us today. Who knows how accurate that process is. They could be confusing me with an old GeoCities account for a James Roe. And he really loves Candy Crush.

I'm Sure You Weren't Looking For This Post

Searching based on text is a difficult thing.  Sure, it seems simple: if someone types in a word, you find things containing that word.  But people don't always spell things correctly.  That leads to Google's condescending "did you mean" or "showing results for" features.  They're slightly insulting, but less confusing than returning with a page of gibberish results matched to mistyped search terms.

But then the concept can be taken to ridiculous extremes.  For instance, there's probably more people who Google "kitchens" than my home of "Kitchener."  Should Google try to correct me by assuming I was looking for a new kitchen?  Fortunately it doesn't.

But then I was at Google's app store, searching for the oddly-named game, "Depths of Isolation" (which is just a physics puzzler, not as depressing as it's name would indicate.)  That's an unusual title, and its a new and little-known game, but still, I wasn't prepared for the store's search to return this:

Yes, even though there was an app that matched my search term exactly, it gave me a page-and-a-half of popular but completely unrelated apps first.  This would seem to be the Ikea model of searching: We'll get you what you want, but we'll make you walk past everything else in the store first.

From Uber Down To Snapchat, I Must Have Bought Them All

I was just at Google Play, which is the name Google gives to its app store. I noticed a game called “Pinball Wizard.” And I thought fine, they’re naming it after The Who’s song, that’s clever. But then I realized that the icon they had chosen was the actual album cover, which is surely a copyright violation.

But alas, the joke was on me. Google Play fancies itself a vendor of all sorts of media, and I had unknowingly scrolled down passed the array of apps, and into the music section. This wasn’t an app, it was the actual recording of The Who’s "Pinball Wizard."

That makes me wonder just how often this sort of thing happens, and how many times people actually buy the wrong thing. I had already figured that a few people every year must confuse Sue Grafton’s V is for Vengeance and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. But now that you can easily confuse items that aren’t even the same media, there’s a whole new level of mistaken identity. When Canadian musician Owen Pallett went by the name Final Fantasy, he may have been on to something.

Google Divided By 2

Officials of the European Union has suggested that Google should be broken up for competition reasons.

Personally, I don't see the reason for it. I am okay with the idea of government limiting business, but that's if there's cause for it. With Google, that cause isn't there.

I was in favour of the U.S. Justice department's attempt to break up Microsoft in the nineties; in that case, they were clearly using their monopoly to eliminate competitors.

Google has made some clumsy attempts to use their position in one area to gain an advantage in another. The Google search feature on Android phones is a good example. But I think they're a few reasons this is different from Microsoft's situation.

For one thing, it's doubtful that Android has really helped Google's search business. After all, Microsoft's near-monopoly in PC operating systems hasn't helped Bing dent Google's hold on the market. Google would probably still lead in mobile search even without Android. After all, it's not hard to switch.

And that's another thing that's changed: it's easy to switch. I remember during the Microsoft case, some pro-business pundit ridiculing the idea that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows would cut use of Netscape. She characterized the government as treating the public as children, too stupid to download the competing browser if they wanted it. I disagreed with that; for one thing, in those days downloading software was a multi-hour proposition. Free vs. two-hour download was hardly even footing.

But today, switching software is easy and fast. People are a lot more comfortable with technology, and it's hard to herd people into decisions, no matter how much of their electronics you control. I'm not saying it's impossible - there may come a time when it makes sense for one of the super-powerful tech companies to be broken up. But that's far less likely now, and the day just hasn't arrived for Google.

Once again, European lawmakers are choosing their battles awfully: add with the "right to be forgotten" ruling, they're going to great lengths to solve problems we don't have. Is sad given the huge number of tech problems we do have, and could use help from a powerful trans-national body to solve:

• Privacy (from both government and business)
• Identity theft
• Bullying and threats
• Spam & phishing
• Spyware

(Dis)Unity

I've been experimenting with the Unity game engine. It's pretty impressive, but there's a problem, and that is the name. Any programming tool you use is going to occasionally leave you with questions, so googling for answers is a constant activity for the modern programmer. That's fine if you're working with software that has a unique name. If you consult Google on "jmonkey file opening procedure" there's nothing else you could be looking for.

But "unity" is a pretty common word. And worse, it's used on another piece of software: the controversial user interface for Ubuntu Linux. So if I Google "unity tutorial" I could get an introduction to either one.

And now it's just getting worse: the latest game in the Assassin's Creed series is coming out soon, and it has the subtitle "Unity". So now we'll have three different pieces of software competing for Googlespace.

Worse still is that I'm working with a programming language called, "Boo". There are lots of languages that are named after an English word, but languages like Java and Python have more web pages dedicated to them (at least in English) than the other things they share their names with. So you can Google "python guide" knowing that you won't get an introduction to snake grooming. But Boo is a fairly new, and not widely used yet, so there aren't many web pages about it yet. So if you Google "boo guide" you'll probably find a bunch of episode guides to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

So I've tried to make my search terms as specific as possible. For instance, it helps to use "boo language" instead of just "boo". Although that doesn't always work either, as it may just lead to pages offering to translate the language spoken by Honey Boo Boo and family.

1,400 Words You Can Never Say On Android

I'm a big fan of the swipe-typing keyboard on Android phones.  So I was interested when it came out a few months ago that the swipe recognizer has a long list of words it won't recognize. There are the usual suspects, like "dock" and "shoot" (at least, that's what comes out if you try sweeping them.) But there is also a curious collection of other words that are verboten. For instance, many times I've tried to type "geek", which comes out as "Greek" or "feel" regardless of how careful my typing. The list of banned words seems arbitrary, so I decided to investigate:

A lot of sex-related terms don't work, including "sex" itself, which becomes "sec" or "seed."  Here's what I got for a few others:

• Menstruation: menageries, menagerie
• Erection: Ervin
• Uterus: yetis, iri
• Yet it accepts "menopause" and "puberty." Or "udder" for that matter.

For the following words, it won't recognize the word automatically, but will offer it as one of the alternate possibilities the swiper can choose:

• Condom: condition
• Penis: permits, pennies
• Vagina: basins
• Testicle: twiddle, sickle
• Vulva: bulbs, villa

It won't recognize "gay", instead suggesting "gassy," "Gary," or "hay." Yet "lesbian" and "homosexual" are accepted.

Religious terms are just odd. Consider the branches of Islam:

• Sunni: Sino, sunk
• Shiite
• Sufi: studio

You'd think Shiite would be the one it would avoid. Lots of other religious terms worked, though: "Eucharist," "Hajj," "Imam," "Rabbi," "Kosher," "Halal."

How about Google's competitors?

• Samsung: Samsung
• Microsoft: Microsoft
• Lenovo: Kenobi

All in all it's quite silly.  I could understand if they have it biased so that when there's some doubt, it chooses the less embarrassing word.  And yet, I've lost count of the number of times it's interpreted "thing" as "thong."

Redefining Canada

Last week I made a map of Canada based on Google searches of province names.  That was inspired by a similar map of the U.S.  Well I've seen another American map going around the Internet.  In this one, they searched Google for "Why is <state name> so" and put Google's top autocomplete suggestion on the map.

So I did the same thing for Canadian provinces.  I've included all the suggestions I was given.  Unfortunately, there was no suggestion for, "Why are the Northwest Territories so" regardless of how I played with the awkward pluralism in that phrase.  Once again, the title is the suggestions for "Why is Canada so":

Notes:

1. Somehow, for B.C. it suggested the rather formal, "Why is B.C. so named?"
2. For Manitoba, it left a blank, suggesting the koan, "Why is Manitoba so?"
3. That is, the only suggestion for P.E.I. was, "Why is P.E.I. soil red."

Apocalypse (Google) Now

I've been continuing to use Google Now, the Android-based software that's supposed to act as a digital assistant.  I've already mentioned my experiences before.  There's been an upgrade, and it seems a little easier to use.  And then just today, I came across this article from the Economist on personal assistant software.

One of its features is that it senses (using GPS) which places you go to often, and then offers directions and travel times to them. So wherever I go, I always know how long it will take to get home. This feature is kind of hit-and-miss. The directions are fine, but it has a bizarre way of deciding which places it should keep track of. A couple of days ago, it offered to keep track of travel distances to Dawson Market, a cafe in Woodstock. I’ve been there a number of times, so I might be interested in directions there. But what odd is that I haven’t been there in months, because it’s been closed for renovations. What caused Google Now to just decide it was important to me?

It's also hit-and-miss when it gives me time updates.  For instance, it figured out that I often go to my hairstylist. (What?  I do have some hair, and it has to be cut.)  Of course, it might be useful to get traffic times to get there.  But it's not smart enough to figure out which places I go to at which times.  It would be useful if it noticed that I only go there at times I have marked in the calendar, and then only gave me updates when my appointment is coming up.  But it can't figure that out, it just gives me all the traffic updates it can, all the time.

Another of the places it keeps track of is my parents' house, and I was quite surprised when it suddenly told me that it would take ten-and-a-half hours to get there, rather than the 50 minutes it usually takes. So what caused that, a massive traffic jam on the back roads of Southern Ontario?

No, here's what happened: In looking through the configuration screens, it asked how I usually get around, with the options being walking, cycling, driving, and public transit. As a downtown resident, I answered it truthfully as walking. So now it thinks that every trip I take is by foot.

The Electronic Slide

A new feature I've been using on my phone is trace typing. On the standard Android virtual keyboard, you don't have to hit each key individually, Blackberry-typing-style. Instead, you can just slide your finger/thumb over the keyboard to each of the letters in your word. It will infer from the path which word you meant. I don't know many devices this is available on; even if it has Android, a phone/tablet may have a proprietary keyboard, so it may not work for you. But you can still download Google's standard Android keyboard.

I've been critical of phone technology in the past, and recently of Google itself, but I have to admit, I'm amazed at how well this works. I've been using the slide technique to type this entire article so far, and although I've had to retype the odd word when my movements were a little careless, it's managed to recognize each word. In fact, it's very good at interpreting sloppy traces around the keyboard, even when my thumb careens wildly around resembling Tim Tebow's throwing motion. For instance, when I typed, "movements" I just sent my thumb back and forth across the board, only in the general direction of the needed keys, yet it somehow made sense my virtual scribble.

It's taken some getting used to. Twenty years of touch typing have left my brain with no conscious awareness of where the letters on a qwerty keyboard are. So I sometimes forget where I'm going half way through a word, and make a wrong turn. Yet it manages to figure out my intentions anyway a lot of the time. Okay, as I'm typing that, I had one of those lost moments, and turned "intentions" into "injunctions."

My point is, this is the opposite of so much artificially intelligent things that try to be helpful but misunderstands you even when you're trying to be clear. Finally here's A.I. tech that exceeds expectations.

Now Let Me Tell You How Hard It Was To Publish That Last Post

I haven't posted in a couple of days, since my difficulties getting the last post online had me close to throwing the computer out the window.  See?  I'm so mad I couldn't even come up with less clichéd way to describe my anger.

I won't recount all of it, but it began with my not being able to upload the flow chart graphic directly from my computer.  That is likely due to the security set up of my browser, so I don't blame anyone for that.  But I then launched into an hour of bouncing the file between my computer, phone, and tablet, using Google's Drive online storage, the Blogger app and website, and the phone and tablet photo galleries.  Something as simple as moving files around is made difficult by both bugs and sparse touch-screen interfaces.

This is all in spite of the fact that Blogger, Drive, and the Android operating system on my phone and tablet, are all Google products.  So let me be the first to say it: Google has turned into Microsoft.   A company that turned a good product from years ago into an empire of buggy software, spreading itself too thin by trying to take on all markets at once, resulting in applications that are supposed to work together but don't, and never get fixed.