The Fearless Blogger

In case you haven’t heard, Google recently launched a new social media service called Buzz:

Buzz lets you share updates, photos, links, and pretty much anything else you’d like with your Gmail contacts; it’s an easy way to follow your friends, too.

If Orkut was Google’s version of MySpace, Buzz is Google’s version of Facebook.

Personally, I’ve been getting sick of Facebook’s shifty-ness -- seems like the site’s sporting a new homepage and/or privacy settings more often than Ryan Seacrest touches up his highlights -- so I’m hoping Buzz gets some momentum.

It’s certainly getting its share of attention. Just two days after the launch, Google implemented some “immediate improvements” based on user feedback (mostly around privacy control features).

One thing I haven’t seen addressed is Google’s approach for verified accounts.

When I visit my Google profile page, I’m greeted with a message advising me that the page “is eligible to be featured in Google search results”. This links to a help page on how to make your profile easier to find,  including this tip “to help you make your Google profile more useful”:

Verify your name, and get a “Verified” badge on your profile.

If you were me, this is the message you'd get.

Given I have a sink full of dishes waiting to be washed and laundry to do, my natural reaction is to immediately set about getting my name verified. (Seriously, you get a “Verified” badge! How could I resist?)

After clicking through a mere five pages, I arrive at the place where the magic happens. Intuitively (that’s sarcasm, by the way) nestled among the Knol (Remember Knol? Google-flavored wikis?) ”Preferences” resides my “Name Verification” page, where I am presented with two options to complete the verification process (the badge is so close!):

1. Credit Card
2. Social Security Number

Nope. Not a Rick Roll.

Really?!

Short of perhaps a picture of me naked and sitting on the toilet, I can’t think of anything I’d feel less inclined to post online than either of those items.

I begin to wonder if perhaps I’ve landed on an archived April Fool’s Day page. After all, it seems far more plausible that the links would lead me to a Rick Astley video, than that Google would actually be requesting that information.

I decide to explore further.  (Who says those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves?!)

Turns out it’s true -
The only way to get that Name Verification badge is to fork over details for either your credit card or social security number.

Of course Google assures us that your card is not charged, the information is used for verification purposes only (via a third party), blah blah blah.  Comfy? Well, before you pull your wallet out, read through the FAQs -- only certain credit cards will work and Name Verification is only available in the U.S.

Indeed, you don’t have to get your name verified. So unless you have a compelling reason to prove you are who you claim to be, this is far from the end of the world. (Even if you do have a compelling reason, I’m confident you’ll be able to work through this.)

Currently, the feature does not seem to be widely used. Google describes it as “experimental”, explaining they “now downplay the feature in the user-interface”.  For those wondering about page rank, the FAQ states:

At the moment, the feature exists solely as one means for you to communicate to your readers that you are who you say you are. At this present time, it does not have a significant effect on ranking.

Does this graph remind you of anything?

Still, I have to believe that this is something Google will need to address sooner or later.

Users are encouraged to update their profiles when getting started with Buzz. Potentially, many are likely seeing the message about having their profile featured in search results.  If so, Google may find their efforts to downplay the verification option to be less-than-successful.

Call me cynical, but given the alarmist reaction to Google potentially exposing who’s on your “most e-mailed” list, the current verification options are unlikely to sit well with the average user.

Would you be willing to share your credit card or social security number to get verified?

Does it even matter?  Will Buzz lead to an increased need (real or perceived) for Name Verification or will verification remain a “downplayed”, experimental feature?

Since I have dishes to do (so much for them doing themselves -- hmmph),  please talk amongst yourselves (i.e., leave a comment)!

Our favorite online Jack-of-All-Trades, Google, has announced their latest venture; and it looks like they’re heading straight into iTunes territory.

TechCrunch posted details about Google’s new music service:

Google will partner with iLike and LaLa for their new music service, we’ve learned. And the announcement date is Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

Press, including us, received an invitation this morning (see ticket image above) inviting them to a Hollywood event next week hosted by music services LaLa and iLike. The invitation, titled “Discover Music!” says announcements will be followed by performances, and that LaLa, iLike “& Others” are hosting. The “& Others” includes Google, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and the new service will be unveiled. All four major music services are backing the service

To get the full scoop, read the original post at TechCrunch:
Google To Partner With iLike And LaLa For New Music Service

Update:
TechCrunch has posted screenshots of the new service.

Have you noticed Google’s new look today?

Techcrunch has the scoop on why the site updated today’s homepage “doodle” to display a barcode:

Google’s new logo is a barcode which, as far as we can tell, says “Google.” Today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code. Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent on October 1949, and it was granted, No. 2,612,994 (pdf), on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so that it could be scanned in any direction.

The barcode on the Google homepage is Code 128 encoded, which is a standard way of encoding ASCII character strings (ie. A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.) into a barcode. It would be safe to assume that Google used their own open source barcode project, ZXing, to generate the barcode. The same library is used in Android for barcode recognition.

Read the full post here: New Google Logo Celebrates The Barcode

I love Google. The company continuously provides ways to use technology to make life easier. Each Google innovation seems to bring new ways to integrate the various data points of our lives.

It’s quite nifty.

(cue Dateline’s Keith Morrison impression)

But is it?

My concern is as we sign up and connect for each new service, we’re spinning our own individual webs of our personal lives into a convenient package that Big Brother would drool over. If the government were providing these services instead of Google, I wonder how readily we’d all be to adopt them?

Would you want Big Brother accessing yours?

Who’s in Control?
It’s not that I don’t trust Google’s business leaders’ intentions live up to their “Do No Evil” mantra.

It’s that I don’t trust that the company’s future business leaders will value ethics enough to let it outweigh profitability, should they ever need to choose.

I also question Google’s ability to maintain control of our data. Ultimately, as omnipresent as Google may be, the U.S. government has the final say over who can have access to what.  And, even in the new age of Obama-influenced hope, “Do No Evil” is not exactly this country’s guiding principle.

For Example?
Case in point, is this recent ruling covered in Mashable:

In a highly troubling ruling from U.S. District Court Judge James Ware, Google was ordered to deactivate the Gmail account of an innocent user whose only crime was receiving the results of a bank screw-up.

Earlier this week an employee at a Wilson, Wyoming-based Rocky Mountain Bank inadvertently sent confidential information including names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information for more than 1,300 customers to the wrong Gmail address. Realizing its mistake, the bank sent a follow-up email asking the recipient to destroy the information. When it received no reply, the bank asked the courts to force Google to disclose the recipient’s identity and deactivate the account. Judge Ware, remarkably, agreed.

(You can read the full post on Mashable’s site: Judge Rules Against Gmail User After Bank Screws Up.)

In case you think you’ve misunderstood – you haven’t.

Some dipshit at a bank not only felt comfortable sending confidential customer information via e-mail, they were comfortable enough to click “send” without double (let alone triple) checking the recipient’s email address (if the bank had hired someone with OCD to do the job, this wouldn’t have happened!).   read more

Microsoft’s been promoting “Bing”, their latest incarnation of “Live Search“, pretty heavily.   I’m not big on their claims that we’re all suffering a case of “search overload”, but the commercials are kind of clever in their patronizing way (< cue Sarah Palin impression> “Searching is hard!”).

But at the end of the day, Google still dominates.  By a show of hands – How many of you typed “bing.com” into your browser to find out more about it?  How many of you googled “bing” to find out what it was?

via 901am | Bing Parody Ad.