Google + Circles, Part 2

http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/
http://www.google.com/+/demo/

So the first post got into why we needed Circles. This second post will hit on why Circles doesn’t go far enough. Remember, the point is to mirror real life, so that the product naturally extends and enhances what we already do.

Yes Circles allows grouping. However what about when the church leader is also your brother-in-law? What about when you hang out with one of your work associates? With Circles, a person can only go in one group. That is a completely artificial, limiting distinction, that I believe will limit Google+ usefulness, perhaps even dooming it to a fate worse than Buzz.

It’s a mystery to me how all these companies can keep getting this wrong. Sure there’s a sneaky reason why they don’t want us to have good grouping. But it’s shortsighted to make something we don’t want and can’t use. The first company to get this right wins.

Google + Circles

• http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/
• http://www.google.com/+/demo/

Well Google beat me to the punch here. I had been meaning to put up a rant about social networks, and how the lack of fine-grained “grouping” was keeping them from getting to the next level.

What I mean by that is Twitter and Facebook (and all the other lesser players in social media) only allow for the concept of a friend. Everybody in the whole world you have any type of relationship with, is a friend. And all of your social interactions go to all of your friends. This is one level below everything you do is public, and belongs on television.

Social networks have to model, mirror even, our real world social interactions, in order to augment them (and provide value we will pay for). That means Facebook needs to grasp the difference between my boss and my wife and my bowling buddy, and allow me to naturally control what I share with each one of them, not just lump them all into a group. This is not just about damage control (the classic drunk at the bar photo). It’s about value. I’ve got a cute story about my kids that my mother and my sister will find amusing, but it’s just clogging up the feeds of the rest of my “friends”.

Well, to get to the point, Google has had the same thought, and built friend-grouping into their newest Facebook-killer/social network, Google+, and is calling it “Circles”.

DosBox

http://www.dosbox.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFWCp9OM5Gs

Back in 1995 I brought home my first laptop from work. It was in some sense my first PC. And the very first piece of software I bought for it was Fuzzys World of Miniature Space Golf (on floppy disk of course, there were no cds back then). This wasn’t even a Windows game, it was a DOS game (though it had amazing graphics for the time).

Roughly 15 years have come and gone since then, and something reminded me of the game. I found it, but it is just too old to run on Windows 7’s version of the dos prompt. Well I went through some effort to set up a DOS VM (Virtual machine) that ultimately didn’t pan out. But then I came across an open source dos emulator, DosBox. Within 10 minutes of finding it, with very little fuss, I had my old game up and running, just as good as I remember it. Very fun, very nostalgic!

Guitar jacks for iPad iPhone Ipod Touch

I have been using Amplitube’s iRig ( http://www.macworld.com/article/153301/2010/08/guitar_cables.html ) for quite a while with both my iPhone and iPad and think it’s great. It’s well-designed, pretty sturdy, and sounds great. I use it with Amplitube’s own app (basically amp/effect modeling), 4-Track, and now GarageBand. There were a very limited number of solutions for getting audio signals in to the iOs devices when I was first looking, and I’m convinced that iRig was the best choice then, and may still be the best choice.

However the one thing all the cable solutions had in common was connecting through the headphone jack. It looks like Sonoma Wire Works (see links below) has figured out how to connect through the dock port.

http://sonomawireworks.com/guitarjack/

http://iosmusician.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-guitarjack-2-for-iphone-and-ipad.html

And the really cool opportunity that opens up is simultaneous dual input. I assume this possibility exists for recording stereo audio for hi-def video, but for an app like 4-track (or GarageBand?), it means recording two tracks at the same time.

Of course iPhone/iPad audio recording/editing does not come close to a professional recording setup, nor even a good dedicated mobile field recorder. But the maxim from the photography field  applies here as well. “The best camera is the one you have with you”.

Wireless mouse on KVM system

I give up! I have tried several wireless mice, including a nice Microsoft one, on several KVM systems, over the course of months. While they are wonderful on regular connections, on the KVM they cause lagginess, jitter, and slow KVM switching. I’ve had it. I’ll try again in a year or so!

“Non-glanceable”

I read a new term today that I definitely want to add to my vocab (ulary). I think it’s probably more grammatical to write it non-glance-able though. In terms of mobile computing it wraps up a very important concept in a petite package. It’s buried in the following link-

http://www.tested.com/news/an-android-advocates-perspective-on-apple-ios-5/2430/

The idea is that computing while you are mobile is different from computing at your desk. Your can’t afford to focus. The resources are constrained. Therefore there are new UI concerns that need to be addressed to provide a safe, efficient, pleasing experience. Stuff’s gotta be glance-able man!

iCloud functionality available today

So I found it confusing to figure out what is and what isn’t available today. Here’s what I have been able to figure out:

1. On the iPhone/iPad/Touch – in the “App Store” app, there is a new “Purchased” tab (along the bottom) where you can get any of the apps you have purchased before with your iTunes account, onto your device without syncing with desktop iTunes.

2. On the iPhone/iPad/Touch – in the “iTunes” app, there is a new “Purchased” tab (along the bottom) where you can get any of the music you have purchased before with your iTunes account, onto your device without syncing with desktop iTunes.

Now there is one additional item that was supposed to be available and is not yet, at least for me. That is iTunes 10.3, which will enable similar “Purchased” music (and some book management functionality?) for Macs and PCs.

Outlook cannot save free busy information

Boy, do a Google search on this one, and you will be amazed at all the hits.

This is an Enterprise issue, so you can probably ignore this if you are using Outlook for POP over the Internet. The basic problem is other people (on the same Exchange network as me) do not see the times I have blocked out as busy (for meetings) when they are scheduling a meeting request that includes me. My free/busy times are not making it to Exchange somehow or other. I should also note that my default mail store is a local PST rather than an Exchange mailbox.

One of the first recommended fixes is, from the Run Dialog, outlook.exe /cleanfreebusy . I got another error upon running that, “Unable to clean your local free/busy information”.

There are a lot of other troubleshooting steps that are recommended, both from the user side and the Exchange admin side. However what helped me was very simple, if unsatisfactory. Under the Exchange account configuration, I turned off “Use Cached Exchange Mode”. After that I was able to run outlook.exe /cleanfreebusy without errors, and the issue was resolved. Not a trade-off I am happy about (losing Cached Exchange Mode), but better than ending up with 3 meetings in the same slot.

Minority Report swiping for the iPad

The Kinect has opened the door for gesturing. However Microsoft has gajillions of R&D dollars invested in these future technologies. Can a brand new cooking magazine bring it to the iPad?

“Gilt is prototyping a way to use the camera to create “motion-activated recipes.” You would swipe your hands through the air in front of the screen instead of touching it to go through step-by-step recipes”

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/18/gilt-tastes-ipad-swipe-without-touching/