Google, Plus a new way to share information and news

I am already pretty pleased with Google Plus.

I learned the happy news that there is an experimental version of Google's Go programming language available. I also added a decent number of acquaintances to my circles, as well as some technology gurus.

The mail thrust of the Google+ service is a stream. That is where you view what others have posted, comment on their posts, and make your own posts.

I would say it is uncomplicated but robust.

I have been using it with Safari 5 today. I imagine it works well with IE. I hear if you use Chrome you can already get some browser extensions to make the UI slightly nicer somehow. I should try it with Firefox, but have not yet -- though I expect no problems there, given what is there under its hood.

I would not torch my existing social web sites yet. I do not see anything that it directly totally overlaps with yet. Twitter is the little hummingbird of messenger services. Google+ is most useful when used with medium sized messages. Google+ streams have a strong Buzz-like feel to them, with a whiff of Waves to them as well perhaps.

Sparks are for the most part just savable searches. Handy enough by themselves and slightly handier being integrated into the social web features.

I haven't tried Huddles yet but hopefully will soon.

I am avoiding putting my precise address out there. Despite Facebook's CEO telling us there is nothing to fear about sharing all our personal and demographic information, I note he now has a stalker who has approached him at his home and elsewhere and consequently has had a restraining order taken out on him.

Google gives Gmail users a Buzz

Google has been trying to facilitate better, clearer, more organized communication for years. Gmail was a step in that direction. It is free, can be easily searched by the mailbox owner, and features unobtrusive and relevant ads on the page. Just like Google search.

Buzz is a mini-blogging/discussion feature available inside Gmail. It lets a Gmail user share information/insights with other people he communicates with from time to time. It also makes it easy to share information with everyone, if they prefer to make a given message Public instead of Private.

The feature was activated for some people a day or so ago. It came on for me right after lunch yesterday (Wednesday). Other people who use Gmail will be getting it sometime in the next 5 or 6 days.

It is a little nicer than Twitter in some ways.

Microsoft came out screaming about it this week. Microsoft has not been right about too much lately. So Google is probably taking this as a positive sign.

Google could probably bind Microsoft's recent "wisdom" related to what Google should not be doing, and make a guide book for managing to be more successful. Microsoft has railed about things that make Google more: popular, profitable, and helpful to the internet/computer using community. Not to mention the business community.

The companies Microsoft has complained about for the past year have good business strategies, unique products and services, and the engineering savvy/determination to get things done that revolutionize computing.

Microsoft saying everyone should just use Twitter and not use/build anything that competes with it tells me that it is definitely time to look for things that will compete with Twitter. Also, given Microsoft's past track record, it seems likely that Microsoft will try to come out with something to compete with Twitter within a year or two.

Google Blogspot dropping FTP support in March

They say it is because not many users use it, which looks correct. But given the timing of it (Jan. 22) coming right after Google announced they and many other Silicon Valley high tech companies had been attacked by industrial espionage agents, I think there may be more to it.

FTP is a notoriously unsafe protocol. It sends a login password as clear text. That means anyone monitoring the network it passes through can steal the password and use it. Not legally, of course. They would most likely be breaking quite a few laws just by obtaining the password that way. But there are a lot of people around the world that do break computers laws for a living.

This reminds me of the fact that about the same week, Google announced they were switching Gmail from HTTP to the more secure HTTPS protocol. This whole thing just seems like a manifestation of the burden hackers are putting on society's use of computer and networking technology.

I really LIKE the new Blogger

Google has really made the new Blogger fun, powerful, and easy to use. It rounds off the rough corners and fills in the holes that the original Blogger had.

I just read a note that you can include snippets from your public Google Reader in Blogger.

I hope they provide the capability to selectively include things from your Google Notebook in Blogger posts and your Blog sidebars too. That would look really spiffy and be really handy too.

If you have not already switched to the new Blogger, you should check it out.

I expected my sidebars and layouts and look of my blogs would be slightly to heavily damaged when I upgraded. However, that really has not happened.

It was not a wrenching change for me. Just an improvement.

switched over to the new Blogger tonight

I switched over to the new version of Blogger tonight.

I figured since it is finally out of Beta, it is safe to jump in.

The Blogging client I use, MarsEdit, is supposed to get updated to use the new authentication scheme. I just checked, and according to VersionTracker there is no updated version yet. I am using the March 2006 release of MarsEdit. I guess I will have to check their website, and if there is no word on an update - then just try the version I have and see what happens.

I did a cursory check of a couple of my existing blogs here, and they appear to look okay.

That is a big relief because I probably spend the equivalent of a full weekend fiddling with the formats of some of them, so the CSS and the templates looked just right.

I like the new Blogger dashboard. It is much nicer than before. Also, I see as I enter this post that there is finally a tagging feature. I have been wishing for that at this site for a long time.

Well, it looks like this could be the start of something really cool. Hope MarsEdit is coming along for the ride.