Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Google begins rolling out free internet to public housing in Fiber cities This is a big deal. I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for years and talked to a lot of kids and adults about their desire to get online. Philly isn’t yet on Google’s Fiber expansion roadmap, but this …Sunday, July 19, 2015
Ex-Googler says she exposed company-wide pay inequality with crowdsourced spreadsheet Kristen V. Brown wrote for Fusion about Googler Erica Joy’s recent salary spreadsheet. Google had no response to her request for comment, which is the worst kind of response to something like this. Apple …Saturday, May 30, 2015
Crisis shelter workers want Google Maps to hide the locations of their shelters Selena Larson reports at The Daily Dot: Crisis shelters provide a safe haven for victims and their families; they are a refuge away from abusers. By publicly listing shelter locations online, Google is endangering …Thursday, December 11, 2014
This is another post that began as a mere link post and became, by the time I was done writing it, an article in its own right. When I’m doing more than brief commentary, an article of my own feels more appropriate. There’s more room for opinion in a full article, and I like few things more than …Friday, September 26, 2014
FBI Director dislikes encryption on Apple and Google devicesEncryption of data on mobile devices is a big selling point in our post-Snowden world. But FBI Director James Comes isn’t happy about it: What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place …Thursday, November 21, 2013
Is Google Play Newsstand a viable alternative to standalone Android apps?No.Thursday, November 14, 2013
Judge calls Google book-scanning fair useGreat news for fair use doctrine, and a big win for word geeks. Judge Denny Chin said much in his ruling granting Google’s motion for summary judgment, but this part stuck out to me: Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data …Friday, November 1, 2013
Google’s party bargeMystery one day, party barge the next.Thursday, October 31, 2013
Google “zealously” private about mystery bargeI thought this was interesting but not really worth mentioning here, until the Coast Guard visited, apparently, as USA Today reports, under a presumably Google-imposed gag order. I’m an avid Google user, incredibly open on the internet, and …Friday, October 11, 2013
One Google, two different privacy rulingsStanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, in an email to the Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Dwoskin and Rolfe Winkler: Courts are doing pretzel twists to slot modern electronic privacy issues into antiquated statutory schemes. Congress badly needs to update the …Thursday, August 29, 2013
Apps for storing your photos in the cloudAt the end of the day, expertise or a lack of it will define your requirements in this space. Less savvy folks love Google+ Photos because the auto-upload is effectively unlimited for them with the appropriate size setting.Thursday, August 15, 2013
Welcome to Google IslandIf you follow one link from my blog this week, make it the one above. It’s well-written and disturbingly possible-seeming.Saturday, August 3, 2013
How the death of Google Reader is saving RSSBen Popper, at The Verge1: Some Reader partisans may have given up on RSS after the shutdown, but the majority seem to have migrated to other platforms. In the weeks following the announcement, Feedly saw 3 million Google Reader refugees sign up and …Sunday, April 7, 2013
Select YouTube partners exempt from fair use policyYouTube’s well within their rights to refuse to leave a video up, or to re-post it after fair use has been reasonably well-defended. But it’s another reminder that when stuff is free for consumers, the interests of the producers providing the …Friday, April 5, 2013
Google fighting National Security LetterThe letters, issued by federal authorities investigating national security concerns, prohibit recipients from disclosing that they have received them, let alone what they’re asking for. The Judge in Google’s case1 struck down the law’s gag order provision as …Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Make Feedly look more like ReaderIf you like Feedly but prefer Reader’s white space and width, grab this handy script. Chrome users like me should install Tampermonkey first.Thursday, March 21, 2013
Evernote will be just fine, despite Google’s recent announcement of a new note-taking app called Google Keep, currently available for the web and Android. Keep allows for text, audio, and images to be added to a single notebook and synced between the web and Android devices. You can even add stuff …Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Google and ExperimentationThis is a great article, especially if you don’t know much about the history of Android. However, Adrianne Jeffries of The Verge ends her article with a silly quote from Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. Perhaps analysts have a legitimate role to play in the consumer …Tuesday, March 19, 2013
‘Babble’ to consolidate Google’s chat tools under one brandGeek.com's Russell Holly: Google’s recent decision to block non-native XMPP requests is the first step towards building their own closed communications platform. In order to use Google’s chat service, especially the new …Friday, March 15, 2013
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fansGoogle+ architect Yontan Zunger meant well, but Google+ will never be sufficient as a reader. Brands maintain a curated presence there for audience outreach and building purposes, not to provide readers with a convenient way to determine what …Friday, March 15, 2013
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedlyFrom the Feedly blog: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are …Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Powering Down Google ReaderI don’t even know what to say about this. Reader is an integral part of my workflow and I need to figure something else out. If you have any alternatives to suggest, please let me know.Thursday, March 7, 2013
ECPA amendment would require warrant even for email older than 6 monthsReps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) are pushing an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would require a warrant for authorities to obtain any email, instead of …Thursday, February 28, 2013
Google’s answer to AirPlay comes to YouTube for iOS, sends video to consoles and TVsI’ve been doing this from my Galaxy Nexus for a while now. I paired my phone to my Xbox 360 so I can pull videos up on my phone’s YouTube app (which is much easier to use than the Xbox app) and then send to my …Tuesday, January 29, 2013
At Google, Constitution trumps statuteDavid Kravets quotes a Googler: “Google requires an ECPA search warrant for contents of Gmail and other services based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure,” Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, said. The …Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Nilay Patel on what we agree to when we use cloud servicesNilay Patel at The Verge reads some Terms of Service and drops some knowledge bombs. It’s definitely a must-read if you’re a Google, Dropbox, iCloud, or Skydrive user. So, if you’re on the internet at all, basically.Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Google Music gains scan and match feature in the USNice.Monday, November 26, 2012
UPDATED: Google Acquires Wi-Fi Provider ICOA for $400 MillionUpdated: This is not true. Angela Moscaritolo of PCMag.com reports: In a statement, Google said it made the acquisition to “further diversify its already impressive portfolio of companies.” The Web giant did not elaborate about its …Monday, November 19, 2012
$22.5M FTC fine against Google for Safari trackingMichael Liedtke, writing for Associated Press: In the Safari case, Consumer Watchdog argued that the fine amounts to loose change for a company like Google, which generates about $22.5 million in revenue every four hours. It’s a very good deal for …Thursday, November 1, 2012
Google integrating AMBER alertsRichard Dunlop-Walters’ The Brief is a must-read for those interested in news about how technology affects our lives every day. Mr. Dunlop-Walters said of Google’s AMBER Alert integration: whenever you perform a Google search related to an area where a child has been …