Google+ is another attempt to take on Facebook. The twist is that this time it might work. It threatens to buck the trend of gaffe-prone Google product launches. People are actually excited about it. I’m excited about it. And I can’t remember when I last felt excited about a social media offering.

Google have obviously spent a lot of time and effort on making sure that Google+ works. A big emphasis has been placed on the user interface, with changes being rolled out across all of Google’s major products.

Circles

On that front, the biggest head-turner has been Google Circles. There is nothing particularly revolutionary at all about the concept. You separate people into different groups, meaning that you can share certain information with your close friends while keeping it hidden from occasional acquaintances.

Facebook has had this feature for as long as I can remember. But it’s never been sexy. Google has realised that people are attracted by flashy and playful interfaces as much as (or even more than) interfaces that are merely functional.

I was initially not impressed by the idea. But I have found that I have created many more circles than lists in Facebook. In Facebook I only have two — ‘Close friends’ (which I don’t particularly use) and ‘Limited profile’ which hides certain profile information from certain people.

But on Google+, I now have separate circles for six groups of people, with the intention of creating more. At the time being it is difficult to tell if the Circles feature will be useful in a way that Facebook’s lists feature isn’t.

A relatively clean slate

But what really strikes me about Google+ is the fact that its main selling point is that it’s not Facebook. Most are focusing on the privacy aspect of this. I am not sure if Google is less of a worry than Facebook on the privacy front.

But where Google has the upper hand is on its image. Over the years, Facebook has built up a lot of baggage. Facebook is now a massive deal with complicated systems of etiquette. Look at how people (only half jokingly) talk about relationships only becoming ‘official’ when your relationship status is set on Facebook.

For this sort of reason, Facebook has become a minefield. I often think twice about adding someone on Facebook just because of all the baggage that comes with it. Some people might take offence. Do they want to be Facebook friends with me? I am never sure. Which pretty much means that I add almost no-one these days.

Google Circles has a major advantage, in that it doesn’t come with all of this baggage. Moreover, it cleverly avoids calling everyone friends. When I signed up, by default I had circles called Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following (for people I have never met but whose posts I find interesting).

The crucial inclusion of the Following circle means I can feel more comfortable about adding people. Already it is starting to feel more like Twitter or Tumblr in terms of the people that are on there, but with the functionality of Facebook.

Partly this is because, for the time being, Google+ is mainly full of the geeky types that I only know online anyway. Time will tell if Facebook users and more ‘real life’ friends will join Google+. But for me, it is a massively good sign that I have already happily added a number of people to my Google Circles, some of whom I would not consider adding on Facebook.

The other features

This is where it starts to unravel a bit for me. Beyond Circles, which is more about a change in culture rather than any revolutionary new features, I am not sure what else about Google+ is exciting.

I have tried, but I just do not understand Google Sparks. What is it for? It seems like a really bad version of Google News or Google Alerts.

Meanwhile, Hangouts looks like it could be fun, but probably not for me. Out of curiosity, I tried it out on my netbook, which has built-in the only webcam I own. But it seemed like Hangouts almost killed it! Admittedly, my netbook is a bit old and is creaking at the seams, but it wasn’t the best of experiences.

What’s to come

Overall, though, the most exciting thing about Google+ is that it heralds a change in direction for Google. It sounds like there is more in the pipeline and that they are intent on shaking up the social web. Circles is a great start.

If you happen to want to, you can add me on Google+.

Is there anything more annoying than those security questions you need to login to certain websites? I cannot understand how they are supposed to make websites more secure.

I understand that passwords can be cracked and the security question is a safety net. But let’s face it. All the advice on passwords is that they are not to be real words. You should insert numerals, use mixed case, special characters; the works. If a password like that can be brute forced, a “security” answer made up of dictionary words, and based on known facts about your life, will be a piece of cake.

Facts like my mother’s maiden name, my hometown or my first primary school are not exactly secret. They can be easily answered by anyone with the slightest knowledge about me.

As far as I am concerned, it is the security equivalent of sticking a Magic Eye puzzle in your porch just in case someone manages to break down your door.

Worse still, a bad security question can lock you out of a website for good. I have seen a security question that was actually impossible for me to answer because it was asking about a life situation that simply did not apply to me. It was offensive as well as being shockingly unusable. I decided not to register for that particular website after all.

What am I supposed to do in that situation? Maybe I could just make an answer up. But how could I remember it? The only way is to write it down. Then it will only get lost in an obscure drawer, or maybe some criminal hacker’s pocket.

Then there are those questions on topics that you simply don’t care about. One certain website that I tried to login to recently left me stumped. It’s the sort of website I might only login to once every few years. So my answers to questions like these really could be anyone’s guess:

What was the surname of your favourite teacher?

I’m not sure I had a favourite teacher. Certainly, the person that immediately sprung to mind was not who I would call my ‘favourite’. And who was my favourite teacher five years ago might not now be the person I remember fondly now. My favourite teacher back when I was still a school pupil is probably totally different to the person I consider the best one now. As it is, I have absolutely no idea how I answered this question.

What is your most memorable place, but not where you were born or live?

What on earth? What is a ‘memorable place’? Not only do I struggle to have any interest in such a question whatsoever, but I cannot even tell what sort of place it might be. Could it be Edinburgh? The local park? Behind the bike sheds? No idea.

What is your favourite musical instrument?

To play or to listen to? It depends on so many things. It could be piano, marimba, vibraphone, Omnichord… It could be anything, depending on my age or mood.

When you add in the fact that answers are case-sensitive, and that you don’t get repeat attempts at the same question, it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to get access to this website. There is no way for my password to be reset.

Apparently my only recourse is to use the electric telephone. But unless they subject me to a similar barrage of obscure questions, I don’t see what advantage this offers from a security perspective. I can picture it now.

“You are Duncan Stephen?”

“Yes! Yes I am!”

“And you have changed address?”

“Yup!”

“OK! No problem at all! On the basis of this phone call we will now send your new password through the post!”

Hello.

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like.

Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. It is pretty important stuff. But the only mentions of it have been ghettoised in the darkest recesses of the technology sections, cordoned off in yellow and black tape with “warning: geeks only” written on it.

I don’t watch the television much these days, so I might be wrong. But I saw no mention of it on the news. I heard no mention of it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear people talking about it on the streets or in pubs.

You might think, “So what? Security update for X, Y and Z are released every day. You can’t have the news reporting it every day.” But something extra happened with that security update that was released last week: it crippled many users’ computers. Including my parents’ computer.

It is just as well I was still able to use my computer to try and find out what the problem was and how to workaround it. It turned out that ZoneAlarm threw a hissy-fit after Windows XP had updated and prevented users from accessing the internet.

In fairness, the BBC reported this on their website — but that’s not very useful if you’ve got no internet. Perhaps there are still people scratching their head about why they’ve not been able to access the internet for the past week.

The problem is twofold. One, the mainstream media seems quite averse to any technology story unless it’s to do with [say this like a caveman] “GOOGLE” or “APPLE”. Or “GOOGLE”. Simply, if you want to find out anything meaningful about technology you have to really know where to look for it.

And this brings me on to the second part of the problem. The people who don’t know where to look for information are also the most vulnerable users. There are people who, for whatever reason, can’t be motivated to take proactive measures to prevent themselves from the various security issues that inevitably arise when you use the internet.

I have a friend who bought a new computer a few weeks ago. The other day he complained to me that his new computer has already got spyware on it. The thing is that it’s not difficult to protect yourself really.

I’m not really a computer expert in the slightest, but I know the basics of how to protect myself — essentially keep all your software updated with the latest patches and don’t click any dodgy links. I don’t think it’s really a difficult concept. And — touch wood — these basics have worked for me. Since I got my own computer early last year I’ve never had anything worse than a tracking cookie on my computer (as far as I know — I just know that this is an invitation for my computer to explode under the weight of pop-ups tomorrow…).

But even simple measures like these that anyone can take are difficult to get through to some people. So many people still treat computers with awe. It is sometimes easy to forget how foreign computers are to many people.

I remember a couple of years ago when there was a really bad signalling failure on the train line into Edinburgh. Basically every train was cancelled. An old lady pointed to the automated departure monitor and asked why it said a list of trains towards the bottom of the screen were still listed as being on time.

This is what she said in protest (as though it would make her more likely to get on a train to Edinburgh): “I thought computers were wonderful things that never ever went wrong.” But even my basic knowledge of how computers work told me exactly why the trains were still listed as being ‘on time’ — because they hadn’t even departed from their start station, so hadn’t passed any sensors and weren’t technically late at all. The computer was none the wiser for obvious reasons.

This can be put down to the old issue that people in their thirties and younger have been using computers for almost all of their lives and understand what a computer is good for and what it isn’t. Youngsters who have lived with computers all their lives understand how a computer works, but for many people older than that computers just work by magic.

The thing is, that divide between young and old is not so clear cut as I used to think. I was listening to iPM yesterday and there was an interview with Clive Sinclair. He pointed out that back in the 1980s computer users really understood computers because they had to in order to get them to work. Today’s youngsters growing up with computers generally don’t understand computers at all.

So we come back to my friend who is the same age as me and has a problem with spyware. I have had a few conversations with him where I have tried to persuade him to use Firefox. For him, the internet is the internet and he doesn’t understand how one browser can be better than another. Even though I have told him about all the superior features and better security that a browser like Firefox or Opera can provide, he persists on using Internet Exploder version bum point poo.

Many people, through ignorance, don’t take the simple measures to keep themselves safe on the internet. I’ve had a look at the stats for this website to see what bad browsers visitors to this site are using.

In the past month, an amazing 20% of visitors used Internet Explorer 6. This is a web browser that was originally released seven years ago and last updated four years ago. It is notorious for its security problems. The more up-to-date Internet Explorer 7 was released almost two years ago.

You would expect Firefox users to be smarter, right? Not always. In the past month, 243 Firefox users that visited this website were using a version of the browser that is considered unsafe (which I defined as 2.0.0.14 and below). This included 19 people using 1.5.0.12, 11 using 1.0.7 and 8 using 1.5.0.3. Most amazingly, 4 visitors were using Firefox 0.9.1, a browser that has been out of date for four years. I dread to think what kind of security problems these users have been getting themselves in.

It got me wondering. If this many people are using dodgy browsers, how many people are still trying in vain to unsubscribe from spam emails? How many don’t know that even viewing an image in an email alerts a spammer that your email address is active? You could go on.

I don’t mean all this in a preachy kind of way. I completely understand why it is difficult for people to keep up to date with all the security issues that arise. I just find it really frustrating that simple awareness issues are not, well, made aware to people.

Things don’t get much more ubiquitous than the internet. It is impossible to imagine that someone growing up today will not be a regular internet user in some form or another. And there are real dangers on the internet that aren’t to do with [say this like a caveman] “PEDOPHILS” and “CYBER BULLIES”. But the media reports on made-up dangers like “KNIVES” and “YOOFS” and “KNIVES” as though we are on the verge of bladeageddon.

Yesterday I was listening to Digital Planet. They had a chap called Stefan Frei on reporting that around 60% of all internet users are using an out-of-date browser. He had a really smart way of thinking about software security. You should think of software as being perishable, just in the same way as foodstuffs. You wouldn’t eat a mouldy slice of bread, so why would you use a browser with a huge security hole in it?

It’s a really smart analogy that should be spread far and wide. It’s just frustrating that the place I heard it was on Digital Planet, which is probably listened to mainly by people who already know that they should be updating their browsers.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts on Facebook, which seems to have become a phenomenon over the past couple of months. Two or three months back it seemed to reach a tipping point. It is now no longer the preserve or procrastinating students.

Now Facebook seems to have made itself the social network to be on for sensible grown-up types. I heard it mentioned on the 6 O’Clock News recently — and that really is a sign, I think (have you ever heard LiveJournal (except in the context of “suicidal mad gunman had a LiveJournal”) or even Flickr mentioned on the news?).

It is easy to see why Facebook attracts that kind of audience. MySpace and Bebo are a full-on assault on the eyes (and sometimes ears), not to mention near enough impossible to navigate sensibly. Facebook has your profile in a pleasant blue interface which has a sensible, easy-to-use navigation system. Tweenagers may cry because they can’t put stupid pink glittery things on their profiles — but the rest of us are rejoicing.

But Facebook are not resting on the laurels of their new-found mega-popularity. Because it seems to me as though, of all the social networks out there, Facebook is the only one that does much in the way of innovation — and it does it by the bucketload.

When Facebook opened its doors to everyone, its current members (ie. students) were up in arms. But it turned out to be the key to the site’s eventual popularity.

When Facebook introduced its news feeds, people shrieked about the privacy concerns. But that was a storm in a teacup if ever there was one, because Bebo has subsequently made a weak copy of it without anyone batting an eyelid.

Also, the “privacy concern” completely ignored the fact that Facebook has awesome privacy features that I have never seen anywhere else. For a start, your profile is completely private to anyone outside your “network” (ie. university or geographical region). Then it can be private to people even inside your network. And then you can even have a “limited profile” so that you can even choose which of your friends has access to which information.

In fact, I feel so safe on Facebook that it is the only place on the web where I have ever posted my phone number. Many others even put their address on Facebook, and it doesn’t feel like a concern. Could you imagine putting your postal address on MySpace? I hardly think so.

Facebook’s latest rabbit out of the hat is its brilliant Facebook Platform, and Facebook Apps. They’re a bit like widgets of the sort that you can find on MySpace and Bebo — but really smartly done.

MySpace is famously annoying for having profiles with a million songs and videos autoplaying. Facebook has very cleverly prevented this from happening by requiring visitors to click before anything annoying happens (and then it’s your own fault damnit!). Just in the same way as Facebook has stopped users from having colour schemes that are like daggers in your eyes, they have sensibly taken precautions to make widgets not get in your way.

Once the initial excitement about Facebook Apps died down, I became a bit worried that Facebook would become a bit like MySpace, with annoying widgets in your face everywhere. But now I have no such concerns. I know I will still be able to visit a profile without being confronted by ugliness (I don’t mean the profile pics, BTW).

The other clever thing that Facebook have done is opening up widgets to everyone. On Bebo, the choice of widgets is really weak. If you really love dodgy Flash photo slideshows, you will love Bebo widgets. But anything apart from that? No luck. This is no doubt because, rather bureaucratically (although understandably, given security concerns there might be), Bebo only allows widgets with “approved partners”.

Yet, Facebook has developed a secure “platform” that allows me to embed my information from other websites like Twitter, del.icio.us and (belatedly) Last.fm. In the space of a week, I have not got everything I’ve wanted Facebook allow me to put on my profile.

A bit bizarrely, Facebook gave websites of arse drizzle prominence over Last.fm, who were not given advance notice of the Facebook Platform. Meanwhile, iLike was. Unfortunately, iLike is the most popular Facebook app at the moment. Everytime I see that “one of my friends has added iLike”, I think of this.

Inexplicably, Mog was also given advance notice. Mog is like Last.fm, but it does everything in a much less efficient and more invasive way. And it’s brown.

Anyway, despite the fact that I was unable to put Last.fm on my profile straight away, there is no doubt that Facebook have already set the standard when it comes to widgets — mostly because they have managed to make it so that it isn’t annoying. Widgets are hardly revolutionary. But Facebook have implemented them with such class that it feels revolutionary.

I suppose Facebook also deserve kudos for calling them “applications” rather than the literally meaningless “widgets” (or, even worse, “gadgets” on Windows Vista). Mind you, this is because Facebook say that their applications are more fully-featured that standard widgets anyway, because they integrate into the social graph, whatever that is.

I see it, because the Last.fm application lets me compare my music profile to that of others on Facebook who also use the Last.fm app. Apparently RSSbook shows you what RSS feeds your friends are subscribed to, and suggests feeds that might interest you based on that information.

It is not quite perfect. I would like my Twitter status to automatically become my Facebook status. I would prefer my del.icio.us links to be imported into my “posted items”. But I can understand why they have not allowed this.

All-in-all, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook. I’ll have more on this in my next post (because this one is already long enough).

Update: Part two has been posted here.

Top Law Student (down at the moment; mirror here) has a post reminding you that your MySpace page is available to anyone. (I guess even if you set your MySpace to ‘private’ it won’t really work because MySpace is crumbly and insecure.) There is also the discussion on Digg.

I had assumed that most people are aware of this. Employers do look up job applicants on Google. It’s a basic security check; common sense if you’re an employer. And when they search for you, they see all the shit you put on the web under your name. That includes all of the ridiculous embarrassing stuff you put on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, everything.

If this scares you, then follow the advice on Top Law Student. Delete your MySpace page, or change it all so that you’re anonymous. Me? I will just be sensible about what I put on MySpace, this blog, and anywhere else on the internet. Obviously that limits what I can write about. But life isn’t perfect. If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard on the street, don’t put it on the internet. Simple as that.

It is an interesting issue though. I reckon the number of young people who have some kind of web presence — be it a blog like mine or a MySpace or a Bebo or whatever — is probably approaching something like 90–100%. The vast majority of them are written as though only friends can read them.

I guess employers would have to be really naive to expect all of their employees to be squeaky-clean. But it is obviously rather better for them not to be 100% aware of your debaucheries. But if everybody puts embarassing shit on their MySpace that could put potential employers off, employers will probably find themselves fast running out of good candidates. They will probably have to start choosing the least-worst person for the job instead of (in their eyes) a really good person.

Of course, now that I’ve given a big lecture on it, I will probably find myself being pwned by a potential employer for something I’ve written on my blog at some point. I’m half expecting one day to wake up and find an angry crowd of lone protesters, each one angry about something different I wrote in the dim and distant past. One despises me for recommending an Autechre album. Another thinks I’m an idiot for siding with Michelin in the US Grand Prix fiasco. A small cluster wants to burn me at the stake because I think the text function on my iRiver is useless.

But I’m willing to take responsibility for what I’ve written. I hope, when I am ready to enter the Big Bad World, I will be able to work in an environment where my blog won’t be an issue. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but hey, I’m a blogger. That’s just who I am. I don’t see this as a reason to run scared of the internet. I hope my activity is a positive thing.

Obviously it is far too late for me to attempt to hide myself on the internet now. Early on I made a decision not to hide my identity. But at the same time I didn’t force it down people’s throats. For a period I never mentioned my name on this blog. But in the end I decided to actually push my identity a bit more, but to be sensible about what I write.

claimID is one way to do it, but the jury is out on whether or not it’s of any good use. I’ve also devised my own little way (it’s unfinished, by the way) to keep tabs on my internet activity. On the one hand it might seem a bit narcissistic, but hopefully it gives me a bit of control over my identity on the internet.

So what’s the gripe? Log in to the home page and you see a big list of pretty mundane data about what your friends have done. It’s not very interesting. “X is at home”, “Y removed walking from his interests”, things like that. Hardly earth-shattering stuff — and it’s all stuff that your friends would have seen anyway, just in a different place.

The ‘mini-feeds’ on each user’s profile have caused the greatest upset though. My mini-feed is pretty boring: there are only two entries so far (1. I’m at home, 2. I’ve added my religious views (another new feature) to my profile). But that’s mostly because I don’t use Facebook so much.

Look at somebody else’s mini-feed, and you’ll get a longer list, but it’s mostly things like “X wrote on Y‘s wall” over and over again. And, vitally, this is all information that your friends would have seen anyway. So essentially we have all the same stuff, just put in a different place. And have you seen those little crosses next to each entry in your mini-feed? You can delete every single thing if you want anyway.

All this stuff about making Facebook “stalker-esque” is a bit overblown. For starters, only your friends can see all of this information about you. The same people can see the same information as they could before, just in a different place. And if you’re adding potential stalkers as friends on Facebook, then that’s your own sorry fault for treating the friends counter like a gameshow scoreboard.

Also, if you’re complaining about the new layout being too cluttered, did you not notice that you can actually now toggle everything so that it magically disappears? The little arrow next to every heading?

So the fuss is all a bit confusing for me. I guess students always feel as though they have to have something to rebel against. Makes them feel important.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Facebook’s new features. They allow you to keep tabs on your friends without having to traipse through their profile page all the time. And if you don’t want somebody to take an interest, why did you add them as a ‘friend’?

Article via Digg.

Update: Groups for people who are fed up with the complaints: Quit bitching about the Facebook feed! Its easy to fix!; stfu about new facebook features (via).

It’s clear that Browzar is on the back foot now. I particularly like this bit:

Mr Ahmed said at the time of its release: “Although it’s possible to delete history folders and empty cache with existing internet browsers, the majority of internet users worldwide don’t have the time or expertise to do this.

It could hardly be simpler to delete history folders and empty your cache. In Firefox it a simple matter of going to Tools → Clear Private Data. And that’s it! As I recall, it is similarly easy to delete your history and cache even in Internet Explorer.

Yet Ajaz Ahmed thinks that people will find it easier to go out, download and install his scam IE shell? In a world where so many people still think that the only way to browse the web is through Internet Explorer? A friend recently said to me that he didn’t understand why he could need Firefox because “with Internet Explorer you just type in the address and that’s it.”

Every opportunity should be taken to warn people away from Internet Explorer, so I’ll do it right now.

Or at least Browse Happy.

Inspector Sands is actually code for “get ready to run for your fucking life”. Most people report that the code is used in train stations or on trains, although it seems to be used all over the shop. Personally, I’ve never noticed it being said, although some people’s suspicions are aroused by the obviously pre-recorded and conspicuous nature of the announcement.

A message such as “Would Inspector Sands please come to the control room immediately?” is actually a way of telling staff members that there might be (or already is?) a fire. They don’t actually say there is a fire so that members of the public don’t start panicking.

The thing is, Inspector Sands actually seems to be quite a widespread codeword. So there are probably quite a lot of people who know that if they hear Inspector Sands being called for it might be something to worry about.

Inspector Sands has been featured in The Guardian‘s Notes and Queries. Maybe he’s getting too famous, so perhaps if you want to stay a step ahead of the rest of the general public you should just question any odd announcement for somebody with a conspicuous name.

There is an old discussion about Inspector Sands at b3ta. People are sharing all sorts of codewords, some of which give me the willies. Apparently if you’re ever in Ikea or John Lewis and they give a timecheck over the loudspeaker, that means that there is a bomb threat! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to set foot in Ikea again simply out of fear of hearing that message.

Woolworths is very boring; we don’t have codes for anything. Not as far as I know anyway… From b3ta:

I once found a gramaphone record containing “this branch of Woolworth’s is on fire, repeat, this branch etc etc” that was meant to be played automatically down the telephone to the fire brigade in the event of a fire.

Under the new system, a unique photo card will also be needed to enter the attractions. Previous winners can apply for a card on the Blue Peter website.

The idea for the new scheme came from 11-year-old viewer Helen Jennings.

Jennings wrote in to the show with a prototype design for the security card, Blue Peter editor Richard Marson said.

“On Blue Peter many of the best ideas come directly from the audience and this was no exception,” he said.

“As a result, she’s won her silver badge and really helped all the genuine Blue Peter badge winners out there who’ve been so upset at the suspension.”

I hate this. Nobody is fooled. An 11-year-old did not invent the photocard.