Former Google product manager on the trashing of Google Reader

A former Product Manager for Google Reader shares my feelings about Google's act of mass data destruction (emphases mine. I resisted the impulse to use blinking bold fonts the color of arterial blood.) ...

Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision?

Google released the previously announced set of changes around G+ integration and UI updates today, and boy is it a disaster. Since the general changes were pre-announced last week, most of us were prepared for the letdown, but actually seeing how it works end to end has made several flaws abundantly clear. Let's start with the obvious...

... When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer "stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading"? Congrats, here's your prize:

Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.

The only thing left with any color of consequence it the obscenely red subscribe button in the top left, which in keeping with the spirit of prioritizing the exactly wrong thing -- you don't even need to use very often.

Ok, before we get started - let me be very clear about one thing. I think integration with G+ should happen. Reader friends should be managed in the same place you manage G+, with the same metaphors (whether you think they're flawed or not). Sharing should utilize the same infrastructure and plumbing that G+ does. I am not objecting to any of these things. Google has clearly made its bets with G+, and Reader should be part of those plans.

The frustrating thing is that these pitfalls could have been avoided through a more thought out integration. As Kevin Fox has already pointed out, Google could have easily made it so that sharing was pushed through G+ (therefore giving providing content on G+, and gaining all the benefits of an integration), but also replaced shared items from People You Follow with a Reader-specific Circle.

It's almost as if Google wants to demonstrate that, yes, they don't really get platforms. Instead of improving the G+ API to support Reader as a fully functional 3rd party client (a la Twitter), they've instead crippled the product under the guise of improvements.

Google has long neglected Reader as a product. (Hey can someone fix Recommended Items? Please?) Reader was fortunate to have a passionate team that was trying to do the right thing for their users by continuing to innovate and build on the experience, but it's not hard to tell from the official blog that core updates died down a long time ago.

Reader never achieved the massively popular status of Gmail or Google News. But it did develop a fanatical following of users, and was one of the few places that Google was able to experiment with and learn about social features.

After I left Google in July, I heard that there was renewed effort around the project and that a new team was bringing some much-needed attention to the product. I expected them to give the product a facelift, and integrate G+ -- both things that needed to happen.

But killing off functionality that could have easily been built on top of G+, and missing the mark by so much on the UI... and then releasing them under the guise of improvements?...

The comment on "Google doesn't get platforms" is a reference to a famous "we don't get platforms" internal Google rant that was accidentally shared worldwide.

It's just astounding. It as though Google is trying to be a bizarro version of Apple. They're now making some of the mistakes Apple makes, but they've vastly uglier and the mistakes are much bigger. It reminds me of Windows 7 ridiculous imitation of OS X Spotlight replacing the imperfect but superior Windows Search 4 interface. Except this is much worse.

I had all the same reactions as Brian Shih, so I appreciate his doing the posting work for me. Google did need to integrate Reader with G+, but they chose an almost perfectly disastrous route. Their culture is broken.

This Google decision does have an upside. I'm learning Twitter, Posterous, Bing, Firefox ...

PS. Did I mention that the Blogger redesign is almost as bad? Label selection is one bad aspect among many.

Update 11/2/11: A former Google senior designer has offered to help salvage GR.

The end of Google Reader shares and the rebirth Gordon's twitter feed

(cross posted to Gordon's Notes and Gordon's Tech)

Google Reader shares are gone.

I'm not going to switch to sharing via G+.

I will, however, be sharing via Twitter: John Gordon (jgordonshare) on Twitter.

That Twitter stream used to consist of feed-generated tweets from GR shares. Now it's the closest thing I have to an archive of those shares.

Now it will be the primary place I share -- with the help of the Twitter share bookmarklet.

Components of a knowledge share solution

Both at work and at home i've been studying our current toolkit for sharing knowledge. At work I'm supporting our software development, at home I'm looking at a ways to share knowledge to support lifelong education of persons with cognitive disabilities, including formal public education and home schooling. Naturally I'm looking at similar technologies in both environments.

I've summarized a few of the components I'm thinking about in a table. I compared best of breed solutions to the best (not free!) suite I know of and to Google's offerings.

Function	Best of breed	Atlassian Confluence	Google
commentary, notices	Wordpress	yes	Blogger
Q&A	StackExchange	no	no
collaborative hypertext document	TWiki?	yes	Sites
PDF, other	FTP/HTTP server	yes	Docs, Share
Calendar/event	Google Calendar	no	Google Calendar
Social, networking	Facebook	no	G+
Subscribe/notify	RSS	RSS	?

Looking at this solution set it's clear that each has its advantages and weaknesses.

Atlassian Confluence is the best integrated knowledge sharing and collaboration solution I know of. It's not at all free, but it's inexpensive for 10 or fewer users and anonymous users can have read only access. I give Atlassian extra marks for actually publishing an easily discoverable price list. Unfortunately I don't think I can get Confluence running at Dreamhost, my net hosting provider.

Google, like Atlassian, is free for a small number of users and provides high performance anonymous access. Sadly, Sites is a great disappointment. On the other hand, I'm not impressed with any of the currently available open source wiki solutions. In many ways FrontPage 98 was better.

Lastly the best of breed solutions have advantages in terms of data freedom and ease of switching providers or changing knowledge base ownership. An integrated approach can also leverage StackExchange -- the net's best technology for question/answer based information sharing. Likewise a Facebook Page can engage customers and provide a secondary notification solution in addition to RSS/Twitter.

Any thoughts? Comments are most welcome.

PS. I've been looking at collaboration technologies for about 20 years -- starting with BBS software and a long string of innovative solutions. The functional list would have had answers 20 years ago. What's different is that the audience today is vastly larger.

Managing Apple Community email: where to unsubscribe

In the old days it was easy to unsubscribe from Apple Community Support emails. Every email had an unsubscribe link.

That's the right way to do it.

Somehow, that got forgotten when Apple made their support community "Social". I'm getting emails from every thread I've commented on, and I couldn't see how to stop them.

This stuff isn't hard, but Apple blows it every time. Something about their culture.

Anyway, this page seems to be the trick. It was a bit hard to find:

• https://discussions.apple.com/people/jgordon?view=watches

It lists all the items I'm (unwittingly) "watching". I clicked each one and removed it. You might be able to find it in in Apple Support Communities> People.

A dead MacBook Air power adapter is magically restored. SMC problem?

The power adapter for my 6 week old 11" MacBook Air failed overnight (45W MagSafe power adapter with "L" style connector $80!). No glowing LED, no charging. Happily a friend's works, so I know the Air is ok.

Still, it's most annoying -- especially since today's lunch trip to a nearby Apple store ran into their Jobs memorial closure.

Naturally I'm inclined to believe this is a national disaster, but this isn't a trending topic anywhere. So it's probably just bad luck.

Researching this did lead me to a related topic of interest. It's safe to use a higher wattage adapter with the Air, specifically the current MacBook and MacBook Pro adapters ...

Intel-Based Apple Portables: Identifying the right power adapter and power cord--US: 

... Power adapters for Intel-based Apple portables are available in 45W, 60W, and 85W varieties. Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple portable, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.

For instance If you have a MacBook (13-inch Late 2009) that normally uses a 60W adapter, you can also use an 85W adapter with that computer. You would not use a 45W adapter with that computer; it would not provide enough power for that MacBook...

I've read elsewhere that using a lower power adapter might allow the machine to function, but not to charge.

The article, incidentally, tells us the removable AC plug on Apple's power supplies is a "Duckhead". Who knew?

Update: On the advice of Dan Swift (see comments), I tried a fix that I thought was 90% crazy. First I confirmed I didn't have a 'stuck pin' problem. I checked all connector pins were moving and out. Then I charged it for 30-45 minutes on a friend's 'good' charger. Then I tried my charger. Now it works again.

This is the weirdest thing I have seen in years. I assume there's no OS in the (bloody $80) charger, so I assume this is a MacBook PMU glitch that will need a firmware update to fix.

Thanks Dan. I've changed my post title to make this easier to find.

I've posted on this to Apple Discussions.

Update: It's back to not working, which feels saner to me. I did reset the SMC, which may help when "The MagSafe power adaptor LED doesn't appear to indicate the correct activity". So it's to the Apple Store sometime soon.

I did find an article on a similar problem from 2008 that tells me that firmware issues can alter charging behavior: "In certain situations when you connect a new 60W or 85W MagSafe power adapter to the MagSafe port of an older MacBook or MacBook Pro computer, the adapter may not charge the computer and the LED indicator light on the MagSafe connector of the adapter may not illuminate."

What happened to Google calculator?

I entered an arithmetic expression into Google -- and I got back a search result!

For years Google interpreted and solved the expression.

It's been a while since I've done this, but not that long.

Is it really gone?

I can't find anyone else who's noticed ...

Update: Ok, it's working again. Phew. That was weird.

 

iPhone 4S battery life is half of what it should be

Emily's new iPhone 4S can't make it through a day of light use.

I suspect a software issue with either IMAP or MobileMe or ActiveSync polling. Otherwise, hardware. I posted a question to Apple Discussion: iPhone 4S battery life is half of what to solicit ideas.

I'll see if a software notice appears in the next few days, and I'll post updates here.

Update 10/16/11: This post has a likely cause. It's apparently a longstanding iOS bug. Restored accounts may have problems with IMAP/POP accounts resulting in high server polling rates. The fix is to delete and restore the account. I did that on Emily's account, and on my first try with the restored account Mail.app crashed. On the 2nd try I had to reenter her password but it's working now. She is getting new email, but I didn't notice a problem before.