Tag Archives: Google

New “Privacy on” alert in WordPress 3.0

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Sometimes it’s the little details that make you smile. When a new WP site is in development, you obviously don’t want it to be visible to search engines. A simple setting in the installation process (and the admin) allows you to choose this, but it can be easy to forget once you’ve set it.

About a week ago a submission to the WordPress trunk enabled a new mini-alert in the admin header, which reads “Privacy on” when the blog is hidden from search engines. Small addition, but very helpful when going live with a new site! I hope this feature remains in the final 3.0 release (due in May according to the current project schedule).

Bad Google!

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Can anyone suggest a good online feed reader and webmail which doesn’t begin with a G?

Google Buzz created quite a stir from the start, with concerns over it’s privacy policy. The first time I logged in to see what all the buzz was about, I thought is was odd enough to see “followers” who I definitely know have never used ANY social media service. Some of them were probably just confused by the “Try Buzz” -notice and have since forgotten about it.

Look! You know all these people!

I only realized how totally screwed up the Buzz launch was after reading this post: F*ck you Google (summary: abusive ex-husband automatically added to follower list along with some not-so-nice crazy people who had emailed the author a lot). Apparently it has also been hard to get rid of Buzz, but the googlers might have corrected that (see below).

There’s been reason before not to trust Google in issues of privacy (*cough*Gmail ads*cough*) but this latest thing really seems to be a case of beating Facebook at the “we don’t care about privacy” game. Google does a lot of cool stuff (GReader, Gmail, Android, Wave etc.) so it’s really disappointing to see them pull something like this.

How to get rid of Buzz

Might have to start looking for a replacement. Meanwhile, apparently to get rid of Buzz you need to delete your Google Profile. To do so, go over to your Google account (https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount), click on “Edit profile” and then right at the bottom of the page click on “Delete profile and disable Google Buzz completely”.

Finally! Search in Google Reader

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At last Google (famous for search) added search capabilities to Google Reader. It’s about time! Now I don’t have to rely on starring items so much…

Google Maps for mobiles – very nice!

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At Google they seem to know how to make good mobile applications. After getting a hint from a friend via email, I installed Google’s latest mobile map software on my Nokia 6233 phone. Initially I ran into some trouble — for some strange reason the UI was all in German! Perhaps they thought that wouldn’t matter, since Finland is so close to Germany. :) Well, unfortunately it seems the only way to change the language is to switch the whole phone’s language from Finnish to English. I hope Google fixes this in the future…

Anyway, once I got the language issue out of the way, the app started by showing a general view of Finland. It’s easy to zoom in by clicking once on the main navi button, or type in a location via the menu on the left. You can have up to 9 favorite locations by adding a ‘star’ on the map.

Google maps on my Nokia 6233

For drivers who don’t need a full gps-based navigation system, Google’s offering seems really useful. It’s easy to get driving instructions simply by entering the starting and ending point. I’m also really impressed with how fast and responsive using the map is, even here in the middle of the Finnish countryside using regular GPRS. Point your mobile phone browser at http://www.google.com/gmm.