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Why Google’s Privacy Policy Change Isn’t As Bad As It is Made Out To Be

Technology, Web 29 Jan 2012
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Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past week you will undoubtedly have noticed the sensationalist reporting around Google’s announcement to change their privacy policy. Sadly, much of this reporting has failed to understand the core essence of what Google is doing in this specific change. Instead, many news sources are citing this as the day Google officially becomes “evil” and starts sharing information across its products.

How is the current policy today?

Google currently has a privacy policy that is extremely complicated. They have a general policy, followed by specific policies for each of their products. Here is a list of products that have their own policy:

+1 Button, Advertising, Advisor, Apps, Blogger, Books, Buzz, Chrome, Chrome Frame, Gears, Google+, Google Music, Google Notebook, Google TV, Google Web Toolkit, Groups, Health
Knol, Location Service in Firefox, Mobile, Moderator, Orkut, Picasa, Postini, Safe Browsing, Sites, Store, Toolbar, Trader, Translator Toolkit, Voice, Wallet, Web Accelerator, Web History, YouTube

Does that seem complicated to you? It does to me. What’s even worse is that the company doesn’t have one specific policy in place for how to handle users informations. If they wanted to share data across their products in the future regardless of the way to do so, this would make it much more difficult.

Simplifying and Opening Doors

Looking at their new privacy policy on the other hand (which goes into effect on March 1st, 2012) this is now going to apply to all services. As you can see by looking at it, it is not a very complicated or long read. If you are interested, nothing is stopping you from reading the policy now.

What this new policy does is open the doors for Google to expand and integrate their products, something that you would expect companies to do. In the case of Google, we all stand to benefit from tighter integration between many of the products that they offer. It remains to see however how Google chooses to do this, whether through opt-in or forcing us to.

Unluckily for Google, they are not very good at communicating change to the mainstream world. What many are beginning to hear about now is the new “Search Plus Your World” service that is integrating Google+ with the Google search results. This is an entirely different business from the new privacy policy and a change that I personally am a bit skeptical about. It is however a topic for another discussion.

Further Reading/Listening

If you would like to get more into what both Search Plus Your World is and what the new privacy policy changes mean, I would suggest that you tune in to the latest episodes of This Week in Google where they talk about these issues in a very good way. No sensational journalism here.

Nikon Releases its Nikon 1 System—It looks cool!

Photography, Technology 21 Sep 2011
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Nikon V1

Image courtesy of dpreview.com

Cool news from Nikon this morning. They are announcing a brand new (mirrorless) camera lineup, going after Olympus Pen series and the Sony NEX series: The Nikon 1 system.

I have said to customers since the success of the Pen was obvious that it would just be a matter of time before Nikon and Canon followed on, given their status in the camera market. Now we have Nikon and will just have to wait and see what Canon does.

The Nikon V1, the first announced camera has a 1″ type sensor (which works out at 13.2mm x 8.8mm), giving you a 2.7x crop. A kit lens 10-30mm will be a 27-81mm equivalent in 35mm system, to which an adapter will be available (Nikon 1 to Nikon F). While the new mount and crop is necessary, I know that this will just help confuse the market even more, which is sad.

I am looking forward to trying the Nikon V1 out in late October when it shows up. To get the full scope of the new release, read this article at dpreview.

Wacom Is Teasing About New Product

Technology 23 Aug 2011
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Wacom: Something New Is Coming...Wacom Europe is in teasing mode right now about a new and upcoming product. They have put up a website with a question mark and a clue about the new product and it looks like they are going to have a new clue every day for seven days.

Today’s clue is that it is not a tablet, begging the question, what is it that Wacom is going to announce?

It sure sounds exciting and it is going to be fun seeing what they are announcing next. Right now you can sign up to win their mystery product, right on the site. Good luck to you if you are entering the draw!

Thoughts On Mac OS X Lion

Technology 26 Jul 2011
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Mac OS X Lion

On Wednesday, Apple released its new version of OS X, namely Lion. By now, there are plenty of websites to read what is new in Lion so I won’t be covering that here. Instead, there are a few things that I find particularly interesting about Lion.

iOS-ification

Many refer to Lion as the iOS-ification of the Mac. While this certainly is true for quite a few parts of Lion, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Setting aside the computer geek side of me, I think Lion is certainly more polished in the areas of the consumer market, with some of the features that are truly popular on the iOS devices.

Going back to being a computer geek, these changes are not necessarily bad either, they are just a bit different. However, development in operating systems have come to the point where it is a requirement to do things differently. the iOS devices have certainly managed to show quite a lot of new ideas that could successfully be implemented into a desktop OS.

Interface Tweaks All Over

Interestingly enough, I find that most of the new features in Lion deals just with the interface. Sure, there is built in versioning control and other, more developer and power user friendly features, but what Apple is touting happens to be the interface for Lion.

While the new Launchpad is nice, it isn’t the most wonderful feature (dropping the Applications folder in the dock works much faster). Mission Control is nice, but not that nice.

It is interesting to note that what Apple is releasing, based on the marketing, is the iOS-ification of the desktop, laying the foundation for years to come. However, looking at the upgrade from a neutral perspective of the computer geek, you are left wondering why the upgrade is truly necessary (apart from the bug fixes).

Should you upgrade?

Heck yes! There is no reason not to upgrade, apart from applications not being fully supported at the moment. There is no reason to be afraid of the interface tweaks that are so different to what we are used to. In my eyes, it is better to adapt early than being forced into it late. Given that the upgrade is also cheap, it should be a no-brainer to get a piece of new technology now.

Camera Gear: Just Because You Can, Do You Have To?

Photography, Technology 28 Jun 2011
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A few days ago my buddy Glyn Dewis tweeted a link to a story about the “first wedding ever to be shot entirely with the iPhone 4″. In the article, the photographers in question are quoted as following:

“We proved that the iPhone technology is advanced enough to handle an event like a wedding, and simple enough that it doesn’t take a lot of experience or extra equipment to shoot high-quality video and pictures,” said Adams. “The user still has to have some creativity and a good eye, but this gives them a great tool.”

At the end of the article, they pose the question: “Would you rather have a great photographer shoot your wedding with an iPhone 4, or a mediocre photographer shoot using professional gear?”

This has two questions popping up in my mind. Firstly, do you really have to do everything because you can and secondly, what is this even good for?

I’ll leave the first question more or less as a rhetorical question and tackle the latter one. I find it quite fascinating that the gear debate has come down to this. While this “experiment” might prove that the iPhone actually has a camera, does it say much more? Even if you could shoot a wedding with an iPhone 4 does not mean that it is even remotely a good tool for the job. All it is, is a tool for the job.

The concluding question in the article is questionable. It is not relevant to ask whether you would rather have a professional use an iPhone 4 or a “mediocre” photographer with professional gear. The statement implies that the only important role in photography is the compositions and not the actual image quality. Weddings in particular are difficult situations that require much of the camera gear.

In the end, I think the gear discussion has wound up properly off-track in this case. Just because you can shoot a wedding with an iPhone 4 does not mean it is even relevant to begin making the points that it is a good tool for the job. Something worth thinking about.

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