Google+

My Google+ invite arrived yesterday courtesy of a friend.  First thoughts:  It's good.  It has the separation of people that Facebook is so lacking in and this pleases me.

When I first logged in I was given a grid layout of people (names and avatars) I may or may not know and I could drag and drop them into "Circles".  Unsurprisingly it had picked up my friends and family. It had also picked up people I have interacted with through other mediums such as Twitter.  I spent a couple of minutes going through the list placing people into circles.  Some people were placed into more than one circle as there is some overlap of course.

When making a post, you can either make it public or limit it to one or more circles.  How public is a public post?.  Can they be viewed by anyone viewing your profile or is it limited to only people in your circles?  Will they appear on your Google Profile page?   The answer is that they are very public.  They will appear on your google profile page.  This system is way more open the Facebook is.  However, as you also have the ability to limit your posts to particular circles, thereby making them private, this is not a bad thing.  You don't have to post anything publicly if you don't wish to.

When checking my Google Profile, I noticed that it was showing everyone who was in my circles and also those who have me in their circles.  This is public by default.  You can edit this and change it so that only people in your circles can see this information or you can turn it off entirely.

So far, so good for privacy aspects.   I'm sure that other privacy aspects will arise as I get to know the system better but I'm fairly happy with it at the moment.

The interface is a typical social network layout but with a typically sparse Google look to it. All Google apps are now looking very much like each other.  Even the blogger interface has suddenly changed as of this morning. Google do the AJAX thing very well which makes it very responsive.  It's a lot snappier to use than Facebook is. 

"Sparks" are basically a news feed on subjects you are interested in.  Only you can see these.  It's a nice touch but limited compared to using Google Reader or some other RSS agregator.

I had a bit of a play with the "Hangout" feature.  This is a video hangout - turn your camera and mic on and anyone you have allowed to view your video will be able to chat with you live.  It was a fairly lonely place for me though as I was the only person online out of those in my circles.

In fact, it's a fairly lonely place altogether at the moment but I think this will rapidly change.  I can't see Google doing a slow introduction with Google+.  They need to achieve critical mass with it quite quickly or it will become another failed Google social networking experiment; a place where tumbleweeds roll down empty streets etc.

I like it so far.  I'll be encouraging people to use it.  If Google can get a critical mass into it fast enough, I can see it rivalling Facebook very quickly. 

Diaspora Code Trial

I downloaded the Diaspora code the day it was released and installed it onto an OpenSUSE Linux computer.  The install was relatively straight forward.  The instructions provided are well written and clear.  While they are written for Ubuntu, Fedora and Mac OS, they are easily applied to other distributions - at least those with good package management and repositories with a wide range of applications.

I had to install MongoDB and update a few Ruby bits and pieces.  I also had to install libxslt before RubyGems would compile.  OpenSSL, ImageMajick and Git were already installed.

This is pre-alpha code released for developers.  Some people on various blogs don't seem to realise this and have been complaining about the lack of expected features.  Pre-alpha isn't expected to be complete or almost complete code.  It's been released to get developers interested in the project so that development of those missing features can get underway.

That said, the basic system does work.  I can sign on to it, add friends (being other accounts I have created as I haven't set my system up to allow it to access the Internet), upload photos, leave status updates and so on.

The really good feature is that you can separate your friends into "Aspects".  This allows you to keep friends, family, work colleagues away from each other.  People in one aspect will not see updates posted in another aspect.  This gives you the separation and privacy that social networks like Facebook do not.

The next release will be in October and will include Facebook Integration, Internationalisation, and the export of your data.

So far Diaspora looks quite promising.  I don't see it as being the "Facebook Killer" that some have touted it as but it will provide people like me who have a greater sense of privacy something to use.  In addition, it's existence may push Facebook and others to provide the separation they currently lack.

Diaspora's blog post on the release.

Diaspora Update

You may recall my writing about the decentralised social networking platform, Diaspora a few months ago after I contributed to it financially. The project is now close to a release.  They plan to open source their current code on September 15 (or 16 for those of us on this side the of dateline).  They will then be releasing an alpha version of Diaspora in October.


Will I grab the code and install it?  Probably.  I'm interested in the progress but I'm not overly fussed with alpha releases.  They can be hard work.  However, I feel almost obliged to install it as someone has to help track bugs and provide feedback and I have ranted enough to people about the disintegration of the concept of privacy on the web that to not help out would be a bit hypocritical.

If I do install it, I will post a few updates here.

Decentralize the web with Diaspora

You will probably notice the slightly cut off graphic and text on the right hand side of the blog with the headline Decentralize the web with Diaspora.


Diaspora is an Open Source project which aims to develop a "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed social network".  Given my rantings in various places about the lack of privacy associated with Facebook and the way they hide their disregard for your privacy, I thought it was time I put my money where my mouth is.  I have made a financial contribution to Disapora as I believe it could be the solution to my issues with social networking - namely the lack of control users have over their own data.


From the Kickstart Diaspora page:

What is it?
Enter your Diaspora “seed,” a personal web server that stores all of your information and shares it with your friends. Diaspora knows how to securely share (using GPG) your pictures, videos, and more. When you have a Diaspora seed of your own, you own your social graph, you have access to your information however you want, whenever you want, and you have full control of your online identity. Once we have built a solid foundation, we will make Diaspora easy to extend to facilitate any type of communication, and the possibilities will be endless.

A more complete explanation is available here.

Fuck Facebook

Some time ago I made the decision to delete my facebook account.  The main reason for this is that Facebook does not respect privacy regardless of how much they say they do.  This article articulates my reasons for deleting my account far better than I can:

After some reflection, I've decided to delete my account on Facebook. I'd like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I'd like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I'm not missing anything. In any event, here's my "Top Ten" reasons for why you should join me and many others and delete your account.

10 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account