Google+ comes to town

I started with my first Gmail address back in late 2004. It was a very exciting time - I had a job I loved, great friendships were being made, I was drunk almost every night and the sun never stopped shining. Since then many things have come and gone; many vibrant friendships have faded, my body doesn't suffer good times as well as it once did and I'm currently without a job. Don't worry though, the point of this intro is simply to point out that as time passes us all by, some things keep on coming around. I am of course refering to Google+, or ExtraGoogle, or GoogleAndThenSome. Call it what you will (and you will call it Google+) the company which brought to the masses a strangely liberating sense of freedom in a Microsoft and Yahoo! dominated online world is back with the next step. Are you ready yet? It appears to be quite a commitment.

Google's clean interface was its most attractive feature. Users were becoming irritated by the clutter on MSN and Yahoo! search engines. Oddly, Netscape users were left to die alone and sadly not enough other users had their own butlers at home to really justify Ask Jeeves.com becoming a reality.
The company's clever use of Google Doodles to remind everyone of certain days of celebration or tributes to significant moments in time or people gave the brand another edge over its competitors; it was almost as if Google really cared about us.
When the time came to push Google email out, the invitation-only system gave flight to a flurry of excitement amongst users and those of us who had already tired of a Yahoo address or simply wanted the chance to get the username we really wanted via an alternative provider (and one which sounded cool). Who has an invite? Where can you get one? You know someone? Can you send me one?

Google was really running now. Not a sprinter but a worthy athelete charged full of stamina and ready to reckon with the world as it pounded the path towards the holy grail of our time; our personalities.

You know how this commentary continues so I shan't labour the point. Instead here's a brief look into how Google+ is presenting itself to users.


Summary of key features

Circles: at first glance this appears to be a method of sorting your contacts into pre-defined groups, in a way I used to on my old Nokia 6210i about a 130 years ago. The main difference being it was controlled by me, seen by me alone and my grouping choices never influenced any of my friends lives via spam and 'taylored advertising'. I feel both those elements will result from this idea.

Hangouts: the most curious of all the new features. It appears to provide online users with an opportunity to contact anyone within their 'circles' via any online medium shared between each user. As if we don't all have enough ways to get under each others skin already.

Instant upload: this feature will delight many, particularly those who voted Boris Johnson into office because he's funny on the telly.
I see this as the biggest step towards 'personality aquisition' since Facebook asked us for our holiday photos, children's birthday pictures and videos of some of the best times of our lives.

Sparks: this is the culmination of years of fine tuning AdSense and other such devices. A similar technology on Facebook has now become a point of ridicule - users are deliberately adding keywords to their status updates to see if the advertising software will bounce back a suitably mismatched and insensitive piece of product information, which in turn becomes an ironic follow-up status.

Huddle: Finally there's the 'Huddle' service which appears to be offering group messaging, such as that used in the BBM service by RIM on Blackberry handsets. WhatsApp never had it so good! Interestingly WhatsApp was designed by a couple of chaps from Yahoo! - looks like the old dogs have jumped one step ahead once more with this one. However now Google has become a real brand in its own right I'm curious to see how these two elements will compete. This is where Google's Android platform brings a Gustav to a gun fight.

So there we have it, a peep into the forthcoming world of Google+

Make of it what you will. I think it's a culmination of a great deal of ideas that've been around for some time now packaged together in what seems to be quite a brutal and forceful campaign. I see why the 'invitation only' route was taken for this one. Eddie Izzard once joked on stage that advertising is far more intelligent now, tricking us into asking questions of the advertisement and the product and being reassured that whatever happens the product will make us sexy! This new offering appears to be wielding a large club and appears to have a doped up chain gang wearily following in its wake.

Personally I'm reluctant to give everything away to Google - I particularly don't want to automatically upload every photo and video I create on my phone; there are some things I want to keep to myself. I don't want Google to know how I group my family and friends into categories, if I do at all. As a Google Latitude user I'm not adverse to sharing personal data but I don't like the way companies are expecting us to provide so much personal information as a matter of course.

Our personalities have been earmarked as trading commodities for some time and this latest offering from Google shows how serious they are in putting a price on everyone. The question is how long will it be before you sell out yourself and your loved ones?

Egypt's Lost Cities: BBC1 Bank Holiday Monday evening telly

The BBC spent more than a week airing a trailer for what appeared to be a new programme exploring brand new cutting edge technology linked to archaeology. What they didn't say was that it was the same technology the west used to identify Osama Bin Laden's weapons of mass destruction, which failed, which had been adapted to identify areas of historical significance across Egypt's vast and desert-ridden landscape. By pointing satellites down into the open sandscapes, and using infrared filtering, Egyptologist Sarah Parcak claimed she was able to point out undiscovered buildings, roads and harbours underneath the surface of the sand. This was the most exciting bit of telly I'd heard about in months and I waited eagerly for its transmission, saved up for a Bank Holiday evening on BBC1 primetime.
Brian Viner, from The Independant, writes of the BBC's recent Egypt's Lost Cities programme that thanks to Tony Robinson's absence the viewing public was saved from his "excitable high-pitched shouting". Instead of Robinson's apparent vase-smashing powers of what must only be telekinesis, Viner claims viewers were instead treated to the supposedly enhanced sexed-up presenting prowess of Dallas Campbell and Liz Bonnin.
Now I'm as much for change as the next black President of the USA, but in this case I can't help but feel confused and distanced from the Big British Castle. Where Robinson would have taken time to direct his excitement straight into the camera lens loaded with factual reference, objective speculation and informed opinion, his new slinky replacements proved themselves bone idol to the point of simply cooing at the site of four thousand year old graffiti. Without too much trouble you could easily work out the BBC has seen how popular Brian Cox is, and thought it should use Cox's cutesie bedside manner in this show too. What they clearly overlooked was that although Cox comes across as a softly spoken mild-mannered boffin who charms the pants off all the world's MILF, he's also one of the brightest of sparks and knows his ox-bow lakes from his longshore drift. Campbell and Bonnin burst out of the traps without the faintest idea of why they were in Egypt - their voice over narration betrayed the simple fact that they added all the substance and fact when they were back in the studio, surrounded by Wikipedia and a team of researchers.
It wasn't just the presenters that failed to hit the mark either. The BBC has decided to go all Radio 1 on its viewers and force us all to put up with an overbearing and over-dramatic musical score in all its latest productions. Not only does this prompt me to anticipate the arrival on screen of Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington, but it reminds me that no I'm not watching something with a nourishing intellectual content, I'm watching something for children suffering from ADD. I would dread having to be a fly on the wall in the production meeting; having to listen to some idiot pursuade a room full of executives and creatives that the programme's too boring without a Hans Zimmer-esque score filling every single moment of what was once quiet. It was in those moments of quiet that a viewer could once make his or her own mind up about a show without being spoon-fed the appropriate emotion the director was desperate to put across. Why aren't we allowed to think for ourselves anymore??!
The scientific content put across by Parcak was touched upon lightly, but in no real depth. No doubt so as not to offend the supposedly low-brow BBC1 audience of today. But why oh why not make a decent show and get some real substance going with the presenters and voice-overs? Take a chance and put it out on BBC4 - leave the prime channel to Graham Norton and give new scientific ventures a chance to find their audience elsewhere.
Akin to the British and American reporting of the effects of Japan's recent tsunami (news crews were more concerned with finding a Japanese resident who was actually distressed than they were in reporting how calm and mayhem-free the people were), more effort appeared to be put into showing Sarah's dismay at not discovering a hidden pyramid than all the work that went into making the discovery in the first place.
Sadly it seems likely that by snipping the purse strings of the best television production establishment in the world, we've unwittingly paved the way to joining our American cousins at the firey gates of entertainment hell.

No doubt soon enough we'll all be sat in front of the telly of a Bank Holiday evening to hear Les Dennis say, "And so for final jeopardy can you answer this question? This is the state of British cultural entertainment since its own public complained the flagship provider was over-financed".
On-the-ball-contestant: "What is dumbed down to the point of dribbling?"

Slowly but surely

Yes the current state of my job search is 'in tatters'. It's official. I'm rapidly running out of time to find a regular and reliable income - it looks like I may have to actually start working really hard for myself.
Self promotion is something I've never really struggled with in my adult life; I can hold my own in any social situation and I'm happiest when I'm talking face-to-face with other people no matter the situation. But lately I've been finding it really difficult to promote myself and my business.
A friend said of me recently that I'm over-analyzing everything. I suppose this is right. It's a pain in the ass because there's no need for it, but it does explain why I'm not out there everyday flogging my wares until the police are called to lock me up for breaching the peace.
It's time to stop and press on with what's important. If I don't start making money soon I'll not only be homeless but most likely wifeless too. Now there's a starter for ten.