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 about putting a price on our heads. The question is how long will it be before you sell out yourself and your loved ones?

[Note: some time after this post was written Google bought Blogspot! Is it irony or just comedy gold?]

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.

Repairs and stares

There's a great deal of nothing going on when you're on the sausage. But in my case there's three counts of something going on, both left right and centre.
Today I took my unemployed self to Boots to order some prescription drugs. That's living.
It was the middle of the afternoon so the place wasn't too hectic (Faversham's hectic once a week; Saturday morning. At all other times it's quiet, peaceful and medieval).
I handed over my papers and waited a while. The chemist, meanwhile, stepped out of the back door to go play cricket for half an hour. I knew he did. We know they do. We knew that before Stupid and Stupidder showed us on their unfunny tv show.
When the pin roller returned he asked if I'd be paying for my prescription. This had slipped my mind - BONUS! That's £21.30 back in my pocket!
I had to mask my glee because another customer had approached. Made my day though, who'd have thunk it?

Rockin' the sausage roll

For the past four and twenty years I've been a loveable employee of the government. Quite a considerable way down the food chain mind, but a local government employee all the same. I never planned to end up on such a heap of corduroy and knitted jumpers, things just panned out that way - coupled with my instinct to be lazy and settle in where I'm comfortable.
Throughout my time collecting a wage slip from the employer of the greatest concentration of insecure over-sensitive and compliant union-worshipping backstabbers I pointed my aspirations at crime and disorder. Not the making of it, personally, but the theoretical reduction of it. This meant I worked closely with community plod, groovy right-on leaders of local groups designed to see the greater good in everyone and, of course, members of the many and varied churches across London. On that last point I say 'varied churches' but, I think we all know, churches is churches; it's just the same old bobbins dressed in suitable and culturally sensitive clothing.
Anyway - Mr Cameroon and his other biscuit-faced chums, as part of their nonsense-parade they call Big Society, have elected to remove the majority of local government crime and disorder assistance from the nation’s rozzas. This is because we're all supposed to muck in and save our own communities from crime. Or, as it used to be called, 'kill anyone what don't come from around here'. This has left a large hole in crime curtailment across Britain; a hole which will undeniably manifest itself as a significant reported rise in crime. The people of Britain will then undoubtedly panic and The Daily Mail will point a finger at cultural cross-over and suddenly everyone’ll be out in the street massacring groovy right-on community workers.

Still, perhaps this is what we all want? If violence is to hop on the exponential increase train, let's jump aboard and let loose some of that inherent Tory-fuelled frustration by kicking the shit out of each other in a Buckfast Abbey monk-manufactured cider-fuzzled rage?

So now I'm unemployed. To celebrate I called up the Jobseeker's Opportunity and Knowledge Emporium line on 0800 055 6688 to register my intentions.
My man Jamie answered the call. He wasted no time in explaining that he had a series of questions that he had to ask me, and from which under no circumstances was he going to deviate, hesitate or repeat anything. Parsons would be proud. I was to pay attention and this part of the call should last about 25 minutes. Christ in 25 minutes I could drive to my nearest TK-Max and be halfway into a new pair of redundancy trousers.
Still this was for free money right? Free money I'd paid my dues over the years to gain such expedited entitlement to. I wanted to jump through every hoop Jamie would hold up in front of me until this sorry little segment of my life was through.

The questions came in like an action movie about an undercover cop who somehow infiltrates an underworld subculture of Los Angeles street racers looking to bust a hijacking ring, and soon begins to question his loyalties when his new street racing friends become the prime suspects. Subtle.
We thrashed through them, Jamie and me. Although I was nervous I could tell Jamie thought I was doing really well; he even shared a laugh or two with me at the inane structure and barefooted wanderings of what he was actually asking me. Bless.
Before long we were done. The first section completed in less than fifteen minutes! It must be a record? I was so pleased and thrilled; especially upon learning that Jamie felt proud of me.
He told me to wait. Just wait for a while as he went to prepare the next section. Just wait, he said, “Wait there and keep the phone to your ear so you can hear when I come back”. Ok. I thought nothing of it - after all why would Jamie want to do anything to hurt me?
Time passed. It passed like a turgid stool with jagged edges. I felt abandoned; my mind wandering back to being kept waiting in the queue in Boots while the ‘doctor’ goes to sort out your prescription - back to when I thought they were outside playing swing ball while I was left to wait. That in turn reminded me I'd had that thought way before Armstrong and fucking Miller slapped it up on their ruthlessly smug and unnecessarily bloody jolly comedy show. Comedy Airmen? I shat them when I was eleven years old.
Time passed and I remained in place, sat like a schoolboy waiting for the parent of a girlfriend to fetch her from her room where she's kissing one of the older boys, and from such a game she won't be disturbed.
Time passed and I was so alone. The phone in my hand became a slender mechanical object; a small semi-automatic hand gun, held to my temple. I moved the end of it so its muzzle rested in my mouth and squeezed the grip hard as my finger stroked the smooth face of the trigger - Jamie spoke, "Sorry to keep you, not too long I hope?”

The rest of the interview proved to be as hassle-free as I'd suspected. If, for one moment, I'd challenged any element of the script and the absurdity of the patter, I'd still be there now.
My application was processed - wooo I'd made it through the first round. Next up: The Eliminator. That final stage is booked and will take the form of a one-to-one face-off with the Jobseeker Panel, or end-of-level-guardian as they're known within the circles I now sink.

Sadly for Jamie the recent wave of cuts in local government will bring him and his colleagues a factor of pure time-warped and institutionalised dumbass never encountered before. A tsunami of self-loathing hard done by beige folk who know nothing of the world outside their once beloved Council. The telephone script is being re-worked as I type this. March sees the reform of benefits and the like. A streamlining process is being cascaded across the country - sounds familiar. They're going to shed the expendable parts to make room for better processes and automation. If your needs don’t fit the template pack your bags. Exile is looming. Re-watch Judge Dredd to see how to get back to the city once you’ve been canned.

Let’s not forget too that even after his four and twenty years helping job seeker types back to work Jamie shall end up phoning in to see if he's eligible to hold a metaphorical gun to his head while the computer at the other end of the line goes outside to arrest some drunk and disorderly Brits for bashing the next nationalist media target.