Category Archives: Google

So is the H.264 problem going to be solved?

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Interesting report in The Register about Google’s acquisition of On2, the company that developed the VP3 codec which is the basis for Ogg Theora.

The question is still whether Google will turn around and open source On2’s video codecs. In announcing the original pact, Mountain View made a point of saying that it believes “high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform” — and that On2 is a means of reaching that end.

The major web browser makers – including Google, Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft – have failed to agree on a single common codec for the new HTML5 video tag. The HTML5 spec allows for any codec, and while some have opted for the open and license-free Ogg Theora, others are sticking to the license-encumbered H.264 for reasons of performance, hardware support, and alleged patent anxiety.

If you’re new to this, Charles Arthur wrote a helpful piece about it, following on a perceptive piece by Jack Schofield.

Buzz: lest we forget

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From Dave Winer.

Yet Google, so far, has only said they’re sorry for the “concern” they’ve caused. That shows that they’re not owning up to the breach they caused. They can’t possibly be so stupid as to not understand what they revealed about users of Gmail. It’s just the kind of weaselly response to a building crisis that PR pros tell you not to do, that covering up will only make it worse when people realize what’s really been going on. But that assumes a competent and vigilant press. That would be too much to assume in the case of Google and its coverage.

The Don’t Be Evil smokescreen was pure brilliance. As Michael Gartenberg said on Twitter, if Microsoft had done what Google did, there would already be lawsuits. It would be a scandal of huge proportion.

The NY Times won’t call it a breach of trust by Google. Instead they attribute the claim to “privacy experts.” I raised this point, and predictably people say that the Times shouldn’t make factual statements about companies who screw up anywhere but in editorials. That’s ridiculous. A fact is a fact, and belongs in reporting. It’s a fact that Google revealed sensitive information about millions of users, and now they’re scurrying to try to cover it up. And the press is helping them buy time. Why? I have no clue, but I don’t like it.

Spot on. Especially the bit about how Don’t Be Evil is a smokescreen. Corporations are not — and cannot be — moral beings. They do what they have to do, which is make money for their shareholders. Period. The best one can hope for is that they obey the law. Everything else — including “Corporate Social Responsibility” is basically hooey.

Why Google needs to fix the Android Apps market

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Yep. My experience of it is that it’s unsatisfactory, so I agree with much of this complaint.

The Android Market (droid’s equivalent to the iPhone App Store) is fundamentally broken. It’s a poor experience from start to finish, and exemplifies the grace with which Apple builds hardware and software products.

The post focusses on three main areas that need improvement.

1. Finding Apps

Like most sites/services, finding apps works via Search and Browse. You can Search for something by word/term, and see apps that match – it works “ok” but not super impressive. Browse, on the other hand, is weak. The world is divided into Applications and Games. Games has the following categories: “All”, “Arcade & Action”, “Brain & Puzzle”, “Cards & Casino”, and “Casual” – no sports, racing, music, RPG, strategy, or pretty much anything after the letter C. Once browsing, you must sort, either by Most Popular or Newest. This means that once popular, something will stay popular. There’s no way to sort, or filter, or even view simple things like “most popular this week”, or “highest rated” or anything else. This dramatically impacts a user’s ability to find new good apps, since there’s just no view for that. And this is from Google, the uber-kings of data.

Once you find an app that seems interesting, the next step is trying to decide if you want it / it will work. Every app has a name, publisher, # of ratings, # of downloads, description, and comments. NO SCREENSHOTS or anything, but a description. The comments are sometimes useful, but typically not, as you’ll often see “crashed on my droid” or “new version seems unstable” or some other complaint. The problem with these kinds of complaints is because of all the different Droid configurations, there’s no way to tell if the comments/ratings apply to your own device.

2. Installing & Updating Apps

The installation process itself is fairly straightforward, once you find an app, you click the big Install button, then you are shown a cryptic screen with a bunch of warnings that you rapidly learn to ignore, then click OK. My big complaint on this process is the aforementioned “car alarm” warnings. I make the car alarm analogy because, much like the loud annoying car alarms we hear on random streets at random times, we pay them absolutely no attention anymore. Which is inherently the opposite objective of a warning! But with phrases like “Your personal information – read contact data” and “Phone calls – modify phone state”, there’s just no sense behind it. It might as well show “PC Load Letter” and have the same amount of effectiveness.

My other gripe is on updating apps. Since we’re still in the early stage of Droid application development, a lot of programmers are pushing frequent updates to their apps. This is great from a “shiny new toy” perspective, but getting annoying from a “stop showing me lots of alerts” perspective. Also, there’s no way to update multiple apps simultaneously, nor auto-update an app. And, since most developers at present are not displaying changelogs it’s hard to figure out if the update is worthwhile or not. Further, it’s very unclear as to whether or not the comments/rating on an app are relative to the most current version or not. Lastly, and most dominant in the category of “how I know this is a Droid and not an iPhone experience,” every time I update an app, I see the warnings about that app. Every. Time.

3. Buying, Rating, and Uninstalling Apps

Rating applications is easy, but … needs more criteria. My rating should get tied to the specific version of the app, and the platform I’m using as well. Overall the rating/comment system is fairly thin, and could use improvement.

Uninstalling applications from an Android device is one of the more awkward experiences of the system. There’s no “uninstaller”, instead you navigate back into the Market, find the app in My Downloads, then uninstall from there. This is mostly awkward because everything else in Droid is either a click-and-drag or a long-click – so the navigation/usage paradigm you learn by using the system all of a sudden doesn’t come into play. Now in reality I’m being a little dramatic, as once you’ve learned it, it’s easy, but it’s just another example of the kluge-like nature of the marketplace. Then again, if it’s so easy why does it take 9 steps on an eHow page (they don’t show the same path I use, but that’s also kind of the point)?

Some of the most irritating things are probably a consequence of having the OS run on a number of different devices. For example, I can’t get a barcode reader to work on my Pulse phone — each one failes to engage the camera. I suspect that they work fine on, say the HTC handset, or the Motorola Droid. Because Apple has an iron grip on their hardware, iPhone Apps don’t have this problem.

On the other hand, Jon Crowcroft — who is not an easy man to please — seems to like his HTC handset.

Google turns to the spooks

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I know that cloud computing is wonderful, etc. but have you noticed this development?

Just the thought is enough to send an involuntary little shiver up your spine: Google — keeper of a vast repository of data on our activities, interests and connections — working hand-in-hand with the National Security Agency — the top-secret electronic surveillance specialists who have been known to go rogue from time to time. But according to sources who spoke to the Washington Post, there are delicate talks now going on to form such a partnership with the goal of fortifying Google’s defenses against the kind of espionage-oriented hacking attacks launched from China against it and dozens of other U.S. companies in December.

Google reportedly approached the NSA shortly after the attacks, but in an indication of the sensitivity of such arrangement, the talks have been going on for weeks. Reports the Post: “Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.” What the agency would be do, as it has with other corporations, is help Google evaluate hardware and software vulnerabilities and gauge the sophistication of its attackers.

At face value, it all sounds reasonable, especially given the suspicions of state support for the Chinese hacking, but of the many things the NSA can tap, a deep reservoir of public trust is not one.

Amen.

The FT’s Gideon rachman spent the morning at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’s briefing on their annual survey of the ‘Military Balance’. He reports that

The briefing offered by the IISS experts ranged fascinatingly over a variety of topics from the Iranian nuclear programme, to Russia’s new military doctrine and the links (or lack of them) between al-Qaeda and Iran.

But the thing I found most interesting was the confirmation that cyber-security is the hot issue of the day. John Chipman, the head of the IISS, says the institute is about to launch a special study of cyber-security which raises all sorts of fascinating issues about hard power, about the responsibilities of states and about international law. What if a country’s infrastructure could be destroyed as effectively by a cyber-attack, as by an invasion of tanks? How do you defend against that? How do you identify the culprits? And what does international law have to say about the issue – might we have to revise our definitions of what constitutes an act of war? Chipman argues, plausibly, that we are now at an equivalent period to the early 1950s. Just as strategists had to devise whole new doctrines to cope with the nuclear age, so they willl have to come up with new ideas to cope with the information age.

And over at the Guardian Charles Arthur has an exhaustive (or should that be exhausting?) analysis of whether the UEA Climate Research Unit’s emails were hacked. His conclusion:

After the July incident, perhaps CRU failed to batten down the hatches, either through technical failings or because someone inside was subverting the efforts. So what happened in November?

Rotter blogged his theory last year. “In the past I have worked at organisations where the computer network grew organically in a disorganised fashion. Security policies often fail as users take advantage of shortcuts … one of these is to share files using an ftp server … This can lead to unintentional sharing with the rest of the internet.”

He added that files were perhaps put “in an ftp directory which was on the same central processing unit as the external webserver, or even worse, was on a shared driver somewhere to which the webserver had permissions to access. In other words, if you knew where to look, it was publicly available”.

If this hypothesis turns out to be true, UEA may end up looking foolish. For there will be no one to arrest.

In other words, the cock-up theory of history rules ok.

What Google thinks

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A chance visit to Web Seer led me to look again at the suggestions that Google comes up with as you type. Here, for example, is what I got when I typed “How can I get?”

Wonder what — if anything — this tells one about the Zeitgeist? Knowing Google, these suggestions are all algorithm-driven, so presumeably they reflect the kinds of searches that users conduct. Should one might infer that how to find a boyfriend, and how to get one’s ex-spouse/partner back are among the biggest preoccupations of Google users?