https://
G+ Museum Pieces...
Before we bury G+ it might be worthwhile to collect some memorabilia...
Marc Weber from the Computer History Museum asked if we wanted to contribute Google+ artifacts to CHM. They don't care about swag, but I could think of a few things that they might be interested in:
- The Obama + Dalai Lama framed print.
- The Buffalo? (Too big?)
- The Emerald Sea painting (did anyone save it?)
Open to suggestions....
[Too bad the Apiary whiteboard is long gone....]
Circles Circles Circles
So I thought I'd write an apps-script macro to help find Twitter profiles of my G+ circled people. [I'm assuming these contacts will go away on April 2nd, right Greg Wolfe ?]
Code works, but App Script barfs on the Twitter javascript used to render the follow buttons. So I just grabbed the html output and stuck it on a server and clicked the follow bu
tton...
If someone wants to poke at it and/or publish it (I have no time for either) have at it...
You can access it here:
https://
And the xss-riddled code looks like this:
function doGet() {
var html = '<!DOCTYPE html>';
do {
var pageToken;
var connections = People.People.Connections.list('people/me', {
pageSize: 100,
personFields: 'names,urls',
pageToken: pageToken
});
connections.connections.forEach(function(person) {
// Skip people without URLs in their profile.
if (!person.urls) {
return;
}
person.urls.forEach(function(url) {
if (url.value && url.value.match(/twitter.com/)) {
var name = url.value;
if (person.names && person.names.length > 0) {
name = person.names[0].displayName;
}
html += '\n<br><a class="twitter-follow-button" href="' + url.value + '">';
html += 'Follow ' + name + '</a>\n';
}
});
});
pageToken = connections.nextPageToken;
} while (pageToken);
html += '\n<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'
var output = HtmlService.createHtmlOutput(html);
output.setTitle('Google+ Follower Finder');
return output;
}
Orkut Community Archive
Whatever happened to the Orkut Community Archive?
+116817942633187704506 ?
http://
Caregiving support
Just a reminder that if you're faced with the task of caring for a loved one at Google I am available to talk.
Also I signed up to donate my excess vacation but I've yet to participate.
Pre-mortem for Postmortems
Looking for a home for the public G+ Postmortems community. Is there a good place to host this? It's not a huge group, only 250 posts, but I would like to see it land in an appropriate place for the participants.
Is there a community of practice around Postmortems that I could reach out to?
Be Hopeful, Be Human
"The first step toward reversing our predicament is to recognize that being human is a team sport. We cannot be fully human alone. Anything that brings us together fosters our humanity. Likewise, anything that separates us makes us less human, and less able to exercise our individual or collective will."
In 100 psalms-like entries Rushkoff's manifesto presents a way forward for the situation we find ourselves in.
The two takeaways everyone should understand are
- The inversion of "Figure and Ground"
- Mechanomorphism - treating humans like machines.
It's a breezy, short read and has my highest recommendation. It also gives me hope that we can rediscover
Available at:
https://
http:///
https://
Grow with Arcs
2 openings on the Arcs team - one Android-ish, one Cloud-ish. Come work with me and the rest of the Arcs team in SFO...
https://
https://
The http://
We develop software across server (TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, Docker, GCP, C++), Android (Java, WebView, TypeScript/JavaScript), and desktop/mobile web (TypeScript/JavaScript, CSS). Much of our work is done in the open on GitHub at https://
Play Music History
Looks like you can get Play Music activity with Location History for free :-/
Visit https://
- Select My Activity
- Click on Edit products
- Toggle All
- Select Google Play Music
Downloaded Json has searches, opens and listens going back to ~ June 2017.
Here's an example:
{
"header": "Google Play Music",
"title": "Listened to Wait so Long",
"description": "Trampled By Turtles",
"time": "2017-07-13T21:28:54.126Z",
"products": ["Google Play Music"],
"locations": [{
"name": "From your current location",
"url": "https://google.com/maps?q%5Cu003d37.804363,-122.271111"
}]
},
Stewards
Some days I dream that we renamed Google Assistant to Google Steward,... as in:
3. a person employed to manage another's property, especially a large house or estate.
synonyms:
(estate) manager, agent, overseer, custodian, caretaker;
historical reeve
"the steward of the estate"
a person whose responsibility it is to take care of something.
"farmers pride themselves on being stewards of the countryside"
Festive 50
Instead of reflecting on the past year think about what's happened for the last 50 years. I finally got around to listening to a 4 part series about computing in 1968. Highly recommended, very very well done and will blow your mind.
Makes you realize that most of what we've been doing has been riffing on groundbreaking things from that era.
Art? Computer Animation? It all started then with some #cybernetics .. (Ep 1)
https://
Google Glass? Augmented Reality? Ivan Sutherland's "Ultimate Display" conceived of it. (Ep 2)
https://
Hangouts? Shared Docs? Remote Collaboration? Doug Engelbert's The Mother of all Demos was already there. (Ep 3)
https://
And the impact felt, with +110664632946820915121 and others:
https://
Sadly I missed out on the retrospective at the Computer History Museum (was fighting urgent legal/policy fires then)
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
To Page or Not to Page?
Trying to figure out if some Google Feed issues rise to a pageable threshold. go/whodoinotify has escalation paths, but go/news-policy is locked down.
This is regarding:
https://
and some Moma searching reveals an internal escalation path here:
https://
and another escalation doc "https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GxGqThElJyrQ0odnSYpGLx1RhRN5w4xNuzITTnOOhvE/edit?ts=5ae0ab73" I also found an A/C Privileged doc that I won't link here.
Also found a related https://
Google Store Issues/Escalation Help?
See b/121203202 about a horrific experience ordering from Home Hubs from the Google Store. Appears to be stuck over one month in Ingram-Micro Limbo-land.
The sad part is that there's hundreds of these devices in Target Stores nearby. We also happen to run a kick-ass shopping system: "Google Express".
If I felt empowered as an employee I'd buy three hubs from Target, expense them to the Google Store cost center and fix this. I hope someone on the Store team *does* feel empowered to do so; since I know that the playbook reading CSRs won't be able to...
An update on go/culture
Looks like the old go/culture, which was frozen in amber in is here.
https://
Of course that site has links to some old Buzz content that's gone forever:
Targeting, segmentation, and conversion oh my!
A good way to keep up with changes in the Ads/Sales part of the org is via go/saleshub -- click the gear icon and enable 'Receive SalesBulletin'
This week contained a comprehensive overview of all the upcoming features.
https://
s/decentralized/accountable/
This is a key insight from Nathan Schneider.
We should also ask ourselves "How do we make Google's hardware, software and services more Accountable." (and also find a metric that describes this...)
We should care less about whether something is centralized or decentralized than whether it is accountable. An accountable system is responsive to both the common good for participants and the needs of minorities; it sets consistent rules and can change them when they don’t meet users’ needs.
https://
A radical proposal for Consumer G+ preservation.
I've been involved with a number of turndowns, Buzz (1st time, and then the double-tap project). Orkut, Hangouts on Air, Google+ Stories, +1s on the web and more. As stewards of user data I would like to propose that we do something different this time.
While we can't keep the service active we can at least do something useful with the output and give back agency to the users that created the data. So here's my proposal.
1) Create the Plus Cooperative(*), owned by the users of Google+. Each post you made prior to a cutoff date gets you one share in the new entity. Decisions are one-user, one-vote.
2) Transfer the plus.google.com domain over to this new entity or redirect to a new plus.coop domain. Generate a static dump of the public** contents and transfer that to new infrastructure run by the Plus Cooperative. In addition Google provides a full dump to the Internet Archive.
3) Google funds the organization for at minimum 10 years off a one time grant.
4) Google publishes a set of identifiers/claims that would allow a user to gain access to the public data in question. The user could choose to remove data from the plus.coop domain or add their own redirect (a super idea suggested by +104122652599862501408)
5) The Plus Coop would be governed by it's user-owners and could choose how to invest in their infrastructure/product. They could create migration tools, publishing tools -- they could even revive the service starting with the seed data.
To me this is full-on "Respect the Opportunity". There are enough passionate users out there to keep the spark of G+ going; let's not get in their way.
And let's not 404 8 years of cultural history.
* There was an attempt to transform twitter into a Co-op, so this idea is not really my own.
** We could conceivably export private data if it was suitably encrypted and a user could claim it at a later point. But that's very much a stretch goal.
*** I also think that all products should buy Bonds that would fund a similar data preservation effort upon failure/cancellation.
cc: +110664632946820915121 / +115753604102260948135 / +101587921131889992978 / +110940801340246898787 / +115283013747081617765
I Still Believe (in Google+/Connect)
There's a lot that I'd like to share about recent Google+ developments, but.. cannot.. due to... reasons..
What I can do is reaffirm my faith in the team that is now running Google+. They are are smart, determined and working with a limited set of resources towards a crazy ambitious goal to improve workplace communications.
Now if I was someone like Vic I'd trot out some parable about the arch-angel Gabriel or Buffalo facing the wind... But that's not me. So I'm going to give you a few lines of the ever inspirational I Still Believe byThe Call.
If you see or work with the G+ team tell them you still believe. In their Mission; in their Work; and in the Impact they can make on the world.
But I still believe
I still believe
Through the shame
And through the grief
Through the heartache
Through the tears
Through the waiting
Through the years
For people like us
In places like this
We need all the hope
That we can get
I still believe
Confused Developers
Gave a talk about Perkeep at the Decentralized Web conference this week. Very happy that I was finally able to re-use my "confused developer" slide from OpenSocial in a new way...
https://
The Fourth Age of Google+
*The Fourth Age of Google+*
There’s a new Google+ on the way. It’s led by new energetic people that are creating *the* Premier Enterprise collaboration system for GSuite customers. It’s my trust in these strong, capable leaders that now allows me to fade and transition to something new.
After almost 8 years working on Google+ I've decided to tackle a new role on the combined Arcs and Cerebra team in SFO. This move returns me to my roots of building open ecosystems using protocols, open source, and sovereign user data. It's an area I've always been passionate about -- working on federated es-protocols was one of the reasons I joined Google in the first place. The move to SFO also allows me to be a more effective caregiver for my family.
While tackling new technical challenges on Arcs I will continue to work on a number of critical privacy and infrastructure needs for Google+. So you’ll still see me in SVL from time-to-time as I continue my quest to slay the Oz Binary.
And finally, thank you to everyone (there are too many to name) who has helped me learn, lead and develop products that improve people's lives. I am grateful and humbled to be working with the best, and confident in the future of both Google+ and Arcs!
[1] https://
[2] https://
[3] https://
The Right Kind of AI
*The Right Kind of AI*
Really enjoyed the wide-ranging discussion with Google's own +104315190395846060684 on the Team Human podcast. I'd love to see a TGIF covering these deep topics sometime, and hope there are more Kenrics in our midst.
You also get Douglas Rushkoff's entertaining rant on Facebook. (!)
http://
Incognito By Default
*Incognito by Default*
Redesign all of our systems to operate without direct access to user data while maintaining quality.
This is my dream after reading https://
Ambitious enough?
Hangouts Chat
Self-redacting your messages on Hangouts Chat? think again....
A message was edited in Hangouts Chat, view the updated message on (https://
Patchwork 2.0 - 2010
While not strictly social, this did use the underlying Shindig code based used for social gadgets. It also allowed for Cooperating Gadgets in the browser via gadgets.pubsub and distributed Prefs system using gadgets.prefs
In fact one of the use cases was 'add the Google Gadget to your container' so your other gadgets could have enhanced functionality. The only thing missing is a user-owned, portable data store. We're seeing a return to this model in ARCS and Fuchsia.
Programming is Forgetting
This is good. Read and/or watch it.
http://
Build systems that forget less. Use that as a metric...
Of course the cybernetician in me wants to say:
- Forgetting is really Variety Attenuation[1]
- The Good Regulator theorem applies [2]. To effectively regulate a system your model needs to be as complex as the system itself.
[[Oh and http://
[1] https://
[2] https://
CPAC
oh no, not this again....
https://
5000 memberships
5000 memberships? I thought this was Google?
com.google.apps.framework.request.StatusException: <eye3 title='FAILED_PRECONDITION'/> generic::FAILED_PRECONDITION: User 91363953886 has 5309 total memberships, can not mutate to reach 5310 as that is over the limit of 5000 ;AppErrorCode=9;StartTimeMs=1519173416402;tcp;Deadline(sec)=9.664;ResFormat=UNCOMPRESSED;Originator=corp-loas-proxy;Tag=cidc3;ServerTimeSec=0.365905408;LogBytes=256;Non-FailFast;EndUserCredsRequested;EffSecLevel=none;ReqFormat=UNCOMPRESSED;ReqID=feead50e0dd47f81;GlobalID=d58444c9b3c68ad4;Server=10.2.37.199:4113
Dogfoods past
googlegroups.com == dogfood history
I counted 44 dogfood google groups (!) including these classics:
butterandcream-prod (wha?)
friendsofallen
openbonfire
snickersmocha
Enjoy it while you can, GDPR will probably force the cleanup of all these...
EBT
Googlers, don't be smug, doesn't look like Google Express supports Food Stamps either..
[And at least Amazon offers discounted Prime membership to people with EBT cards.]
That said if you don't have the learned experience of being poor you might want to check out today's talk "Growing Up Poor In America" - Lisa 'Tiny' Garcia at 11am PT
Livestream at http://
[original image sourced from https://
6p
So one more Nexus 6p / Android post.
A teammate offered me a 6p test device as a loaner. Has the asset tag and everything. *Yay!*
Turns out it was factory reset with a test account on it. *Uhoh!*
But no worries there's an internal unlock tool. (http://
Ugh it's broken for some odd reason:
https://
Techstop basically gives up at this point and say try out http://
If we can't manage a shared pool of devices I fear what hell our enterprise customers go through. Also imagine if a fired employee Factory Resets their phone before they leave. Instant brick...
Anyway, enough ranting for today. I need to save my energy to deal with my wife's repeated question: "let's just go buy iPhones -- Are you some kind of masochist or what?"...
Google Store
Google Store, please take my money :(
- FWIW this is the chrome bug where time goes backwards
- And to add insult to injury I now have 4 pending charges for the failed orders.... At least having my card declined let me know that this was the case
- Filed http://
6p Bootloop
Nexus 6p Bootloop :(
And we're not making it right for users and sending people to Huawei, who are now closed. And all my spare phones are micro-sim.
The playbook for the people on the phone is a depressing read:
https://
We have a huge hoard of cash, surely we could do right by our users?
Oh and this is my 4th 6p...
Story of your life
Well worth watching. The blog->book is an interesting thing I didn't know about and I found the email -> blog solution for communicating with her future grown-up children clever.
Slides are here: https://
gThanksPlus?
Looks like G+ sharing was added to gThanks in
https://
But the shares it creates now are pretty bare-bones and you have to really hunt down that G+ share button...
Oh and big congrats to all the people getting Kudos and PBs lately. Y'all are awesome!
Twenty Eight Bucks
It took a bit of searching to figure out why I received a check for 8. But if you get one here's why:
This is a wage and hour PAGA action arising from Defendant's failure to pay wages in a timely manner at the end of each pay period. Labor Code § 204( d) requires employees to be paid out by the seventh (ih) day following the closing of the pay period if employees are paid on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Defendant, who paid its employees on a bi-weekly basis, had a consistent policy of paying the wages of its employees on the eighth (8t11) day or later following the close of the respective pay period, and thus, beyond the time periods as allowed pursum1t to Labor Code § 204. This PAGA action is being sought on behalf of Defendant's other aggrieved employees.
In addition to the PAGA action, Plaintiff also asserts individual claims for wrongful termination in violation of public policy. Specifically, Plaintiff engaged in protected activity by removing alcohol from the workplace (due to fear for her personal safety and the safety of co-workers), and to prevent sexual harassment. However, by exercising such rights, Plaintiff was terminated from her employment.
Defendant's Position
Plaintiff was employed by Defendant from approximately January 27, 2015 to April 12, 2016 as a Program Manager. In late March 2016, a Google employee reported that several personal items had gone missing. Google's asset investigations team confirmed through video evidence that Plaintiff had taken the reported items. During its investigation, Plaintiff provided inconsistent accounts of her actions, which Google deemed to lack credibility. As a result, Google terminated Plaintiffs employment for violation of company policy and the dishonest conduct she exhibited.
Google denies that its payroll schedule was inconsistent with section 204 of the Labor Code. Moreover, Plaintiff cannot show that she or any of the members of the group she seeks to represent were aggrieved. An award of civil penalties under PAGA would result in an award that is unjust, arbitrary, and oppressive
California Fires
Two new local charities available for gift match for California Wildfires so it's not just the Red Cross now:
Still *0k* to match.
Also I learned that Google Docs has a 'mobilebasic' suffix which generates a simple lightweight doc. Many of the emergency resource docs are using this:
https://
https://
Google Now Everywhere - 2012
Not strictly "social" per-se, but there were a number of cross overs from iGoogle. Also relevant as Now is undergoing some historical changes of it's own..
- Pixie Labs ended up moving their games to Google+ Games (remember Farmville?)
- The gadget infrastructure from iGoogle (GGS) was used heavily for the +1 button, OpenSocial, PeopleSense and others. +103390686048441232976 might even still carry a pager for this old infrastructure...
7 Years at Google today
*
Hired to work on web protocols. Immediately detoured to the needful work of building a social network. Learned a lot along the way.
I don't have a lot of sage wisdom to offer other than be humble, humane, and empathic. That goes a long way.
That and banjo. Always have banjo.
Looking forward to 7 more years of causing trouble with you.
Google Assistant (circa 1973)
Google Assistant as envisioned from 1973's "Designing Freedom"
https://
Much of what we implement today was predicted then. We also forget that people once derided and feared "The Computer".
This work is quite accessible and reading it gave me a better understanding of complex dynamic systems, relaxation time, variety, Ashby's Law and the nature of bureaucracy. Also originally broadcast on the CBC as a lecture series:
http://
Google at the Edge of Chaos
Looks like we once had an Ethnographer on staff. This is the only notable mention of Complex Adaptive Systems I found. But it is interesting reading back from 2011....
https://
Google Forever
Greetings Area 120. Google Forever has also made it to the final pitch round.
We have plenty of opportunities for people to pitch in on sustainable bizdev models, decentralized engineering and more. But one role we'd love to fill is a UX/Design/Frontend leader. Here's our job listing. Please reach out if you're interested!
https://
Are you interested in building user experiences and critical user journeys that work for generations? Do you want to help people preserve their most important digital memories?
Consider joining the Google Forever Project. We're a proposed Area 120 project that's already made it to the final pitch round and we need you!
Our project is creating the software that will power a business and ecosystem that will last for decades and centuries. We're starting with a way to preserve the world's most valued Photos in an easy, simple sustainable way.
As a lead/founding frontend member of the team you will have considerably freedom to set the direction and tech stack while working with our passionate engineering and business teams. You will also be able to explore experimental user interfaces and user experiences that might be used in the far future.
If accepted to Area 120 you will have the chance to work on this full time. We also will accept any and all people who want to help us achieve our vision!
See http://
Proud Code
GoogleCloud asks: *What was the first program you wrote that you were proud of?*
_Please include what language it was written in and a brief description. Feel free to go out of bounds if you have a creative answer!_
My response:
At age 17 I was published in Compute!'s Gazette. The small utility, named ML Runner, is tool written in Commodore 64 Basic and 6502 Assembly. It converted machine language binaries into easy to use BASIC programs. The result was a better, easier way for users to execute code.
You can see the actual short code on page 98 in the June 1987 Issue here:
https://
Crashplan to home customers: bye bye
60 days isn't a long time for people with lots of data. I have a feeling it's going to take legislation to get companies to do the right thing here (and that includes us too, Google Drive notice is 60 days as well...)
Also facepalm on the earnest CEO video at:
https://
Missile Mail
tired: drone delivery
wired: missile delivery
If you look back you'll see the parallels between Google and the Postal Service....
Jungle Gym
Question for Jungle Gym -- how does it stack up against the Q&A feature in Groups? It seems that there's some overlap here that needs to be shaken loose. Maybe something for Daniel when he returns from his travels..
Battle for the Net
I read that we were going to participate in Net Neutrality protests today. I loaded up google.com to see if we were doing a home page promo. I didn't see the logo load and thought that this was a very sublime way of calling attention to content blocking. So I waited for a spinner and call to action...
haha; no. Instead it was this super heavy doodle that took forever to load over GBUS wifi.
Ah well. Looks like we're sending an "email" to our "listserve" (itsthe90s.gif) of committed diehards, and posting a video playlist hidden somewhere on youtube (couldn't find it, can you?)