Gmail Controversies: 2010 Isn’t 2004 All Over Again

“On the surface, it sounds like a wow idea…Truth be told, however, this is the kind of technology advance that gives me the creeps…That’s why the big thinkers at Google should go back to the drawing board and correct a big mistake, before it’s too late.”–Charles Cooper, Cnet

“I think this whole thing could be an electronic noose…The more defined you are, the more definable you are, the more you’re exposed [to possible security problems].”–analyst Roger Kay as quoted in a Washington Post article

“The interplay between the creation of an inalienable right to privacy and the application of this right to the private sector is important. It requires Google to obtain the affirmative consent of individuals before violating their privacy.”–an open letter to the California Attorney General signed by privacy advocates

What do the above three comments have in common? Nope, it’s not that they’re expressing angst over Google Buzz’s privacy issues. They all date from almost six years ago, when Gmail was brand new and plenty of intelligent people were freaked out over the idea of an e-mail service scanning messages for keywords and displaying relevant advertising. As far as I can remember, it was the biggest privacy-related furor Google had encountered until this week.

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A Simple Solution to Google Buzz’s Privacy Problem

The hubbub over Google Buzz’s conversion of your most frequent e-mail contacts into followers that anyone can see may die down eventually. Right now, though, it feels like the controversy is still heading towards the boiling point. And I think that Buzz’s basically confusing design isn’t helping matters.

If Search Engine Land has its facts straight–which it generally does–Google may end the melodrama decisively by simply removing Buzz from Gmail. That would be kind of stunning, since its integration into Gmail was one of the key features that Google trumpeted back on Tuesday when it announced Buzz. But stranger things have happened.

[UPDATE: Search Engine Land has updated its story, and says it didn't mean to suggest that Horowitz said Google was considering completely detaching Buzz from Gmail over privacy concerns.]

I think it would be a shame if Google went that far, and I don’t see why Buzz can’t be a good citizen within the Gmail framework. The company has already fiddled with Buzz’s default settings a bit. But can’t it end the Buzz discontent immediately by making it a cakewalk to simply skip the conversion of e-mail contacts into followers in the first place? Make Buzz accounts start with you following nobody by default; allow the e-mail contact conversion as an option, with an excruciatingly clear explanation of what’s happening.

Do that, Google, and you could confidently tell the world that the default state of Buzz is privacy. And virtually everyone who made their most-contacted list public would be doing so intentionally.

The Promising, Confusing World of Google Buzz

It’s now been 72 hours since Google launched its Google Buzz social-sharing service and started rolling it out to Gmail users. Much of the coverage so far has been grumpy–especially when it comes to the fact that the initial list of people you autofollow on Buzz is based on who you talk with most often in Gmail, and that list is public unless you choose to make it private.

To its credit, Google has responded swiftly to complaints: It’s already tweaked Buzz to make it more obvious what information the service is making public, and to help you crank up the privacy settings.

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Quickoffice’s Cloudier Approach to iPhone Office Suites

Quickoffice–which was the first office suite for the iPhone–is now the first with a very cool feature: built-in support for Google Docs. It’s part of Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite 3.0, which was announced this week at Macworld 2010.

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Hey, Free Kindle!

How can Amazon.com keep Kindles popular in the face of competition from the iPad? Giving them away might help…

Rock of the Dead: More of This, Please!

If Activision or Harmonix never released another Guitar Hero or Rock Band, I’d be satisfied with the existing plastic instruments and gobs of downloadable songs. But there’s still potential in music games, as shown by the upcoming Rock of the Dead.

IGN ran a preview of the Wii game, a cross between the zombie shooter House of the Dead, the keyboard skill-builder Typing of the Dead and Guitar Hero. Each zombie gets its own sequence of notes to play on your guitar controller, and you must enter the sequences correctly to destroy your foes.

As a concept, Rock of the Dead rules, but I’m not as enthused after watching a video of the action. This would be so much better if each note produced a crunchy guitar riff, instead of a dull thwacking sound against a bland backing soundtrack. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of potential in using music game instruments for games that aren’t explicitly about karaoke.

Rock of the Dead isn’t the first one to try. A new game called Fret Nice mimics the platforming style of Super Mario Bros., but with the option to use a guitar controller. Sadly, critics said the experiment didn’t work, and the game is better off with a standard controller. The problem is that Fret Nice tried to map a new control scheme onto a genre that’s already too familiar. In a sense, Rock of the Dead is doing the same thing, even though on-rail shooting games aren’t as universal of a genre.

Still, imagine if a music-themed adventure game like Brutal Legend incorporated the guitar controller, or maybe there are ways to experiment with music games that don’t involve popular songs or straight-up performance (for instance, Rez). There’s fertile ground here, and I’m glad Rock of the Dead developer Epicenter is playing with it, because the music game genre, left alone, is stagnant.

Opera 10.5: Better and Chrome-ier

Norwegian browser company Opera has released a Windows beta of version 10.50–a follow up to 10.0, which shipped back in September. It’s definitely a beta–it’s not available at all for the Mac or Linux yet, and quirky enough that I couldn’t post this article using it–but it’s a promising one. And all the changes make Opera feel more like its much younger rival Google Chrome.

Opera’s makers are calling version 10.50 “the fastest browser on earth,” apparently based on the performance of its new JavaScript engine, which the company says is eight times faster than the old one. (The previous engine performed poorly compared to other browsers in the SunSpider benchmark test.) Judging browser speed based largely on JavaScript doesn’t make a lot of sense, but all of Opera’s competitors except Microsoft do it, too.  (It may not be a complete coincidence that IE is the other browser besides Opera that lags in the SunSpider test.)

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Office for the iPad? Maybe. Hopefully.

Gadget site T3 is reporting that Microsoft has dropped a “hint” that it may be working on a version of Office for the iPad. I hope so–it could be both cool and useful. But the evidence that it’s doing so is paper-thin so far. (I’ve probably asked Microsoft staffers about things they might be working on hundreds of times over the years, and they only rarely say “no comment” or issue a flat denial–their tendency is say that ideas of all sorts sound “interesting.”)

Last April, someone asked a Microsoft exec about Office for the iPhone, and some took his response (“Not yet–keep watching”) as evidence that such a suite was in the works. The only Office/iPhone news since then has been the fact that Office 2010′s Web features will include some basic tools designed to let people view documents on smartphones. Maybe the exec was talking about that. Or maybe Microsoft is working on an iPhone edition of Office. Or maybe he just meant what he said.

Of course, almost thirty years ago Microsoft did become a rabid fan of a new Apple platform, and released a bunch of applications for it. Its enthusiasm seems to have paid off for everybody involved that time around…

5Words: New Stuff for Mac Chrome

Mac Chrome: extensions, bookmark sync.

Windows 8: supposedly mindblowing.

Rumor: Google just bought Aardvark.

Bill Gates critiques the iPad.

Office for Mac gets Ribbon.

What’s TiVo announcing next month?

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Where the History of Tech is For Sale

Yesterday I paid a long-overdue visit to one of the Bay Area’s most amazing geek destinations–the Weird Stuff Warehouse, which salvages the hardware and software that Silicon Valley has lost interest in. The place has been in business for a quarter century and throngs of shoppers were roaming the aisles during my expedition. And it was bursting at the seams with shrinkwrapped software for defunct platforms, obsolete gadgets, components and cables of every imaginable type, and much, much more.

View Silicon Valley’s Island of Misfit Tech slideshow.

Silicon Valley’s Island of Misfit Tech

I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’ve lived in the Bay Area for almost eight years without paying a single visit to one of its most legendary temples, Sunnyvale’s Weird Stuff Warehouse. Today, I happened by it after a visit to its neighbor Yahoo, and stopped in. (I did pay one previous pilgrimage in 1995, as a tourist.)

This amazing, aptly-named store offers surplus and salvaged electronic equipment, but that doesn’t begin to describe it–it’s really a museum of technology where everything’s for sale, usually for only a few bucks. Shopping its aisles today, I felt like I was walking through the entire history of personal computing. And I documented the journey with fuzzy photos from my iPhone.

Wii’s Old Supply Problems Are New Again

It’s 2007 all over again, with Nintendo’s Wii in short supply at retail shops and online stores.

Shipments are coming in, but they’re selling out fast, Joystiq reports. Nintendo hasn’t gone into specifics on why it can’t meet demand for the Wii, but the company said “replenishing Wii inventories will be a challenge” in the short-term.

According to Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, 47 percent of GameStops had the Wii in stock last month, IndustryGamers reported, so you might have to call around to get one. Supplies are a bit scarcer at other retailers; Bhatia said 28 percent of channels had the Wii in stock last month.

Why are Wii shortages happening again? One GameStop employee told Joystiq that it’s a regular occurrence after the holidays, and that supplies should pick up in mid-February, but that doesn’t jive with Nintendo’s remarks about short-term supply challenges.

Back in the early days of the Wii, a popular conspiracy theory held that Nintendo was intentionally holding back supply to stir up buzz. I never really believed that, and it certainly doesn’t seem likely now. However, a variation on that theory, from GameStop chief operating officer Dan DeMatteo, seems plausible: In March 2007, he said Nintendo was holding back supply because the company already met its yearly sales goals.

A similar motive could be at work here. Despite a 23 percent drop in profits last quarter, Nintendo does seem on track to meet its sales forecasts for the year ending March 31, so the company may not be in a rush to boost production.

Again, only Nintendo knows for sure what’s going on here. As a consumer, it seems silly that a company would make it harder to buy its product, but that’s business for you.

Vudu Goes Boxless

I knew that high-quality Internet movie download company Vudu was focusing on adding its cool service to other companies’ gadgets (like LG Blu-Ray players and Mitsubishi TVs) these days. But I guess I didn’t realize that it had dropped its elegant box until I read this mostly-favorable new review of LG’s Vudu-enabled Blu-Ray player by the New York Times’ David Pogue.

I’m sorry to see the Vudu box’s thumbwheel-driven remote control–possibly the best remote ever shipped by anybody for any device–go away. Ultimately, though, Vudu makes more sense as a feature than as another gizmo to squeeze into an entertainment center. Here’s hoping the new strategy works for this plucky and inventive little company.

AT&T Talks LTE

Anxious to see AT&T improve its wireless network? The long-term solution won’t involve beefing up the company’s current 3G network–it’ll be nailing LTE, the even-higher-speed 4G wireless technology that’ll eventually replace the current network. AT&T announced today that it’s working with equipment manufacturers Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson to begin tests of LTE later this year, with a full rollout in 2011.

LTE isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s promising and I look forward to its arrival. Even though absolutely none of the phones and wireless adapters we own now will be compatible with it…

Yahoo’s Sketch-a-Search

I’m at Yahoo this morning for a press event the company is holding about its search activities. One overarching goal, clearly, is to make the case that Yahoo intends to remain an innovative force in search even assuming that its deal with Microsoft goes through and Bing’s index winds up as the basis of Yahoo’s search features.

Unlike yesterday’s Google Buzz launch, Yahoo’s event doesn’t involve any major announcement. We’ve seen a few brief recaps of minor recent additions to Yahoo’s search features, and gotten some quick previews of features in the works. The most interesting of the latter demos was of an iPhone app that lets you draw an outline with your fingertip on a map to indicate a geographic area, then get local results–for instance, to find restaurants on the waterfront.

Here’s a lousy photograph of the feature in action:

Yahoo says the goal is to let people search as easily as kids draw with an Etch-a-Sketch–it calls this feature “sketch-a-search.” As someone who spent a lot of time with an Etch-a-Sketch in my youth, the metaphor doesn’t quite make sense: The defining feature of the Etch-a-Sketch is that it’s hard to get a picture out of it that’s anything like the one you might have in your head. (It’s a lot of fun to try, though.)

I do like Sketch-a-Search, though–I’ve certainly spent a lot of time on the iPhone and other phones futzing with maps and having trouble zooming in to the geographical area I care about. I tend to end up either with the entire United States or a one-block radius, when what I really want is a region of half a mile or so.

Yahoo didn’t have anything to say about when or how they’ll make Sketch-a-Search available to consumers.

New on ExecTweets

Here’s my latest guest post over at ExecTweets: “12 Smart, Memorable (and Sometimes Funny) Quotes About Technology.”