Tell Google To Do Your Laundry

Posted on 24 January 2013 by Debbie

Recently, my boyfriend became the next of zillions of people who freak out when they accidentally delete a draft in Gmail, and realise that it’s gone forever. It’s not in the Trash. Google didn’t ask first if you wanted to delete it forever. It’s just gone.

I Googled that problem, and found there was a page on Google where you could specifically say you want Google to change that. Not sure why they’re waiting for enough people to stumble on that page. It seems like a good UX idea to just do it. But when I hit the page, I noticed something odd (click to enlarge):

One suggestion you could choose was “Have Gmail do the laundry.”

My first impression was, “Someone at Google is tired of getting suggestions for Gmail, and snarkily wrote that as if to say, “Do you also expect Gmail to do your laundry?” ” Now, who knows why that’s there. Maybe someone just thought that was funny. My first impression was not totally funny. It was that someone hates getting suggestions.

I guess if you want that, you can go here and choose that one.

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Ads Are Following Me Around The Web

Posted on 28 October 2011 by Debbie

Lately, I noticed a lot of ads for a company called Channel Advisor popping up on nearly every website I visit.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I know who Channel Advisor is. I became aware of them in 2001. I’m not a fan. Many of my eBay consulting clients are not fans. So they are not a company I recommend. If you need what ChannelAdvisor does, I recommend that people check out Solid Commerce.

The ads are white, and have origami animals. Their slogan is now, “Be Seen.” OK, I see you. Since I’m not a ChannelAdvisor fan, I decided it would be fun to click on the ad every time I see it. If CA wants to advertise to me, they can pay for the pleasure. I was curious about how often it would be served up to me, and I was curious to see if ad systems would be smart enough to notice someone clicking on an ad over and over, and never hitting the goal page that shows that I followed through with whatever is their desired ad intent.

Short version: the ad system is not smart. I’m shown the ad between 4 and 10 times a day, each time on different websites. I’ve seen it on Pollstar.com, a site where you can look up what bands are touring, which has nothing to do with Channel Advisor’s services. I just saw the ad on a website joking that the day should be split in to metric units like 10 hours, 100,000 seconds, etc… Nothing to do with ChannelAdvisor.

Clearly, I fell into some sort of target audience. Google is showing this ad on any website I visit, even though the content has nothing to do with the advertised product. It must be some sort of run of the whole internet type of placement. But the more interesting thing is that Google has to know who I am. I’m logged in. My IP isn’t dynamic. And they’re showing this to me multiple times, even knowing that I’m clicking on it multiple times a day. I’ve probably clicked on their ad 30 times in the last week, maybe more, because I think it’s funny.

So attention Channel Advisor: Google is happily collecting your dollars for your clicks. They know I’m clicking on the ad at least 4 times a day, and they still show it to me many times a day. Day after day. An advertiser would hope that Google would know when someone is clicking on something for sport, especially since these are the only ads I have clicked on on the internet in probably years. You could easily collect behavioural data, and see what I’m doing: I’m running up CA’s bill with Google, and Google is letting me.

I am not sure of the solution, but I’d suggest looking more closely at your Adwords spending, and getting goals in there to see who reaches your goal pages.

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Oh, Google Wallet…

Posted on 7 October 2011 by Debbie

Google Wallet page, screen shot in Chrome… with a big top bar notification that the page isn’t properly secure. Click to enlarge:

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Why Google+ Lost Its Shine

Posted on 19 September 2011 by Debbie

When Google+ rolled out, I wanted to be one of the first ones on there. And I think I was. I felt like the lone woman when everybody wanted to talk about how male-dominated it was.

Immediately, Google+ seemed to resolve things I disliked about Facebook and Twitter (and I had mostly abandoned Twitter at that point). It made posting to or dealing with groups of friends ways easier than Facebook’s buried “Friends Lists,” and the 47 steps you had to go through to customise who can see something you post. It was more open like Twitter, but the conversation was linear whereas on Twitter, 10 people can reply to a tweet, and each has no idea that the other is replying. So I do prefer the Facebook style “conversation” rather than the disjointed tweets.

I added some friends, and a few Silicon Valley Big Names, just so I can see what’s going on. Nearly 100% of the posts were about Google+. It was the network that seemed to be built to discuss itself. Plus, with it being so limited in its early days, most of my Facebook friends weren’t there… so I still had to go to Facebook to hear what they were thinking. Apps didn’t have an API, so posting to Google+ required you to go to the web (or eventually, a mobile app), which meant that people were less likely to post. Reading Google+ requires the web or the app. It’s not a stream in my Hootsuite.

And most of the conversation was about Google+. From “who’s here” to “who’s not here” to “what genders are here in what ratios” to “why can’t I use a fake name” to “why does Google think my real name is a fake name” to “here is a list of photographers to follow” to “here is a list of everyone who works at Mashable since they’re not allowed to have a business page” to UGH, I was just waiting for real content. And waiting. And I’m still waiting. And I think I’ve given up.

The final irony was launching my new startup, posting that on Google+, and realising that I could only link people to our website, Facebook, or Twitter. No business pages on Google+ yet, so if you want to hang with us, it’ll have to be everywhere but Google+.

During the meanwhilst (as once said in a Monty Python sketch), Facebook took a look at Google+, and clearly said, “Holy cats, there are some GREAT features here that we should probably, finally get into our system.” And surprisingly quickly, you had new ways to deal with groups of friends and who can see your post. My Friendcaster Android app lets me pick from an easy menu who should see my post. The menu choices are: everyone, network and friends, friends of friends, friends only, pick the friends lists who can see this post, pick the friends lists that can’t see this post. Lots of choices, but hey, they make sense, and that’s really nice flexibility. It doesn’t go as far as Google+’s “pick individuals who can see this,” but I’m not sure that’s really needed.

Facebook introduced subscriptions, similar to following on Twitter or adding someone to a Google+ circle. I am hoping that Facebook is smart enough to ONLY show those people my public posts!!! Whew, yes, they only see your public posts. But you see where that’s going. If you are posting public things to Facebook, and people can subscribe and possibly comment, then you’re a few steps closer to not needing Twitter.

This is all getting very interesting. I’m glad I tried Google+. But I just don’t really see the need for it when I can’t connect to the people who interest me… because they’re either not there or not using it. Or not talking about much other than Google+!

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I Guess I’m Back On Twitter

Posted on 8 September 2011 by Debbie

I started on Twitter in 2008. By early 2010, I felt pretty done. I couldn’t stand all the one-way conversations, and the lack of linear discussion. I didn’t like how I had NO idea if anybody was talking to or about me without doing searches or hitting refresh all day. I pushed my blog posts to my accounts, and stopped reading.

Fast forward to now (September 2011). I’m checking Twitter again now for a few reasons. But first, let’s look at what the other social media and networking spaces mean for me.

Facebook is where I’m connected to friends I know. I don’t use it for business. I use Facebook business pages for business. But my personal account is very personal, and I keep my friends list relatively low. So my Facebook news feed is mostly updates from people I know and like. It’s the answer to, “Hey, how are ya today?”
I used LinkedIn a lot for biz. I try to connect with interesting people I meet at events as well as potential and current clients. I don’t read the LinkedIn stream since most of us are just sending our Twitter over there.
I joined Google+ pretty much right when they started accepting real humans. I like it a lot, but so far, it’s mostly people talking about Google+. Major snooze. Not much going on there yet.

And then there’s Twitter. OK, it now emails me if someone mentions me. So does my Postling.com account. Twitter is a place where I can listen to people I know, don’t know, like, or don’t like making short commentary. I follow a lot of recruiters and potential jobs there, and I can’t get those people anywhere else. I only follow people I’m interested in. I create lists to check out what some people are saying without them knowing I’m “following,” which is a neat feature, especially to keep an eye on competitors. It’s very searchable, so it’s easier (nowadays) for me to pull out just what I’m interested in… which isn’t much.

Another thing Twitter is great at is capturing the in-the-moment at an event. With hashtags, I can easily follow what’s going on relating to one topic, and filter out (most of the) garbage. It’s especially useful at conferences, and especially when they do hashtags for individual sessions.

So I guess you can find me on Twitter as brassflowers, of course.

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Google Voice Search Transcribes Humming

Posted on 1 March 2011 by deb

A friend posted the picture shown below. I am posting it with her permission, so if you love this story, please link to this blog post rather than taking the picture. Thanks.

The story was that she was humming while holding her Android phone. She didn’t realise but she had pressed the button that starts a Google Voice Search on the phone. For those who don’t have Android phones, when you press this, the phone is “listening” to you, tries to guess what you said, shows you a bunch of choices, and then you can pick one or none of them. It then sends that block of text to Google as a search. The phone will also do that in areas where you’re just typing (without the search part of the process).

This is what her phone thought it heard as she was humming. Three hilarious cheers to Google for getting this wonderfully right. Which would you pick?

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Google Introduces Visual Analytics

Posted on 20 October 2010 by Debbie

Last week, Google announced some new features for Google Analytics. The main one is a new way to superimpose visitor behavior over the page. It’s a better UI than the old overlay.