October 14, 2004

• At first, I was pretty excited about this, but the more I think about it, it is a pretty big privacy concern. There are some huge benefits to this (like being able to bring up older, cached versions of files), but something about it is a little unnerving to me. Maybe it's that Google seems to be everywhere now, I don't know.
• I just installed this, and I've gotta say, it's pretty cool. When you do a normal google search it will put a little thing up at the top telling you how many results there were on your own computer, kinda the way it does for news stories. Also, if you just go to Google with it installed, "desktop" will show up as an option, along with images and groups, etc. I'm just holding my breath and trusting google not to be evil.
• I've become wary of installing too many things "google". I have the option of receiving email via gmail, index my images on my hard drive via picasa* then upload an image using hello to my blog which features adsense ads. I can also install a googlebar. I can have an orkut account which lets me be part of special interest communities and now can search my hard drive using google search which will include being: "mixed with your Web search results to produce results pages for you that integrate relevant content from your computer and information from the Web" eek no thx. As for searching my hard drive I've always found the "search" on windows to be rather effective. They're in the searching business, what they do best but with all these tools they are releasing hard not to start being concerned about what if any information is getting back to "they", "them" and the tiny green men from cali ;) puts on her tin foil hat *picasa is a wonderful application one of the things I would recommend.
• Yeah. I am too paranoid to use it. I'll just keep using the slow search function I have in Windows XP.
• I'm another one who is uncomfortable giving google the ability to catalogue everything that's on my computer.
• From the Google Website: We treat your privacy with the utmost respect. The Google Desktop Search program does not make your computer's content accessible to Google or anyone else. More Info Just trying to settle some fears before they get out of hand. Oh, wait. This isn't Slashdot.
• Nice little piece by Kottke. This looks like a pretty neat little doo-dah... and personally, I plan to keep on being excited by cool new things from Google right up until the point where they become an utterly terrifying monolithic ubercorporation, by which time I hope that a competitor will have emerged. Cool shit good; monopoly bad. That's the kind of vague principle that rules my life.
• I don't care about my privacy. However, I've found that it really really bogs down my computer. For example, if I pull a bunch of files from cvs. I know I know I can tell it to ignore my source files, but ...
• drivingmenuts it's not fear, it's paranoia ;) adjusts her tin foil hat ps: good article flashboy. Trying to recall who said it, in mid 90's (I believe) someone talked about virtually elminating computers as we know them and plugging into supercomputers - much like what Kottke is talking about in that article.
• If you think that's cool, check this out. Coming right on the heels of the new Gmail feature that allows you to forward mail to another address, which I promptly set up in a filter to forward my "real" emails to my cell phone, and now I can search from my cell phone as well. Sweet! Also new and fairly cool is the Gmail notifier which will notify you from your system tray if you have new messages on your Gmail account without having to open a browser every 12 seconds (or is that just me?)
• Suddenly, the Paranoids Don't Seem So Paranoid Anymore
• yeah, street view feels a little creepy, don't it?
• I saw Lewis Black's rant about Google View on The Daily Show, comparing it to Big Brother. I've been reading about a prominent flickr photographer (I won't try to spell her name, which is Icelandic) whose photos were used by a Leicester company to sell and make a profit. On one blog, a commenter used the website registration to identify the woman who owned the domain and presumably the company, found the address on Google Maps, zoomed in on the satellite photo to make assumptions about her income, found an old website where she sold her car and ascertained that she sold the car to set up her company, and basically was able to do some (very amateur) detective work without leaving his computer. Google View may not be much more invasive, but it has the potential to be -- look at the poor woman whose photo is all over the internet (and the Daily Show) with her pants hung low and her thong hanging out.
• Eep!
• Have you noticed? We've become a people that no longer respects, or apparently desires, privacy. Our own or anybody else's. Well that's fallacious. And not in a good way, either.
• Re Google street view, the French yellow pages (pagesjaunes.fr) has had a low grade static version for Paris for at least five years (I think mappy does the actual work). Not such high quality, but it's useful if you're preparing to go somewhere you've never been and want to get an idea of what the street or building looks like.
• and want to get an idea of what the street or building looks like ...and any handsome young Frenchmen you may be likely to encounter hanging about outside. I'd plan my vacation around that!
• *dons stripey shirt and beret, pretends to smoke candy cigarette*
• Thing is, at some point the sky IS gonna fall. Rather: Le ciel tombera.
• Google privacy 'worst on the Web'
• So much for their mission statement.