oogle Plus (G+) and Google Profiles look very similar and almost identical. Is Google merging them? It seems possible. It actually goes deeper than this. Google has become a major content network and not just a gateway to information. Not anymore anyway. Will Google use people’s personal data to push ads? Well, it’s already doing this. The transaction is hosting in exchange for changing one’s perception on behalf of advertisers, but the real problem is the proprietary nature of G+).

“As of 07/01/2011,” say a lot of older profile pages, “Groups profiles have been disabled. Your profile information will be available for export from your profile until 11/01/2011. This change will not affect the nicknames you might have chosen for yourself to participate in groups. It will only affect the custom profiles fields, such as your photo, location, and occupation. More details are available here.” The cited page says: “Beginning July 1, 2011, you will not be able to change your Google Groups profiles. You will be able to download the contents of your profile until November 1, 2011, at which time your Google Groups profile will be deleted.” Just deleted, eh? Unless Google Groups is shutting down, it seems possible that a migration route to G+ might be offered with an ultimatum of sorts.

The date is very close to that of G+. Might it be the reason for change? Groups profiles were ripe to abuse by trolls who abuse the scoring system (Google allows the same user vote an infinite number of times and thus game the system). The key question is, will Google try to convert many users to people with a G+ account, without going through conventional routes? Other than privacy invasion, there is not much to be gained from such networks. The way Google treats personal information matters because Google is… well, Google.

was never a major user of Skype. Heck, I only started using it on occasions around 2008, after I had repeatedly rejected invitations to join it. The reasons were multiple, e.g.:

• It was non-standard (the protocols)
• It was proprietary (it still is, but they openwash it for PR purposes)
• It sucked on GNU/Linux
• (Questionable: It offered no real privacy through decentralisation)

Now I have a fourth reason to abandon it altogether and move back to SIP, which sadly enough not many people are using as network effect matters. Microsoft has a very poor track record when it comes to privacy, retaining GNU/Linux support when acquiring software, and generally speaking, Microsoft is a convicted monopolist which continues to engage in crimes such as racketeering, bribery, and extreme market distortion.

Thank you, Skype. It was good while it lasted. And thank you, Microsoft, for giving me a reason to abandon this piece of malicious software and also encourage others to do the same, obviously to come over to SIP. Today I had a half-hour conversation over SIP (the codec is as good if not better than Skype’s). I also have a physical SIP phone connected to my hub. The future is SIP. Skype is going down the same path as Hotmail.

Being a Bastards Telecom customer means a lot of things, some of which include:

• Waking up every morning for two weeks only to test a phone line
• Being told by a Bastards Telecom agent that it’s OK if the line is not working, it’s just part of how it’s supposed to work (it’s not, they made an error and then arrogantly disregarded my advice)
• Taking two complete days off work to wait by the intercom from 7AM to 6PM, thinking that perhaps within a minute the delivery person will arrive (but in vain, surely)
• Waiting on line (in a queue) for one hour to reach an actual person. This is not like holding the phone for one hour knowing that after one hour someone will answer it. This is a case of a one-hour anticipation for answer on the other line (you don’t want to miss an actual real person who doesn’t just ask you to enter digits after waiting for half an hour).
• Not doing proper exercise for a week, just making phonecalls at the gym and waiting for calls back (nearly having to apologise for being a polite (but mistreated) customer
• Having to travel for half an hour just to get to a phone with a working line so that about 20 phonecalls (like the above) can be made
• Having to ask friends and business ownerz for an apology for using the line for hours and hours, draining battery, taking up their time, and costing them telephone charges
• Not being able to get in touch with friends (except using slow medium like E-mail)
• Having your friends receive unwanted and unexpected phonecalls from Bastards Telecom, which somehow decided one’s friend can also be treated like someone’s secretary
• Bastards Telecom contacting someone’s friend on the work telephone, which in turn causes this friends problems at work
• Having general problems at work not just due to lack of an Internet connection (I do both my jobs primarily from home) but a telephone line, too
• Being told a 12 month contract is suddenly an 18 months contract despite being told and then confirming contradictory information by sales staff and signing a deal based on that information
• Being put on hold for 15 minutes while one agent listens to the recording of an older call with another agent, only to then misrepresent the customer and put all blame on the customer, obviously to defend Bastards Telecom. Humility is a disallowed term among Bastards Telecom.
• Having an agent hang up despite the customer being patient and polite
• Friends arrive and leave in anger because they cannot get in contact and therefore cannot access the building or discuss times
• Missing a few nights out for being off the telephone grid and thus unable to coordinate
• Being away from some of one’s crucial belongings, such as work equipment
• Being unable to wish the parent a “happy birthday”
• Failure to contact businesses for crucial transactions, which leads to a lot of trouble
• Having to travel by foot to a lot of places because there is no other way to make contacts
• Having to leave “telephone number” fields blank in a lot of place, then having to come back later to fill those missing parts
• Making family and friends worried that contact cannot be made (which leads to false assumptions)
• Failure to accept the shipping of a hub (for broadband) because there is no working line at home for Royal Mail to get through to the customer

In conclusion, don’t choose Bastards Telecom. Their monopoly is far from deserved, it’s more like a government franchise and they will also Phorn your phone, spying on your every activity online for for benefit of marketing companies that will pressure you to buy things you do not need and share personal information about your life and your loved one.

Bastards.

And the worst part remains ahead. They may bill me for someone else’s phonecalls, in which case more bureaucracy will be required to resolve issues relating to refunds.

What does it mean when Bastards Telecom makes false promises about broadband services and due date? It’s getting late, so the following list will be very incomplete (imagine being offline for 3 weeks when all your work is online, employers included):

• pay through the nose for mobile broadband, having had to spend hours finding an appropriate package at the shop (25 British pounds or nearly 40 dollars for just 2 gigabytes)
• struggle for hours to bring back up a failed mobile broadband connection
• work on single-head rather than dual-head display for a while, being away from one’s crucial files for several more days too (impossible for getting work done)
• not being able to make VoIP calls and make up for lack of landline (which worked fine until Bastards Telecom botched it, then claimed it’s just fine)
• not being able to blog, manage sites, etc.
• not being able to transfer any large files
• changing one’s browsing habits to account for caps
• being throttled and taking an entire night to upload just 2 audio files while the computer stays connected and uses up valuable resources
• many other Internet-related implications, as expected (I’m getting tired just thinking about it)

Bastards.

The whole thing is confirmed to be BT’s own fault. They admit it now, albeit shyly. Their staff totally messed up (maybe at risk of being fired), so right now one of them is constantly phoning my friend’s work phone (4 times today), asking urgently to meet me on Saturday, some time between a range of 5 hours (great! A fourth day having to be stuck at home, without connection to anything). So he now puts my friend’s work in jeopardy, not just my own. I don’t want anybody fired, but I know BT has been running around with the axe quite a lot recently (given their poor standards, no wonder). I am not asking BT for much, all I want is my life back, please.

N.B. – In case anyone from BT reads this, please look up VOL011-479058023564 and VOL011-47251182944.

Summary: One malicious and incompetent monopoly that everyone (where applicable) ought to avoid even more aggressively than Microsoft

O REMOVE any misinterpretations or rumours, nothing has changed at Techrights. The reason there has been so little going on since the seventh of the month is that BT is so bloody awful. When the IRC logs get posted (hopefully this month) some of the details will be made visible, but until then there are these messy notes of mine and reassurance that when all wired connectivity is back to normal, everything in Techrights too will be back to normal. Until then I will carry on coding and complete my 50-page paper about this research project that has occupied a lot of my time. Here is an out-of-date screenshot (it looks a lot nicer by now):

This post would be off topic unless some connection was drawn to items we typically covered here. What the experience with BT shows is that a monopoly — and just about any monopoly for that matter — is a very bad thing. BT has a monopoly on my line and all its competitors must go through BT to rent the line. This gives BT a lot of power and my assertive attempts to cancel the order with BT after nearly 10 hours on the phone (and two entire days waiting at the house for a delivery that never came) are pointless at best. They make it impossible and hold the line as a hostage type of tool, in order to prevent the customer from going elsewhere. As Richard Stallman once put it, when support is a monopoly no wonder it is so bad. It turns out that under my name BT even activated the wrong line, which means that some stranger somewhere is making phonecalls at my expense. What an irreversible mess! Boycott BT. Avoid is like the plague and suggest others do the same.

N.B. – In case anyone from BT reads this, please look up VOL011-479058023564 and VOL011-47251182944. For shame, I want my life back.

Women’s perception of the Web differs

EX as in “gender”, that is. In an writeup titled “Men Are From Google, Women Are From Yahoo”, a certain difference in browsing habit is highlighted. It claims one is be able to tell apart the two genders, whose exploration of the Internet is driven by other motives.

Men and women have different motivations for doing what they do. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities. Men tend to see it as an office, a library, or a playground–screw the community, this is about function not family.

Do men hunt and women nest as Jerry Seinfeld once said? Is that why women settle for whatever is on TV while men strive to find out what else is on TV? This is by no means a chauvinistic statement. The woman’s ability to concentrate on the familiar leads to a loyalty which is most rewarding.

Entering the virtual world (screenshot of
Manchester snatched in June 2005, Google Earth, click to enlarge)

The Internet is bound to make most sectors of traditional industry obsolete. Below are several examples, which have begun to prove more realistic than ever before.

• Telephone companies- suffer from VoIP for local and international calls
• Internet Service Providers (ISP’s)- giants like Google can gnaw at their revenue by appealing to a large userbase
• Newspapers – readers opt for the Internet, get access to blogs of many ‘flavours’
• Television – user opts for interactive content, not one-way communication with a finite number of channels
• Reviews move on-line – similar impact to that of digital TV (on-demand menus) on the TV guide — a river that have dried up
• Book publishers – the impact of Wikipedia and free books in PDF format; easy printing and sharing
• Film industry – media ‘ripping’, DRM
• Music industry – same as before with but increased levels of piracy, also due to P2P networking
• Classified services, real-estate (among other middlemen-type services) – superseded by eBay, classifieds service from Google, Microsoft, Craigslist, etc.
• Banking – online banks with neither concrete branches nor assets
• Groceries – as previously predicted (along with other wild guesses), warehouses may replace supermarkets and be managed and accessible via the Internet

What will be the outcome of this revolution? Nothing far-fetched, but nonetheless a noticeable transition. More free content, low-cost services and fierce competition among service providers, primarily left in the hands of giants.

Why I put my cards on the table and wound up using Google

NTIL about 3 years ago I was using Webcrawler as my text and graphics search engine almost exclusively. Webcrawler offered some nice features, without a doubt. I can clearly recall suggestions for completion or extended/refined searches on the side of existing SERP‘s. This assimilates to Google Suggest, which came about much later. In due time, Webcrawler also harvested results from Google, which made the results rather pleasing.

At present, Webcrawler has an interesting feature, which enables the user to see results from all major search engines (crawlers rather) side-by-side. One can see the top 10 from each on the same page. This is nothing like Dogpile (bad name for a business) that is composing results artificially. Rather than getting a mishmash of results, Webcrawler gives a more comprehensive and impartial view that brings together many search engines into one (overloaded and cluttered) page.

A9 is doing something similar to Webcrawler, but it very Google-centric. The user can see results from the Web, alongside images, videos, and more. Speaking of video search, see my previous post on search results bias.

The disadvantages of the approach are speed and visual clutter. Much of the information on the screen will be discarded. Yet, having plenty of information, both textual and visual, might be helpful sometimes, especially over a quick Internet connection where traffic is expendable.