I have the original Commute messenger, and I like that the current model has a more efficient use of space in the main pocket, moving the laptop compartment to a second pocket in the back. That is one complaint I would have is that the laptop compartment (which is placed inside the main pocket) takes up almost half of the useable space in that pocket, especially if I have more than a few items in the front pockets. But what I don’t like is that they no longer have the secondary strap clips on the rear bottom corners of the bag, which allow you to adjust the strap to fit more tightly to your back, almost like a sling backpack. I wear my Commute in that fashion most often because it is more comfortable and secure when I am moving around. Meanwhile their Classic Messenger has two additional rings even though the bag’s strap is not removable. As a matter of fact, they don’t sell any messenger bags with the removable/adjustable strap that the original Commute had, which is a shame, because that is one of my favorite features of that bag.

]]> http://ryanboswell.com/blog/2012/01/26/apples-record-profits-for-q1-2012/feed/ 0 http://ryanboswell.com/blog/2012/01/25/privacy-concerns-and-googles-new-privacy-policy/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://ryanboswell.com/blog/2012/01/25/privacy-concerns-and-googles-new-privacy-policy/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:22:20 +0000 Ryan Boswell http://ryanboswell.com/?p=757 The other day, Google announced that they would be streamlining a large number of the more than 60 privacy policies across their various products and services into one single policy. With this change, they would also unify user profile data across these services. Lots of people are getting up in arms over this news, saying that it could be a privacy violation to do this. Google would have the ability to track and correlate massive amounts of user data and use this data to alter search results for logged in users to provide them results that could be more relevant to what they are looking for.

I don’t understand why people are so upset about this. With most web services, if you have an account, all your information is already unified and it is kept unified. But with Google people somehow think that it should be different because it has always been separated into various silos, mainly by virtue of most products being born from a startup that Google acquired, which meant that user data was stored in a different manner than how Google stores everything. Thus the idea of a unified user profile was a lofty idea and something that most people got used to not having.

Personally, I welcome the changes and to be honest, I wonder what has taken Google so long to do this. It’s been one of my biggest annoyances with using Google that my information is so disparate. For example, YouTube has had profiles for years (even before Google acquired them), and when Google announced it’s own Profiles service (before Google+), the two remained completely independent from each other and I had to update them individually if I wanted to change anything. To their credit, I can attest that reorganizing a database structure on a production web service is no small task. And I’ve only dealt with databases and services the smallest hint of a fraction of the size that Google has.

But I also welcome the advances in personalized search recommendations it will likely bring. I want Google to use my entire profile in aggregate to give me more relevant search results. I want Google to make it easy for me to transition data across different services. I want the benefits of unified information.

Last year they released a Google Chrome extension that put a sidebar in the Gmail web interface that did the same thing as the Outlook plugin (which had been expanded and much improved in the 3 years since). This was awesome, except, I also don’t use the Gmail web interface very often, except for work, but I found that at my job it didn’t offer much help or usefulness since I rarely contact people outside of the company. So, while this was a huge improvement, it still didn’t make it for me.

But today they finally did something for me. Something huge. A contacts application for iOS. I’ve been waiting for something like this for so long it’s not even funny. I’ve always hated the fact that I have to manually create an address book entry for every contact or friend on a social network to be able to find and unify their contact information. But now, this automatically creates a unified contact card for every friend on every social network I have (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter at the moment) as well as all of my Google Contacts (which covers Google+). I’ve been addicted to it all day and it is massively useful for the most part. The one hangup is that the one-click call and SMS buttons don’t work for me because I use Google Voice on my iPhone, and the one-click buttons go to the default apps. A minor hangup for sure, but at least I have the ability to look up contact info for everyone I know from one place rather than jumping from one app to another trying to find where their phone number or email address is kept. Although it would be really nice if the app provided the ability to copy the number or email address to the clipboard.

A Small Wishlist

The app does have some areas it could definitely improve on, which is to be expected with the first version of an app. Below is a short list of some of the things that I came across that would be really useful (at least for me) to see in the future.

• For starters providing the ability to copy contact info to the clipboard so that people like me can more easily jump over to Google Voice (or another application) and use that information.
• Providing a way to jump to the local Address Book card to make edits (if one exists) would be nice.
• Show all the contact card information available, or make it an option in the app settings. Currently it only shows phone numbers and email addresses, but I would like to see birthdays, street addresses, instant message handles, and anything else that I have stored in an address book card.

What’s Missing

The only two things that keep this new development from being a complete god-send for me are a native Mac application (or Address Book plugin of some kind), and contact syncing between different services. I need a local Mac app so that I can use my universal address book when drafting emails or searching for contact info for someone without having to go to my phone every time.

And contact syncing is a problem that I (and thousands of others I am sure) have been plagued with for years. Up until Apple released iCloud I was in a happy place with my local Address Book contacts and Google contacts because there was an easy, built-in way to sync between them. But now with how iCloud works, there is no way to sync with Google anymore. Which means that my Google contacts are usually disastrously out-of-date (a major problem because of my dependence on Google Voice) because I keep my “master” copy with iCloud since that is what feeds into my desktop email client (Sparrow) and it automatically syncs between my computer and phone. Having something else in the middle seems like the only way that I’ll be able to return to that happy medium, but for now, that’s a lost hope.

Ok, so I lied, there’s really three things, but this last one is somewhat more minor than the first two. There should (eventually) be a way to manually link social profiles to address book cards. I have many friends that do not use their real last names on Facebook, and so Xobni has a difficult time connecting that with their ‘other’ card that pulls information from my address book, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

All in all, Smartr Contacts is an awesome app and it’s going to save me more time than I care to admit and I only hope that with a few additions and improvements, I will finally get my wish.

As for my own websites, I’ve removed the overlay calling for action, but I’m leaving the ribbon on the side for the time being.

I’m not going to go on at length about these bills, since there are plenty of other places you can do this. So if you haven’t already, read up and sign a petition at one of those websites, contact your representatives in Congress and lets protect the future of the internet.

While individual Occupy events and actions have a more purpose and goal, if you look at the sum of them all, the goal of the entire Occupy movement is to stand up for what you believe is right for you and your peers and demand that change be made. While many people disagree on the final “right” answer to these problems, the important thing is that people are finally ending their complacency and doing something about their unhappiness with the status quo, and discussion is starting to happen among people.

Few people will argue that the majority of first world countries are run by a more elite class of very wealthy and influential people. They are referred to as the 1%, since they represent 1% of the population. Yet, they hold the most the wealth and power in these countries. The rest of the common population (called the 99%) has, to this point, gone along with the gentle nudging of the elite and allowed a frightening disparity in power and wealth to grow between the two groups. Fortunately, this has started to change. IN reality, this global movement has its roots in the political unrest in the Middle East over the past few years. It is they who began to Occupy their cities and governments and countries to demand change, and they achieved it. And now, more and more countries are following suit, with the common population rising up and demanding change in their governments and more. In the end, I can only assume that whatever changes eventually result from this movement will truly be for the more common good because it is coming straight from the people themselves.

But the most important part of this are the changes that are happening on a more personal level. As I’ve said before, people are now realizing that things don’t have to stay the way they are. This is happening on a very personal level. And it is this kind of change that is the most powerful and the most amazing. When people finally pull their head out of the sand and look around them it is a personal awakening to the world, they realize there are no limits to what they can do if only they put their mind to it, and seizing that opportunity is what creates new and fresh perspectives that will help shape the world for a better and brighter future for everyone.

Now is the time to Occupy YOU and make the changes necessary to make yourself a better person because only then can you make the world around you better.

You can find out how to get involved in local Occupy actions or get resources for how to occupy effectively.

Basically, this USB stick sized device holds all the important guts of a modern-day smart phone minus the screen and keyboard. In their place are USB and HDMI dongles. With simply a USB cord plugged into a power source, a HDMI display and Bluetooth enabled keyboard and mouse, you have yourself a full computer. Talk about portable computing. Granted, this thing isn’t going to encode HD videos or anything heavy like that, but it will be able to do any kind of processing that a smartphone can today. It also has a WiFi radio in addition to the afore-mentioned Bluetooth radio to give you network access (vital for any modern computing device), and comes with an SD card slot for removable storage.

Since it’s basically just a flash drive, you could in theory install any OS you like on it. Windows and OS X probably won’t work well (if at all) because the system requirements for these exceed what the device offers, but you can run a virtualization from it if you have another computer.

Moving forward, this is a huge step forward in mobile computing. Google has started pushing for Android-embedded devices everywhere, and this is exactly what can enable something like that. Given the size of the hardware (8cm x 2.5 cm), it could be embedded into almost any device and with the right OS configuration, it run anything/everything from microwaves to thermostats to picture frames to TVs, all connected to the cloud and communicating with all of your other devices.

Sadly, this is only a prototype at this stage, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see things like this in common use in another 5 years.

Google has said for a long time that Profiles and +1 will be available ”soon”. Well, it looks like it may finally actually be on the verge of launching. From the start of the big account transition, there have been a few things that just worked a little different under Google Apps accounts versus Gmail accounts. Earlier today when switching between accounts, I noticed that my real name appeared for all of my accounts. Previously all my Google Apps accounts were identified by just their email address and not my real name like Gmail accounts are. So far the account list shows up like this in everything except Gmail (which shows just email addresses and then sorts them alphabetically, not the order I signed into each account in). This may be an sign that they are prepping Profiles for release.

I found the next big hint through the embedded +1 button on a GigaOM article I was reading. When I accidentally hovered over it, it displayed a tip box suggesting I +1 the post publicly as Ryan Boswell (which linked to a Google Profile URL). I’d never noticed this before so I clicked through to the Profile only to discover that it was an invalid link. I went and checked the URL for my Gmail account’s Google Profile and found that the two are different, meaning that the link is likely for what will be my Google Profile for one of my Google Apps accounts.

I’m excited for this update, and I really do hope that these two are signs of its impending launch. I’ve wanted to start using a Google Profile tied to an account I actually use and get into Google+ since it launched, but I’ve been left out in the cold thus far. I can only hope that once it does launch they will start letting people into Google+ again.

My job with Abraxas Energy Consulting is technically my first real day job. I’ve done consistent contract work for companies, but I’ve never really been on payroll as an employee before. It is an interesting experience to say the least. I really enjoy my job and the people I work with. To be honest, I was nervous about working in an office with a lot of other people. I’ve never worked in that kind of environment before, and I wasn’t sure how well I would adjust to having a more set working schedule. But as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about. I am surrounded by really intelligent and interesting people all day, and while the days can get long sometimes, it’s nice to actually have my evenings and weekends to myself for once in my life.

At first, I thought that I would be able to have my job and still do some freelancing work on the side for a bit of extra spending money. But these past two months, I’ve had so little time to myself it’s scary (my excuse for the lack of activity here). After working long days and volunteering with the local SARP Center, I just want to eat dinner and relax when I get home, not sit at my computer for another few hours and work on client work. It’s been hard enough to keep up with my existing clients for maintenance work, there is no way that I could handle any new clients. So I’ve decided that I am no longer accepting new work, and most of the rest of my summer will be spent re-evaluating which clients need me to stay working with them, and which clients I can help to better manage on their own so that I can lighten my load just a little more before my classes start-up again in September.

With that said, it is a bitter-sweet transition. On the one hand, I’m really enjoying my job and working with other people every day and I’ve learned a lot already. But on the other, I’m really starting to miss waking up when I felt like it and having the freedoms that come with being your own boss. C’est la vie.