#“Sorry Google, Plus Local without a Platform won’t save Google Plus”

6 days ago, I posted this on Google+

The response from a Googler was that “I don’t have anything new to share right now”. The following day, Scoble stated that he had heard they will announce a Write-API at Google IO.

Instead, they make the blindingly obvious step of merging Places with Google+ Pages to make Plus Local. A totally sensible move.

Except,Zagat? Really? Youhonestlythink you can jam that down people’s throats? How many attempts has that been now to beat Yelp and TripAdvisor? All of them flops.

We’ve closely watched reviews on Places since they removed all Third Party content and,unsurprisingly, it’s a graveyard, just like Google+. We know plenty of SEO people who try to cajole people into writing reviews on Places. Not because Places is any good but because Google highlights its own reviews in the SERPs over organic results and doesn’t put them where they belong, in the ads section at the top. And lets be absolutely clear, that’s what they are, Ads for Google.

The ever growing outcome of this is that people are losing trust in the search results. They are no longer the best results, they aredisguisedads.

So now we have the same trick all over again, this time on Google+. They are using the fear of not appearing well in the fiddled search results to get businesses to use Zagat reviews on Google+ instead of providing a PLATFORM for businesses.

I criticise Facebook relentlessly but this is one thing they have done 100% correctly and they have handed Google its ass on a plate. By providing rich APIs and a Platform where businesses can build whatever they want, you get real innovation. Facebook doesn’t dictate. As long as you aren’t doing anything nefarious, they want you to do what you like.

Google cannot overcome their centralised command and control mind-set. The thought of letting businesses and users do whatever they damn well please on a Google property fills them with dread. “What do you mean you want to put your reviews on Google+? No no no, Zagat only.” This is Google’s fatal flaw. They don’t trust anyone to have good judgement. They know best. Meanwhile Google+ remains a graveyard apart from the hardcore group of SEO people trying to figure out how they can game the search results.

Google, the only way to save Google+ is to turn it into a PLATFORM, not a destination. You have lots of very smart people working for you. But there are a lot more smart people out there who don’t work for Google. They are the ones who’ll come up with your next big leap forward, not you. Enable and facilitate those people instead of hawking some hackneyed old “it’s Google’s way or the highway” mentality.

If a full rich Platform with Write-API access is not announced at Google IO, you can expect to see the Google+ brand to disappear before the end of 2012.

#“My 70 year-old Mother has out-hacked me with Sugru”

My mother isn’t obviously technical but she is incredibly practical. This is a woman, who at the age of 12, was sent to live with her widowed Grandfather, to take care of him! Nothing fazes her.

As she lives in Kilkenny, she always found the Sugru story interesting (Jane, the inventor, is from Kilk) and bought a packet to see what it was about.

Now, have a look at this big plastic bowl.

Not exactly special.

Except it is.

It’s over 40 years old and has been used to make my Mum’s legendary brown bread for that entire time.

A few years back it split on the side and Rose had been using various tapes etc to stop the bread mix leaking. But none were satisfactory. Then she thought of the Sugru. And it has worked perfectly. She’s delighted with it. I figure it has another 40 years to go.

For me, that bowl represents a generation of people who hate waste and believe, in their DNA, that thrift should be celebrated. And Sugru is the perfect modern symbol of that.

#“Lego Case and Sugru for Raspberry Pi”

My 8 y/o daughter and I put together this Lego case for Raspberry Pi. All design concepts are hers and she built it. My job was to make it all fit and not wobble. Which of course we did using Sugru.

The case is a lot bigger than the RPi but that gives us expansion opportunities for USB hubs and battery packs. I like it and it will be our official Raspberry Pi case from now on.

Here are theinsides:

Finally a video showing it in action with theOpenElec version of XBMC playing Peppa Pig.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc6RQejTv6Q

Oh, and here’s another setup I did last week. RPi running on battery power with wireless mouse and Bluetooth portable fold-up keyboard. I’ve ordered a cheap bluetooth mouse so I only need one USB port.

#“Quick update on Eken T02 Tablet and where is Scribblenauts for Android?”

I asked my 8 y/o daughter on Monday if there was anything she didn’t like about her 88 Tablet after a week of ownership. I assumed she’d gripe about the touch sensitivity of the screen, which I still see as a problem. Nope, she had a single criticism - the battery only lasts a couple of hours on a charge. Otherwise she loves it. She streams TV shows and movies across the homenetwork, browses the web and plays lots of games. Exactly what you want in a tablet.

I’m holding out for a 7” one with slightly better CPU/GPU and an IPS screen. Should come in around the 110-130 mark. Maybe that Ainol Elf. I doubt I’ll have to wait long.

As far as she is concerned, the only thing Android lacks is Scribblenauts. Come on 5th Cell and WB Games, get the finger out. Huge youth market for it, all moving away from NDS at the speed of light and not going to iOS.

I just checked out Sonic TheHedgehog4 Episode 1 on the Eken. However bad I thought Nintendo’s future was looking before, this game confirmed that they are dead unless they bring out an Android gaming device in 2012.

#“Node.js Chat Server running on Raspberry Pi? Hell yeah.”

Why? Because we can.

Compiling took a few stabs but not particularly hard. Runs perfectly. Not much else to say.

You can try it here. No guarantees I’ll leave it running as it’s sitting on the world’s crappiest DSL line.

#“Motorola S10-HD are brilliant Bluetooth running headphones”

The lovely people in Mobile Fun in the UK, home of a bajillion mobile and iPad accessories,contacted me recently. I’m a long-time customer of theirs and I’m a huge fan. Their Dash Genie in-car phone holder is a wonderful thing that just works.

They asked if I wanted to review anything on their site and I cheekily requested a pair of Motorola S10-HD headphones. They shot a pair over to me for free immediately.

I’ve had them for a few weeks and they are just superb. Like a fool, I bought a pair of S9’s on eBay a few years ago. I didn’t suss that the only way they could be so cheap was if they were knock-offs. They fell apart in no time. These real S10-HD’s are in a different league altogether.

The design is unusual in that they basically clamp on to your head. Some people with particularly big noggins report that they are uncomfortable but I found after two uses that they fit perfectly.

The reason I wanted them was for running. I hate the normal in-ear wired headphones that fall out constantly and tie you in knots with the wires as you run. With these, I pair via Bluetooth A2DP to my HTC Sensation strapped to my arm and I listen to all my podcasts and music. It has volume and track selection buttons on one side.

However it also works as a handsfree for the phone. If you are listening to music when an incoming call arrives, it mutes it and you can press a button to accept the call. I tested this paired to my laptop and made a few perfect quality Skype calls with it.

The big test was this morning where I ran a sweaty Bandon 10km and listened to Kermode and Mayo’s movie reviews for an hour. I was chuffed that they worked perfectly, never slipped and did not hurt after an hour. I assume the same will be true when I do the Cork Half Marathon in June. Run Keeper is also able to temporarily mute the podcast and tell me my pace every 1km. Nice.

Not much more to say. They work perfectly. They come with a variety of ear-plug sizes and they are great value. I’ll be using nothing else from now on when running.

Thanks again to the Mobile Fun crew. Still the first site I go to when I want to get something for my phone.

UPDATE June 5th 2012: I ran the Cork Half Marathon yesterday with the S10-HD connected to my HTC Sensation. They worked beautifully. No battery issues, no drop-outs and my head wasn’t sore afterwards. Which is more than can be said about the balls of my feet.

#“Alleluia - How to specify which Google Account in the URL”

I have been driven demented by Google’s multi-login feature since it launched. Every damned tool of theirs seems to do it differently. The good ones let you flick seamlessly between accounts (Google+). The awful ones won’t let you select an alternative (yes you Picasa Web) and if you logout, you logout of everything. And of course, they always default to the one you don’t want (hellooo Google Reader).

I had a brainwave a few minutes ago - what if there was a way of specifying which account you want to use in the URL when accessing a Google application? And it turns out, praise jebus, there is. All you have to do is tack on ?authuser=N to the URL (or &authuser=N if there is already a parameter on the URL) where N=0 for the default account (i.e. the one you logged in with first), N=1 is the next account you logged in with, etc etc.

So now, rather than clicking a general bookmark for Google Reader which always goes to my unused loudervoice.com Reader account and then I have to switch, I can set the bookmark to http://google.com/reader?authuser=1 and go there directly.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work for Picasa. Why Google, why?

One less thing to bug the crap out of me each day :-)

#“Connecting to your Raspberry Pi desktop over the network”

sudo apt-get install xrdp

Simples. And works surprisingly well.

#“Rough n Ready Unboxing and Booting of Raspberry Pi”

Sorry, very busy, so zero production values in this video. Three snippets jammed together but I go from closed delivery packet to fully booted and operational Raspberry Pi with browser running in a few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-c07VNczZE

Few immediate thoughts:

1. Shockingly small. You don’t realise just how small until it is in your hand
2. It just works
3. The CPU is fine but I think the 256MB RAM is going to be a problem fairly quickly. Most modern Linux apps expect more.Building Fuse from source took a bunch of tries as GCC ran out of memory until I found a low-memory setting
4. It’s slow but acceptably so
5. It runs almost cold .Gotta love the ARM architecture.
6. They should only highlight one Linux distribution on the site and put everyone’s focus on that. Far too early for fragmentation or trying to please everyone.
7. Should boot into XWindows by default and then show a “Welcome to RPi” screen like Linux Mint.
8. The efforts on XBMC etc are very exciting
9. Wireless keyboard and mouse saves you one USB port
10. 8GB Class 6 MicroSD in an adapter worked fine as the boot device
11. Full-size SD cards for pennies on sites like 7DayShop
12. It needs HW-accelerated GUI and decent Java support quickly
13. I’d love to see someone put together RPi in a case with keyboard and mouse as cheaply as possible. In fact they should make it a competition. I have a $6 keyboard coming from HK at the mo.

#“Cent The Pete running on Raspberry Pi”

A Centipede clone written by me in Z80 Assembler in 1985. Now running on the Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator on the Speccy’s spiritual successor, the Raspberry Pi.

Full unboxing video coming later tonight once it uploads to YouTube.