The truth is this:  when your picture goes out into the lovely webs of cyberspace, it’s never gone.  It might be just sitting on a shelf without a label – that is, until the technology to link you to the evidence comes along.  As an example, try Googling yourself on Google’s image search:

When I tried this, I found my photo on page 17 of the results from a site that I had never seen before.  That alone was pretty strange.  However, don’t stop there – add a piece of information about yourself that others might know (like the company you worked for last) and you might be surprised how much the field narrows.  I went from page 17 with millions of hits down to page 1 with my picture as number 2, just by adding a former job to my search.

Companies liked LinkedIn and Facebook are the source of many of these images, but there are also companies that archive older pictures from the Facebook or LinkedIn database.  For example, Radaris (which does background checks) has a copy of my LinkedIn image (how is that ok?).  Long story short, even if you remove a picture from the site you’ve signed up with, you might be too late.

There really isn’t a fix for this. The best answer is probably not to post things unless you’re sure you want the world to see it.  I know that we’ve heard this before, but the supporting evidence is rarely so easy to find.

Best of luck staying safe out there!

~ab

You were right.  It took me nearly a year, I swore up and down that my Flickr account was the bees knees, I wrote articles and explanations of how to use Flickr’s advanced tool set, and I ruined perfectly good cocktail party conversations, berating all services that did not stack up to my personal choice.

A year has gone by and now, like a dope, I have to reverse my position.  Why?  Because Picasa just changed the game, and I can no longer ignore the beautiful integration between Picasa and all my other apps.  Before I start into the details, this isn’t to say that Flickr is a bad service – it’s just no longer for me (yes I’m trying to save face – but let’s not write off Flickr entirely… there are too many devotees).

Without any more ado, here are the top 4 reasons I’ve decided to change over.

1. I can host 80GB of files for $20 a year.

This was the clincher, so in a way, it’s normal that it be my number 1  reason.  Suddenly, Flickr and Picasa are essentially evenly priced.  Before this week, buying the required space for all my photos, and future photos, was simply exorbitantly expensive.  My last defense crumbled, which allowed me to acknowledge the next 3 points…

2. Integration

In Flickr, when I wanted to send a photo to someone, there were three options – 1. I had already done this before and saved the email address. 2. I had to go into my email and find the email address before hitting send back in Flickr.  3.  I could just copy the link and ignore the email functions because my address book wasn’t available.

In Picasa, I just click the share button below and poof – my contacts are available from Gmail.

As you can see from the picture, it even looks like a Gmail message.  This is what makes the integration between these tools so powerful.  You don’t have to learn anything new.

This doesn’t end with email.  There is integration with other Google products too.

For example, you can specify the site of the photo on a Google Map, exactly like you did when you were looking for takeout last night.

If your camera (or cell phone camera) can geotag to your photos (a longitude and latitude value), these will appear in the familiar Google Maps interface, just to the right of you photos.  This makes sorting photos by destination a very pleasant task.

As far as integration goes, using Picasa if you already use Gmail for contacts and email will save you a ton of time.  If you don’t use Gmail, you might not be better off…

3. Ease of use

Gmail caught on because it was easy and fast.   When I started evangelizing, often I heard “but I already have an email program” and “I just don’t get it”.  These same people are nearly all Gmail users now.  I have to believe that the snappy response time for searches and other tasks makes a serious difference.  I won’t rant and rave about how Picasa takes things to a new level – in most ways it doesn’t.  However, it does benefit from the same value created by Gmail and other Google products – a simple interface.

4. All the same features (or at least the ones I use)

Finally, it’s worth emphasizing that this is not a baby version of the other popular photos sites.  There are some serious features involved.  Hardcore photographers will be asking, where are the camera related details for each picture?  Where are the ISO settings?  Where are the exposure details?  Well these are all available (if you hit more info), but are hidden to make the screen less cramped and to provide a better viewing space for your work.

Other fancy pants features exist too:  We’ve mentioned geotagging above.  There is also facial recognition, allowing you to tag your friends photos (using their integrated contact information from your Gmail).  In addition, there are collaborative albums, fans, commenting, full tagging features, video capabilities, email upload, and mobile access…

In conclusion

Yes I was wrong, dear wife, but I’m working to fix it.  This probably won’t be my last change of heart in the technology department.  You do deserve credit for seeing most of this right from day one.  Nice work.  Feel like writing for JAA?

~ab

Recently, I’ve read  several articles on the brilliance of Wolfram Alpha, a new search tool from the computational giant Wolfram (makers of Mathematica).  The trend is obvious – we are aiming for natural language search that combines data from many sources into one view.  What does this mean?  Let’s do an example to explore a bit.

Tylenol vs. Aspirin vs. Ibuprofen

Here is the test: I simply type Tylenol vs. Aspirin vs. Ibuprofen into several search engines and record the result as of 8/8/2009.

Let’s start with plain Google.   Here is the result.  I received 715,000 hits.

The top 3 results from Google (for me) are these:

Not particularly enlightening – it does seem like result number 3 is pretty good, but I’d have to go somewhere else (away from Google) to know for sure.

Now let’s try the exact same search in Wolfram Alpha (don’t worry, we’ll give Google another chance in a bit).  Here is the result.

This is looking a bit better.  It figured out that I’m not a doctor and translated Tylenol to acetaminophen.  It is also showing data side by side, providing comparison – albeit of data that I’m probably not interested in if I’m just trying to figure out what to take for my hangover.  What is missing here is a filter, some sort of way to go a chemical/medical direction, as shown above or to go a average Joe direction, as in the (partly) fictional case of a hangover.

Now let’s try a new product that (despite claims of Google to the contrary) is supposed to be a rival to Wolfram Alpha.  It’s called Google Squared.  I put the same search in and here is the result.

Not super inspiring but there is hope.  I now spend a few seconds putting my queries into the separate boxes and hitting “square it”.  Here is the improved result.  What is cool here is that we’ve got a variety of results.

And now things get interesting, because you can add and delete columns on the fly.  After another minute of playing, I get the exact comparison that I want:

That’s all I really wanted – the dosage, a bare bones description and a picture.  It’s still not perfect.  I would love to type “hangover” in as a new column and get a recommendation (yes, yes, no) on which one to take.  You can also click on any result to see Google’s confidence in the result (it always seems to be low…).

Now that we’ve gone through all that – what worked and what didn’t?

Limiting results – I don’t need to see 715,000 hits.  I was really just looking for 3, with some data on each.  Traditional Google fails because it’s overload.  Even if the best results are on top, I still have to comb through other websites (which takes me away from their advertising and loses them money, as a side note).  Wolfram Alpha goes in the other direction, limiting results to the point of mere scientific curiosity.  Google squared limited results but allowed me to add more data to my view and I think this is why I was happiest with the result.

Categorizing data – Plain Google didn’t categorize my results.  Wolfram Alpha chose the categories for me.  Google Squared let me attempt to categorize data as needed.  Again, this flexibility was what provided the best view of results for my query.

Magical data categorization, based on the information gleaned by watching me over the past year, could easily have been included in my search results for Google.  Although you can read my bio (AB), none of these sites knew of my background in Chemistry, and the the result sets were primarily scientific in nature.  The reason for this is quite obvious, data is easier to manage than opinion (the foundation of probably 99% of the web).  Chemical data is the easiest thing grab when someone searches for a chemical, but where was the insight into me?  I would have loved a scientific paper on my search or a list of hangover remedies (although I would have been ashamed if the hangover remedies were proposed first).  Admittedly, it didn’t take much more Googling to find these results, but I wish that categories were proposed based on me.  It would make me feel like all this information on my habits was worth having in the cloud, rather than a concern for my privacy.

It seems like my wish for a mind-reading search tool is still nowhere close to being granted.  Given that so much of my data is publically (and frighteningly) accessible, this is disappointing.  However, the future is bright –new tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared are going in the right direction – they just aren’t there yet…  Certainly, these tools are making search easier, but there is room for a brilliant product, that uses your history in a positive way to make accurate suggestions, categorized by relevant categories and easily adaptable to the whim of the user.  When this arrives and once the privacy concerns have been answered, everyone is going to take notice. However until that day, these incremental improvements are not going to make waves.

~ab

First of all, check out the tour page before testing – there’s a bunch of tips and although the search engine is not exactly intuitive, it’s certainly effective.  You can easily find hotels, health tips, or even automobile stats using plain English queries.   I’m not crazy about the results from the maps functionality, but the flight status information is fun and easy to use.

The advantage to Bing is the categorized result filtering to the left of the screen.  Try typing Ipod in and your are given options for how to refine your search (shopping types, buying guide, reviews, FAQs).  The actual results are not improved, as you’re still relying on the web – they are not adding content – but the pertinence of the result set does increase.  I can see how some might even prefer this product to Google’s search, as the “decision engine” does simplify your life.  Not interested in shopping results?  Don’t filter by that value…

Just for fun, here is a search for “Just an Asterisk”: http://www.bing.com/search?q=just+an+asterisk.  However, here is the same google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=just+an+asterisk.  You’ll notice that this blog is the first option in Google, but not even present in Bing (although who knows?  This article might move us up the Bing engine results…)

Try it out.  Obviously, I’m lukewarm about this new search engine.  However, the idea of this blog is introduce new and exciting technologies.  Bing seems like it should be on the radar.  Maybe one day you’ll say – I read about that on JAA…

~ab

PS: For those looking for even more search engines to play with, try www.cuil.com.  It’s a hoot…

According to Wikipedia, “Gmail launched on 1 April 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public on 7 February 2007″ (source). I have used Gmail since 11/2005 (not to toot my own horn or anything) and I’ve consistently been amazed with all of the features (often unheralded) from Google. Google has their own page devoted to why you can use Gmail (here), and others have written good reviews (joke), but as always, I’m going to try to provide you with ways to use Gmail better!

Note: To spice up these articles, I’m going to refer to a few Google “labs” features, so you’ll need to activate these features individually in your Gmail account. You can access labs from your settings menu (top right) on the tab labs.

Search better…Boolean terms and saved searches

You’ve probably used Gmail’s search feature before. It is easy and quick, finding emails by keyword exactly in the same way as Google.com. Using the “more search options” feature makes searching even easier and allows you to specify exact criteria. However, what you may not know is that the standard search bar has hidden power. Actually, it’s not really hidden, Google is very open about it…. but unless your first thought when you search is “boolean operator”, perhaps a little more detail is needed?

For our purposes, the relevant Boolean operators are “AND”, “OR”. It turns out that George Boole wanted to define relationships between objects mathematically and created logic. His brilliant ideas have become part of search… To receive results with both “cats” and “dogs” type “cats AND dogs“. To receive either results about “cats” or “dogs”, type “cats OR dogs“. Not rocket science so far, but what if you combine the two? You could search for either references to “fish” or references to both “cats” and “dogs” by typing “fish OR (cats AND dogs)“. Get it?  Note: the capital letters are REQUIRED for these operators to work correctly (as far as I can tell).

Finally, you can remove terms that are messing up your results with “-“. For example, let’s say that I search for “bank” and “new york” because I need to find a specific email for my finances. My Chase bank balances (which I always seem to forget to delete) hog all of the results, something in the order of a few thousand. How can I see results without any reference to Chase? Add “-Chase” to my search terms and all Chase results will be ommited.

Other interesting operators to help you search:
Has:Attachment = only show me emails with attachments
label:mylabel = filter to show only mylabel emails
is:unread or is:read = read or unread
is:starred = only starred
from: and to: = specify the sender or recipient

This is only a sampling of the possible operators. For a full list go to this help page from Google.

You might be thinking that this is great, but more than a bit labor intensive. Agreed! Saved searches are the final piece of the puzzle. Google labs has enabled a feature that allows you to save any search for later use. A simple link will bring up your search results again (including all new additions). I have one for unread mail (using “is:unread“), one for pdf files (using “has:attachment AND pdf“), and one for emails from my wife (yes, I’m shamelessly sucking up). To use saved searches, simply do the following:
1. Enable Quick Links in your Labs settings (don’t forget to save changes  at the bottom of the settings page!):
 2. Search (using the standard Gmail search bar) and create your query like we did above.
3. Create a new link and give it a title you’ll remember:

4. Revel in how efficient you’ve become!

As a final note, remember that you can create quick links from any search you do in Gmail. Give it a try and let me know any brilliant searches you saved in the comments!

That should be enough for part 1. Still to come in the Gmail series:
- Remember better… Tasks, Calendar in Gmail
- Keep in contact better… Chat, Video, chat history!
- Organize better… labels and label colors, Contact lists

~ab