Google Buzz and the Not-So-Live Web

The thing Google has realized is that people want everything to happen instantly. This is most true when it comes to communication. However, that is not the area in which Google shines. They have probably done more for means of instant communication than any other company on the Internet. The product that comes to mind that no one really cares about is pubsubhubbub. This is a way that instant communication means can scale in a decentralized method.

What it comes down to is alerting other services when an action is performed. In my case this is most often posting a status message on Twitter. Facebook manages to import this message as me status in only a few seconds. Occasionally it doesn't work, but the delay is typically very small.

Now one of the benefits of Buzz is that you can import feeds from other services. One of the first things I did was import my Tweets into Buzz. Twitter is great because typically the things you say are time sensitive. Right now, messages take many hours to be imported into Buzz. So when I say I'm watching TV at 9 PM on Twitter, it gets sent out to the world on Buzz at 3 AM and my friends thing I'm crazy. You would think at the very least they would use the post time included as part of the Atom feed.

The real problem probably doesn't boil down to technology. The problem is more likely companies and openness. Twitter believes it has value in keeping their data locked down, at least slightly. This is not going to be the case moving into the future. Users are going to be in control of their data, and if we want two services to integrate and they do not, something is going to have to give.

Google Buzz Further Bifurcates the Conversation

I post my status messages to Twitter and have them imported as my Facebook status. I occasionally have people @ reply to me on Twitter, but more often I have people like and comment on my Facebook status messages. With Google Buzz I will have my Tweets imported and syndicated (along with blog posts). This adds another place where my posts will be commented on and liked. While Google was very smart in integrating Gmail with the service to guarantee a large user base out of the gate, it didn't solve the underlying problem and actually made the current environment worse.

If Google Buzz provided some way to bring together the reply to Twitter messages and Facebook status messages along with comments on blog posts and other platforms and combined them with messages posted directly on Buzz, they would have something going for them. However, this doesn't appear to be the case.

While everyone says Buzz competes with Facebook and Twitter they are missing the point. With regard to Facebook, the value of the company lies in the information they know about how people are connected to each other. Google wants this information and this can be seen in their other services such as Google Profile. Buzz will provide an accelerated way for Google to gain information about who we are connected to and this is really the center of the product.

As long as Buzz integrates with a large number of other Google products seamlessly it will do more good than harm. From how I have seem my friends use the product so far, it looks like a large number of Google Profiles will be filled as people use the service. This opens the door for social search. This will definitely be a service to keep an eye on as the web continues to evolve.

Tablet PC Handbook

I have been working for the past two months on a new project. This is my first attempt to launch a website that is dedicated to a specific topic. The Tablet PC Handbook is a wiki-based living book that I have been writing and developing as a resource for information about Tablet PCs. I was hoping to have it more developed by this point, but I have made available what I currently have. Moving forward I will continue to develop more content and fill in the gaps that still exist on the site. There is an associated blog and twitter account for the project.

Check out the Tablet PC Handbook at http://tabletpchandbook.com

Seeker: Reinventing Assassins

In the past, Speed School Student Council hosted a game called Assassins that was played at Speed School. The concept was fairly simple and it was an easy, social, game that allowed players to have fun during the semester. The rules were fairly simple: You were given a target and a secret. The targets were assigned in a circle such that when you found your target, you then were to find their target. The system kept everyone honest by requiring you to enter your targets secret to confirm the "kill." In the end there would be only two people that would need to find each other. Despite the violent name, Assassins is harmless and is more like a big game of hide and seek.

The concept of the game is brilliant, but there are some major shortcomings. The main problem is that the game was designed to be played with pencil and paper. If every player was given an index card with their target, when they found their target they got their index card, in the end the player with the most cards won. However, Assassins in practice was played on the web, requiring players to memorize or carry their password with them and go back to a computer to tell the system they found their target.

Less than two weeks ago I was talking to Mike and Alex about the game and it turned out if we slightly changed the rules some interesting things happened. We played out what would happen and it seemed to work. The first problem is the circle of targets, in the end two people have each other. Additionally, the targets are not secret because the person you eliminated has no reason to keep quiet. Another problem is that once you are found you are out of the game, no more fun for you. Lastly, requiring players to use a website to progress in the game takes you out of the experience. I believe I managed to fix all of these shortcomings with Seeker.

The first change is to issue contract targets at random. The first side effect is that multiple people can have the same target. No problem, first one to reach the target gets credit. When issuing a contract there are some limitations: you can't have someone that has your, you won't be issued your previous target, and you won't be issued someone who is not in the game. This still provides a large degree of randomness in the game. When you are eliminated you fail your contract and if someone reaches your target before you do you fail your contract as well. Since contracts continue to be issued, this is not a problem. When you are eliminated or found you are only out of the game for a short period. In this case 24 hours. This respawn time is taken straight out of the way video games offer. To keep the game moving contracts will expire after 72 hours.

The last problem is how to play when you are not around a computer. While some players would have smart phones, it is not a guarantee. However, a large fraction of college students have text messaging plans. ZeepMobile provides a free web based text messaging API that was used to allow players to play the game. By allowing players to get their current secret and target along with completing contracts via text messages it makes the game more transparent to the player. Additionally, players will get text messages when they get a new contract, are eliminated, or fail a contract.

I managed to code the entire game in a single weekend and we started playing the next week. It is still somewhat a work in progress and I am still working a few of the bugs out, but it seems to be working. The game is open source and you can see the code at seeker-game on Google Code. The best part about Seeker is how simple the concept is. At the core, there is only a table of users and a table of contracts. The most complicated part is keeping the game state updated. Once that is ironed out the rest is up to the players.

UofL Ekstrom Library's August 2009 Flood Collection

In August 2009 there was a major flood in Louisville. With my trusty camera I hiked to UofL's campus with some friends and took a lot of pictures along the way. I posted them to my blog (Old Louisville Flood Flood Damage) shortly after the flood. I posted all of the photos to Flickr under a creative commons license and submitted them to the library for their digital archive.

The library posted the August 2009 Flood collection recently and it is worth taking a look at. However, if you only want to look at a few photos, look at the photos I submitted to the collection.