alexmikro.net » Google

Gmail Tap: Who needs 26 keys anyway?

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:26 +0000

Last year Google revolutionised emails with Gmail Motion, this year they went with Gmail Tap. Why bother with 26 keys, when you can just use 2 to type all your messages? Tap away!

Well, they sure know how to celebrate April fools’ day in Google

Filed under: Fun Tagged: April Fools' Day, Gmail, Gmail Tap, Google, Google's hoaxes, Morse code

Social search now by Google

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:41:05 +0000

Google has just launched a new search service based on social data: Google Social Search. It works like this: if you have a Google profile, you can add the social networks you’re a member of (e.g. Twitter or FriendFeed). Then, when you do a Google search, you will also get results that have to do with your friends, like a post from a friend’s blog. Of course, if you don’t add this information to your Google profile, or if you are not logged into your Google account when you do a search, you won’t get any social results.

Here’s a demo video of this new service. You might notice that Google is quite concerned about privacy issues, reassuring us about the transparency of the service throughout the video:

Posted in Social Web Tagged: Google, Internet search engines, social networking, social networks, social search, Social Web, Web 2.0

Web 3.0, Linked Data and the Semantic Web

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:16:23 +0000

Greg Boutin, founder of Growthroute Ventures, recently posted a series of articles about the latest trends on the web: Web 3.0, Linked Data, and the Semantic Web. Greg attempts an in-depth analysis of these concepts, the technologies and innovations behind them, and how they can be combined to form the next generation web. Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb has posted a recap of these articles, together with some of his views on the future of the Semantic Web and the role of Google. Richard concludes:

It’s clear to us that the time for structured data has come. We’re beginning to see it in the current wave of Linked Data sets being released, and in the support that big companies, like Google and Yahoo, are showing for structured data. Who knows, maybe the Semantic Web is nearly upon us too.

Posted in Semantic Web Tagged: Google, Greg Boutin, Linked Data, Richard MacManus, Semantic Web, Web 3.0, Yahoo!

Our privacy on the Social Web

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:17:40 +0000

How is well is our privacy protected on the Social Web? Of course, you can (and should) take some basic precaution measures, like not giving away sensitive information that can be used for financial fraud against you. However, there are issues beyond our hands that depend on how the Social Web handles our information.

Google recently published a paper entitled “(Under)mining Privacy in Social Networks”. The paper outlines some possible threats and proposes a number of counter-measures. In particular, the issues identified have to do with:

Activity Streams: These are collections of actions we perform on the Social Web, e.g. adding a friend, or posting a video. We may not be aware of all the actions fed into our activity stream. Also, we may not be able to control who sees our activity stream. For example, when Facebook introduced Beacon, purchases that I would make on eBay would be fed into my activity stream and would also be available to my friends.
Unwelcome Linkage: This happens when web links reveal information about us that we did not intend to.
Merging Social Graphs: It is possible to uncover personal information by merging data from different Social Web sites.

Getting complete control over the construction and publication of your activity stream is the key. The authors propose a solution in the form of a privacy warning system. When you upload information on the Social Web, you should be warned whether this information could be used to make connections about you.

Posted in Social Web Tagged: eBay, Google, privacy, social networking, Social Web