Not so busy, not so productive

[altivo]

I actually took a nap in the middle of the morning today. Because I felt like it (or felt bad enough) but it's very rare for me to be able to sleep in daylight even for a few minutes, let alone a full hour

Comments

[schnee]

I'm about to trash Google's "Buzz." They pushed it at Gmail users pretty hard, as in saying "no thanks" just meant they kept asking you again and again.

Really? I declined it once and haven't heard from it since then (there is a "Buzz" link in the sidebar next to "Starred" now that I don't need or want, but that can be dealt with using AdBlock or your chrome/userContent.css, assuming you're using Firefox).

Of course, after reading the rest of your entry, I'm glad I declined, too.

[altivo]

I think you'll only get that sign-up panel again if you log out of Gmail and back in, as I do when I move from machine to machine at work. Or they may have fixed that issue, but it was definitely happening in the first 24 hours or so.

If you haven't touched Buzz or used that link at all, so you have no connections and no profile for it, then you can go down to the very bottom of the page and click "turn off Buzz" in the tiny options in the footer. That should get rid of the tab and make things look the way they did before the monstrosity was released from the lab.

If you looked into the Buzz tab even just once, though, it has created a profile and automatically linked you to other people and applications. The "turn off Buzz" option does not undo that, and you'd want to undo it all and delete the profile first. Unless you do that, all the potential privacy issues still remain active, only you'll get no notification if anyone starts probing around.

[schnee]

I just tried to log out and back in, and didn't get another message asking me about the whole thing, so I assume that was a glitch that got fixed (or an attempt at obnoxious marketing that turned into a blunder and was scrapped).

No, I haven't used it at all, although as the article hrrunka linked pointed out, that apparently still doesn't keep Google from forcing it on you behind your back, anyway. x.x I got it all disabled now, though, I think - I hope.

[altivo]

The really OBNOXIOUS thing about what Google did was that automatic profile creation business. They joined you to other people and other people to you, based entirely on an automated examination of your e-mailing habits. If you ever doubted that Google is tracking what you do, now you know. Worse, once they made those connections, ANYONE could see who you had been e-mailing by just following you on Buzz, even if you weren't actively using Buzz yourself. This sort of thing is just inexcusable

[schnee]

Yeah, indeed. I've got to say I really liked Google better when they were a search company - right now, it seems more like they're trying to become the private-sector version of the NSA.

[altivo]

Or worse, the corporate version of your maiden aunt, trying to engineer social contacts for you. ;p

[schnee]

*shudders*

[hrrunka]

The risk isn't how it bothers you, but rather how many other Google users you end up being linked to. A friend linked this article which pointed out that just saying "no thanks" doesn't stop it, but merely hides from you what it's doing behind your back...

[schnee]

Ah, thanks - hmm, seems like Google still made me "follow" eighteen people and had five follow me despite my declining the whole thing (and not even having a profile, either).

I got rid of all of these, though, and turned the whole thing off for good now afterwards. :)

Still, all in all, I guess it's just another reason to move away from GMail in the end.