CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2012-08-01 04:34:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

(Cross-posted from Metafilter)

I've played a hell of a lot of social games. I started with Farmville and managed to achieve my goal of beating 90% of my friends through sheer bloody-minded stamina and min/maxing, at no small annoyance to my girlfriend who had to put up with me returning to the computer every few hours.

Then I moved onto Frontierville because it was supposedly 'better' and likewise got pretty far in it, to the point where I succeeded in my personal goal of getting rid of all the trees and weeds (which is kind of a clever if evil tactic on the designers' part to keep people like me playing). But I recall thinking that Frontierville, despite its incredible shininess and points and such flying everything, was oddly unsatisfying and bizarrely complicated. So off I went to...

Cityville. Perhaps one of the more interesting Zynga games (relatively... more »

2012-07-12 23:46:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Mainly for +Todd Gage and +Carol Smith.

2011-11-08 16:33:04 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Now you can look me up with my AOL Google keyword: yoz

2011-08-17 21:59:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

My kids adore this app. Essential, along with the Toca Boca series. The makers tried to get a free copy to me but it never worked, so I had to buy it. Glad I did.

2011-08-05 18:40:22 (29 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Interesting read, especially given all the kerfuffle around name-related problems with G+.

2011-07-24 09:11:59 (15 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

People who like it here and have even the faintest notion of how software and websites are tested and made better should have more patience for Google to achieve the right balance of the principles mentioned in the below-linked artlcle.

I'm not saying that it's acceptable to have people's entire suite of Google services disabled due to perceived or actual profile TOS violations. I'm not saying that the concerns of community members like +Liz Henry , +Autumn Tyr-Salvia and +Doctor Popular are unworthy of note. I'm not saying that Google shouldn't more quickly address the concerns that our peers are raising.

But for pete's sake, can we please keep it constructive? Doom-and-glooming articles like +Violet Blue 's on ZDNet today, to which I will not link, are not constructive, even though they do raise awareness of the issue. Projects like +Skud's... more »

2011-07-23 21:02:01 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 3 +1s)

A chance to collect hard data on Google+'s current real name policy in practice: http://is.gd/nonplussed

+Rebecca MacKinnon +Sarinee Achavanuntakul +紅杏翻墻 I wonder if anyone could work with Skud to get this form translated into languages where Google's policy might be having a disproportionate effect? She's at skud@infotrope.net.

2011-07-20 22:14:34 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Two Lion problems and short-term workarounds:

"Drag, can't drop" in Finder: Sometimes the Finder can get into a state where icons can be dragged but not dropped; they just seem to stick to your mouse pointer. To unjam this and make icons generally droppable again, sleep & reawaken your Mac.

Keyboard locks up: The keyboard will appear to stop responding almost entirely; the key events are being received at OS level (so, for example, switching between Spaces using the keyboard still works, and all key presses are shown in Keyboard Viewer) but these events aren't being passed to apps, including Finder and the screensaver password dialog. This apparently happens in Snow Leopard too. +Chris Devers suggested that it's related to Spaces, and since I've moved all my apps into a single Space I've stopped being afflicted; using multiple Spaces... more »

2011-07-20 00:38:32 (24 comments, 6 reshares, 8 +1s)

Next time you're asked "What's wrong with requiring people to use their real names in public?" point them here: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F - fantastic work by +Skud . and the other Geek Feminism folks.

Following comments, edited to add: Note that this is not aimed at the Google+ Terms Of Service specifically, especially since Google seems to have taken large and rapid steps to fix earlier account suspensions. However, the conversation was valuable in re-raising why the overall concept is important. (And, as usual, it's worth pointing out that there are huge and useful differences between anonymity and pseudonymity.)

2011-07-19 19:45:18 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Is http://www.amyeditor.com/ really as awesome as it looks? It's an open source collaborative code editor with TONS of features (including TextMate bundle support, apparently). How come nobody else seems to have picked up on this? (Apart from it needing PHP + PostgreSQL)

2011-07-15 01:34:39 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

(via +Dave Kap)

2011-07-14 20:51:34 (15 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Based on the problems I'm having with it, I'm starting to regret upgrading to OS X Lion. I'm running the GM (close to final version). Problems:
1. Mission Control (the replacement for Spaces) is nice in some ways, but anyone used to Spaces (especially with multiple monitors) is going to be seriously pissed off about how much more work is required to arrange app windows.
2. Random keyboard lockups after switching between apps. Seems to be some problem with OS-level key events not being passed to apps. I haven't seen any other reports of this, so maybe I'm running something weird that's triggering it, but it's seriously disruptive.
3. Mouse drags of Finder icons sometimes won't let me drop the icon. Huh? (Possibly related to 2.)
4. Sometimes the computer will take ages to sleep after shutting the lid, or just won't sleep at all; I need to manually... more »

2011-07-14 18:09:14 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hey +Tantek Çelik, what's the current state of the whole schema.org debacle?

2011-06-30 19:17:44 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Yoz Grahame changed his profile photo.