Google Preparing "Google Mine" For Organizing and Sharing Your Stuff On Google+ 129
MojoKid writes "George Carlin said it best, we all 'need a place to put our stuff.' It seems the folks at Google understand this age old wisdom as well and as such will be launching a new service. Google Mine will reportedly soon be integrated with Google+ so that users can share their belongings with friends in circles they so designate. The new service will also allow G+ users to rate and review items as well, so that anyone in your Google+ stream that you allow, can see the items and your opinion of them. Reportedly there is also an Android app on the way for Mine, which seems like a natural of course, for sharing your stuff on the go. What's perhaps most interesting about the prospects of Google+ Mine could be the secondary benefit that Google receives from data 'mining' your shares on the items you own, use or want."
An internet of free physical packages (Score:2)
Described by me here, but others had the idea before: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#Princeton_University_Freecycle_Transportation_Network_--_an_internet_of_physical_packages [pdfernhout.net]
From there, as a disclosure to make it harder to patent it all:
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Princeton University Freecycle Transportation Network -- an internet of physical packages
Here is just one more example of changes to PU's infrastructure and operations from a Post-Scarcity point of view. These might take burning another billion
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's also "Google Latitude", in which we give Google latitude to do what they like with our location data.
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But what could me more metaphorically obvious, than your circles using glass for mining from the stream?
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"They couldn't have chosen a more ironic name for it if they tried to. Or could they, /. ?"
My thoughts exactly. "A place for your stuff" == "A great place to go mining."
I don't think it's necessary to point out who those miners might be.
Re:Is it the 1st of April yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've given up on all stuff Google. I really just want one solid place to provide a good chunk of my services (so that it is all cohesive), but Google can't get their shit together. Things come and go overnight. They get abandoned. They make things very convoluted (Google Drive/Docs could not possibly have a worse interface and a shittier capability to sort/organize things -- want to easily find the size of a file in your google docs/drive? Good luck!).
All Google has done is proven themselves to throw too many things at the wall, abandon them quickly, and do them poorly. Once a big Google fan, I've come to realize that their big hits are less from the wisdom of Google and their engineers and more a result of simple probability. If you throw 500 things at the wall, two of them are inevitably *not* going to be total shit.
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I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating.
I am pissed about iGoogle going away this coming November, but we have known about it for well over a year, giving me plenty of time to find a replacement (which does not appear to exist, for some reason).
I guess these hassles are the price for free services. Wait, I thought having access to my web activity was the price for free services. Well, maybe the price is too damn high.
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There are all sorts of iGoogle replacements. Just to name a few...
NetVibes [netvibes.com]
U-Start [ustart.org]
Proto-Page [protopage.com]
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http://www.ighome.com/ [ighome.com] is also worth mentioning.
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Thank you, friend. Netvibes hasn't worked for me, but I will try Proto-page right now.
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Ah, those are RSS readers. I've got one of those already, embedded in my iGoogle page.
I see below someone has suggested igHome. It looks a lot more like what I'm looking for, but only if it has a widget for my Gmail accounts.
That Proto-Page is an awfully nice RSS reader, though.
Re:Is it the 1st of April yet? (Score:5, Funny)
They couldn't have chosen a more ironic name for it if they tried to. Or could they, /. ?
G-spot was taken I guess.
It seems like calling this google Mine, is going to cause havoc when people google the term Data Mining. I'm actually wondering if this might even have been the intent to cause obfuscation. They should have called it Google `Nuff Stuff Already or G-NSA for short, to really cover their tracks.
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I wonder if it will let you list music, software, movies and other intellectual property? These days you don't usually own it, you simply have a license to use it under very limited circumstances. Claiming ownership could be considered copyright infringement or "theft" if you are the RIAA/MPAA.
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What's the point? (Score:2)
Sure, this move benefits Google greatly -you're tagging their database and giving them more personal info, for free.
For the user though, not so much. If you've bought a hot new phone and want to show it off, its much more satisfying to do it in person where you can gush over it and more importantly, see your friend's reaction.
If you must share the news online, theres so many other ways to do it, over FB or Twitter for instance. All this instrusiveness achieves is make people more wary of using G+.
Not sure what I'm more excited about (Score:5, Insightful)
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More likely anyone who owns certain fertilizers or a pressure cooker in a metropolitan area will be getting a knock from the anti-terrorism squad.
Should be interesting when people start putting their gun collections on there.
Meh (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just waiting for the day when i have to close my gmail account due to the autoshare feature where all my g+ contacts get a a "Meh just received an email from amazon where he bought a facial massage, click here to buy too!"
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I actually like some of the things google does.. but I had to unistall google+ from my phone because I couldn't find a way to stop it from uploading all of my photos, and videos. I don't like the fact that they took out the setting that allows you to only upload what you want to. I don't care that they don't automatically share. I don't feel like going through and deleting 50 million images and movies every time I log in to G+
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
I'll assume that since you're not an AC this is a serious complaint and not FUD. You can stop the "auto-backup" of all photos under Settings/Accounts/Google/Google+/Camera & Photos/Auto-Backup ... just set it to "Off". Here's hoping this doesn't get modded down as well. I've just about had it with the various FUD and astro-turfing campaigns going on right now.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Settings/Accounts/Google/Google+/Camera & Photos/Auto-Backup ... just set it to "Off".
Which is the default, actually. If it's been uploading everything, it's because you explicitly told it to.
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It is also possible to turn it off on the Google+ Android app, Settings->Camera and photos->Auto backup
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Hrm.. funny I had read that on the web. Couldn't find the off. I tried it before and after posting here.. then I shot video of the settings to show I wasn't making it up, and while viewing the video before uploading, I saw it. Right at the top, blue button. I'd been looking at it the whole time, and just couldn't see it. God knows this is the biggest problem I have when writing code too.. just some dumb spelling error that takes me an hour to debug because I can't see it right in front of me...
Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people have too much stuff, and we don't even realize it. Get rid of half your stuff and you will find it incredibly liberating. You will discover that you your residence is less cluttered, it's easier to focus, it takes less time to clean and it's easier to spend time at your residence. Donate it, sell it, give it away, loan it, just plain get rid of it. You'll thank yourself for long afterwords.
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The more you have, the more you desire. Age-old truth. The weird mixture of the economy of scarcity and life of abundance has this schizophrenic effect on people.
Stuff is Terrible! (Score:3)
And the more you get rid of, the more the rest of us can buy at used prices, reducing our COL, stress, and shopping angst. Works for me. Get rid of stuff! Stuff is bad! Particularly stuff like, um, money, yeah, and cute girlfriends, and um, let's see, great audio gear, fine guitars, and... oh, hey, stuff like an original Apple I, you have one of those, it's *really* ruining your life, just email me and I'll solve your horrible problem; I'll pick it up personally for you. I am your best friend in this matter
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this to be quite true. Though not entirely voluntarily,* I recently downsized from 25 years of built up possessions to almost nothing - a backpack and a couple of suitcases worth of belongings. It is absolutely liberating. Yes, there are some things I miss - but I don't think of it nearly as much as I would have thought. The freedom of not worrying about "things" is very real.
* I was relieved of many of my possessions in my divorce; I shed the rest of them moving to Europe after a lifetime in the USA.
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What I want to know, is why did it take me so LONG to realize this? I'm sure there are people who have come to this conclusion before I did (and I'm 43), but it seems many people either realize this by about my age or don't EVER realize it.
Now if I can only convince my wife we need to get rid of all the crap....
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Don't confuse what slashdot nerds care about with what people care about in the real world. Slashdot groupthink is representative of about 0.1% of the real world, tops. It's insignificant when it comes to market influences.
In the real world, nobody has a problem with google, and they are happy with google's free services. So happy that I know very few people who don't use gmail, and nobody who doesn't use google search, google maps, and google apps if they have an Android phone.
That will continue to be t
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If by first collaborate you mean the first to fight the requests and release the number of requests to the public then yes. There is also a huge difference between the potential to use a power for evil and actually doing it. They ain't perfect but they're miles better than *all* of their competitors, explaining the FUD spread by ACs like you over the last few years.
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But this is not the government, which is for the people, by the people (the NSA's government, that is).
This is capitalist juggernaut sucking up all your data, reading your e-mails, eating your cookies and storing your wifi data so your phone knows where you are, and so does Google, so it can market intrusive ads to you. It's completely different.
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The notion that the government will not molest the biggest collector of marketing data is insane.
What I'd like to know is if Google could expect to say "no" and not suffer for it.
Why I even heard that the FTC was nudged into going after Google for antitrust issues even though there were other companies that were at least twice as bad.
Strangely, at the time, Google was also one of the most uncooperative companies with the government.
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And the funny thing is that there are all these alternatives out there. If you really cannot live without commercial systems, at least spread out the information among several of them that are owned by different companies. Or you can just use something like DuckDuckGo as your search engine, French DailyMotion for videos, rent your own website/e-mail and get your own domain. You can use that system to put files on the "cloud" with old-fashioned FTP.
Those are very easy things to do, even if they are not flash
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Or you can just use something like [...] French DailyMotion for videos
Sure, now show me the tool that converts all the embedded YouTube videos and YouTube video links to their DailyMotion equivalents.
You can use that system to put files on the "cloud" with old-fashioned FTP.
That is terrible advice. Try sending your technologically challenged friends a file from your phone that only they can open, on their phone, using old-fashioned FTP. Even if you manage to somehow do it, it will be such a huge pain in the ass that you'll probably never do it again.
Personally, I see BitTorrent Sync (-like solutions) combined with proper upstream bandwidth going a l
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Well not everybody will have the knowledge to do these things. I understand that, but you can perfectly use something like WebDAV if you know a little bit about Linux/Apache, and when you do you can give your friends access and split the bills for hosting if you like. It's more that if people realize that there are options for most of that stuff things are totally doable.
As far as converting YouTube videos to DailyMotion it is really easy to do. Just get any YouTube downloader app from CNET Download.com and
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Well not everybody will have the knowledge to do these things. I understand that, but you can perfectly use something like WebDAV if you know a little bit about Linux/Apache, and when you do you can give your friends access and split the bills for hosting if you like.
For some definitions of 'perfectly'.
1. Start Whatsapp.
2. Open group chat.
3. Send attachment.
Alternatively:
1. Open file
2. (on Android) Share/send to using: Google Drive/Dropbox.
Both methods allow sharing something with multiple receivers and only those receivers, and require almost no effort of the receivers.
Let's be honest: the only private alternative that is (almost) as easy for everybody as the above is to roll your own centralised Google Drive/Dropbox alternative like owncloud or using a distributed sys
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Techno-hipster cries "wolf". Yawn.
Well, Google was third on the list in one of the diagrams, not first. And Google doesn't collaborate with the NSA other than manually responding to national security letters, which they are required to do by law.
I've been inside the Google datacenters, for weeks at a time, including the CCNRs (network hardware center). There is no way that NSA has direct access to Google, unless there was a conspiracy involving thousands of people, including me.
The only information that
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More like, with the IRS.
what could go wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Location service [X]
social networking system to say when out [X]
Home information based upon past social posts [X]
List of property [X]
One bad share later...
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1. Google has been working on it for less than 15 minutes
2. Everyone at google who is working on this or signed off on it is collectively dumber than you
3. Google wants their users to get victimized
"Don't make it public by default." Bam, solved that problem in about a minute. There are probably other ways google could try to prevent thefts.
ISR (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia Google mines YOU!
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And in the US, the IRS mines you!
Burglars will love this. (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder who is dopey enough to use this?
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Burglars aren't likely to be in your Circles on Google+. (And if they are, you deserve any thing they get).
But by the same token, simple notes work fine. Anyone could write such an app. Oh, wait, someone already did. [google.com]
Why does Google have to know what you lend out?
So they can tell your mooching friends where they can borrow something?
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People whom you know to be burglars aren't likely to be in your Circles on Google+...
YAKTANNTSIO.
(You already know the acronym, no need to spell it out.)
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The same sort of people who accept join/friend requests from all sorts of people they don't actually know on their social media sites.
On the other side, they are called "marks."
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I accept "friend" requests from anyone -- as a teacher/lecturer/author/poet/musician, I figure people I don't know are people who have been to one of my classes or performances.
But when I choose what I share on Twitter or FB, I keep in mind that many "friends" there are strangers. I share only what I want to publish publicly.
This is like a creepy social experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
These last couple of years are taking the shape of a creepy social experiment in which calloused developers working for billionaire corporations, see just how far they can go. "New app lets you share with all your friends and social-network-acquaintances the consistency of your last poop." Wow! Now with new icons and a fantastic new color scheme! Available for iphone, android, Blackberry, but not Winphone (sorry, folks)!
Then watch everyone rush out and coo over the new app, forgetting the fact they're now publicizing something even more personal than the last time.
How far will they go? I dunno - how far will we let them? Me, I'm going anti-social, and fast. This new social network trend is a recipe for disaster, and I plan on laughing about it from the safety of my underground weapons cache and tinfoil hat collection.
Right now at iPooped HQ (Score:1)
"He's onto us! It leaked!" ..."
"We'll have to rush to drop it at AppStore!"
"Did we flush all the bugs?"
"Yes, it's solid!
OK, OK, I've got it, I'm leaving now, I'm leaving by myself, no need to use force...
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"Ligten up, Francis."
I have a Facebook account, I share on Google + as well, and I was one of the fist Ingress'ers in my city. I've shared nothing of any consequence to anyone in doing so. My life hasn't nor will it change in any significant way because of these activities which bring me a few moments of fun here and there at the cost of NOTHING to me. I already was a number to corporate America long ago, but I avoid consumerism and its pitfalls on my terms just fine.
Sometimes I wonder why I read /., wit
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laughing about it from the safety of my underground weapons cache
There's still room down there??
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We've been sliding down a slippery slope.. (Score:1)
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Is it PRISM-compliant too? (Score:5, Funny)
I would never share anything with my friends without letting the NSA know.
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You can count on it being IRS compliant too.
Carlin wouldn't approve (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to blow up in their face. (Score:2)
Google's rules for three year olds: (Score:4, Funny)
Google's new storage service: MINE!!!!!
Mine!
Mine!
Mine!
Unless it violates the law. Then it's yours and we'll tell the FBI about it.
Re: Google's rules for three year olds: (Score:2)
Google can't control themselves (Score:1)
When Page became CEO he started on a house-cleaing binge, shutting down various services. They said they had launched too many little products/initiatives, and now needed to put more resources behind fewer projects/products.
Recently, with the launch of Keep - which looks like a nice start but is very barebones - and now the possible launch of Mine, it looks like they have already forgotten that sentiment.
Re:Google can't control themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
They shut down money sinks, and are opening up potential new revenue streams. That's how business keeps moving forward. The reason for the closings and new launches is the same - profit.
They had to explain it to the users without alienating users. "Your service that you like costs us too much money and isn't popular enough to monetize" doesn't have that snazzy ring to it.
Google seems very much in control of themselves, outside of the various FTC probes they will be subjected to since they are trying to monopolize all data everywhere, as the stretch goal.
taking bets: how long before THIS service ... (Score:3, Insightful)
...goes kaput?
at this point, only fools trust google to keep things running. put your 'stuff' there, get used to it and in a year or two, they change their minds and either change the terms on you or outright cancel it.
I would not touch google services ever again. 'free' is not free when you have to spend time, later on, relocating.
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What? Facebook which enjoys changing its interfaces every 6 months for no reason? (and no warning)
Myspace? Friendster?
Google is easily the best when it comes to discontinuing services since they usually let you know ahead of time and give you the option to migrate your data. Even though some of the things they've discontinued have been really random (Reader didn't need much maintenance, neither did iGoogle) they've given people ample notice.
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Google Mine Correction Officer (Score:5, Funny)
One Timex digital watch, broken. One unused prophylactic. One soiled. One black suit jacket, one pair black suit pants. One hat, black. One pair of sunglasses. $23.07. Sign here.
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We are definitely past peak Google (Score:1, Redundant)
I am not even going to waste electrons describing why Google DataMine (the "data" is silent) is a bad idea. These reasons will have already occurred to anyone intelligent enough to bother discussing them with.
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Hey guys, what are you not talking about?
yes this is what I needed (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing better than stupid opinions people express on Yelp is having my own personal Yelp where people write their idiotic opinions about my house and possessions.
Also coming soon - Google Mime! (Score:5, Funny)
Pretending to give a shit about your privacy.
Ever feel like a lab rat? (Score:1)
Google scares the hell out me. The stuff coming out of there has become really creepy. Are we on a unstoppable path to a Dystopian future?
Google Ours (Score:2)
Sounds ridiculous, but (Score:2)
Am I getting old? (Score:2)
Neither slashdot summary nor TFA give me a clear idea of what this stuff is about. Am I getting old or is it just too early in the morning?
At least I understood this is about giving Google some personal data. But that (Google + personal data) is a easy finding
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Me too.
And no Wikipedia article, but Engadget had an article days ago, it's a system for listing things like book or DVD loans. IE, you can post your library to your circle of friends and they could respond, "I've always wanted to check out X". Voilà, sharing resources.
I'll find it useful to keep track of gear left with others.
How long before (Score:2, Interesting)
They require use of G+? How many times must I close a tab in order not to accept its TOS?
no face, no space.. /.'s as social as I get. Screw G+
Carlin never said stuff (Score:1)
He said "shit". He talked about people running out of room for their shit and having to get a bigger house so they could put more shit into it. And that is what 90% of what most people own is, shit. Even more so now that both software and hardware tech are designed around planned obselesence. That nice new smart phone or table you have will be shit in 12 to 18 months when the new model comes out. And your personal information is shit too. The price of all your personal information google has on you is proba
Re:Carlin never said stuff (Score:4, Informative)
No, he said "stuff". [songlyrics.com] C'mon, dude, the title of the fucking album is A Place for My Stuff [wikipedia.org] . Have some respect and don't misquote Carlin:
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It was censored
Really? really? (Score:1)
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Ever buy a new _ and tell people about it? Or get a message from a friend about their cool new _? That's all this is. Get over yourselves.
If this was just some small and relatively obscure part of the internet, then sure.
But this is actually Google doing this. There are PhDs working on this tech!
These are people that could (and should) instead be using their intellectual capabilities for solving the world's problems.
This is not cool.
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This can be made even more general and confusing! (Score:2)
Copyright Law Extension (Score:2)
Meanwhile... (Score:2)
I'm preparing to migrate away from as many Google services as possible.
Close to a good idea, if it weren't from the Goog (Score:2)
I'd actually been thinking about a service somewhat like this for a while now, but apparently missed my opportunity to have my app bought out by Google. Pity.
The problem with Google's project is it appears (I haven't read TFA yet) to only go half-way: it allows me to list the stuff I've got, but doesn't allow me to share my stuff with my friends. I'm much less interested in putting up an inventory of everything I own to allow my friends to tell me how much it sucks than I am in putting certain things up tha
Keep your stuff in a Tent (Score:2)
We should be moving toward keeping all our 'stuff' in a distributed individual server which we personally control, but services can access via standard API.
There is a new project toward building this interoperable API - tent.io [tent.io] . It is just getting started, but deserves community support.