Category Archives: google

Goodbye, Flickr

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I’ve been saying “goodbye” — figuratively speaking, of course — to a lot of things I’ve used in the past.  For instance, I recently said “goodbye” to using Firefox in favor of Google Chrome.  Now I am saying goodbye to Flickr, a service I’ve used for many years.

Instead of Flickr, I plan to use Google’s Picasa Web Albums (PWA) for uploading and sharing my photos from now on (in addition to sharing them here on this blog.)  The reason for this switch is simple:  Google recently dropped the storage prices to ridiculously low levels.  I’m able to pay $5 per year for 20 Gb of storage.  Compare that to paying nearly $25 per year for Flickr.  I realize that with Flickr, storage at the Pro account level is unlimited, but 20 Gb of storage on Google is way more than enough for all of my online photo albums.

I also realize that Flickr will remain a favorite of photography cognoscenti, and that my switch to PWA won’t hurt Flickr in any way. But there are several other reasons I made the switch besides the cost factor.  Since it was first released, I have used Google’s free desktop photo application, Picasa.  It is head and shoulders above just about every other similar software application out there, particularly with the latest release.  I’ve tried a lot of other similar applications, including iPhoto, and I’ve decided that Picasa is the best for my needs.  There is tight integration between Picasa and PWA, so this tilts the balance in favor of switching to PWA in my mind.  In comparison, Flickr has all kinds of third-party plugins for uploading and downloading files and other stuff, and I’ve tried them all.  Picasa is way ahead in this area and Flickr is at a significant disadvantage.

Also, because Picasa is available on Windows and Mac, I am able to interact with my photos no matter what computer I am using.  This is critical.  I can download photos from my cameras onto any of the computers I use, load them into Picasa, and then sync with PWA.  I can then download them or sync them from PWA to Picasa on any other computer.  I can do all this on my iPhone as well (for this, I use Pixelpipe).

Picasa Web Albums lacks many of the nice features that Flickr has, I’ll admit.  For example, PWA only recently began to track number of views for each photo, as well as number of times a photo is “favorited.”  This was built into Flickr and is much better executed.  In PWA, for example, I can’t see a summary of this data. Instead I am only able to see it on an individual photo by photo basis.  However, over the years I have become a bit frustrated with Flickr’s overall capabilities as well.  Google’s Picasa has excellent face recognition, for instance.  Flickr does not.  Flickr’s overall interface is bland and somewhat stagnant (my opinion).  Picasa Web Albums features much better geolocation capabilities.  PWA also has tight integration with Google Contacts and Flickr doesn’t have anything to compare to this.

I’ve actually used both services for years.  The only substantive thing holding me back from making the switch was the cost of storage on PWA.  Now that it is set at a reasonable price, the decision was a no-brainer.  (And did I mention that the extra storage I purchased for PWA can be used for all kinds of other stuff, not just for photos?)

Goodbye, Firefox

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Yesterday I quit using Firefox and switched completely to the dev channel for Google Chrome. The main reason for switching is that I got tired of waiting for Firefox to start up. I realize that it can be slow due to the number of extensions I have installed but the wait time is still ridiculous. This, after having heavily tweaked Firefox to get maximum speed.

Chrome has always been faster but it has not been my default choice before now because of its limited options for extensions that I really rely on such as IE View, AdBlocker, etc. Without support for those sorts of things, Chrome was compelling but not up to snuff. Now, things have changed.

My number one beef with browsers is load speed. Chrome addresses that, but it now does more. Support for extensions in the dev version, and the availability of key, useful extensions to use, make Chrome into my new default browser. It even has the ability now to have an IE view for any webpage, which is a must since many of the sites I use for work are built for IE (a really annoying practice, btw). Plus, I have an ad blocker, a nice Gmail notifier, a great Google Reader notifier, and even a built in Twitter reader/monitor. All of this comes with little to no performance hit.

Goodbye, Firefox.

New job, new direction

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Monday afternoon I accepted an offer to take a job in a different group within the library where I work.  Basically what I’ll be doing is leading efforts to implement and expand search and taxonomy company-wide.  A lot of work has already been done so I’ll need to get up to speed quickly on that.  Also it is important to note that there is a whole team of people with whom I will be working on this large set of responsibilities.  I have always felt it was a huge plus that the library group in my large, global company has been given the responsibility for search and taxonomy.  That means that just about everywhere there is a search box on a page within our intranet or on external Internet sites, that is set up and maintained by the library.

This will probably be the most “un-library-like” job I have ever held. But I am ready for a new job and a new direction.  I will still be working within the library but the scope of the job is much broader than that.  One of the new things I’ll be doing is a lot of client development and managing client relationships as well as relationships with a new set of vendors.  There is much more to it and frankly I don’t understand it all just yet.  My official start date will by September 29 but I am already easing into the role and out of my existing one.  This means that the next several weeks will probably be pretty crazy.

Why the change?  Well, there are many reasons.  Mainly, I have been looking for a way to get to another level of responsibility and this provides that.  I have long wanted to try new things, to have a new set of challenges and learning opportunities.  There is no question in my mind that libraries and information centers of all stripes need to have a great awareness of and involvement in search, especially in this Google era when everyone thinks search should be as easy to use as Google and just about everyone uses Google many times a day.

It seems to me that a lot of people in my company aren’t happy with search as it currently is established, so I hope that along with many others, I can help to improve that.

Applying new lipstick on an old pig

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One of my work responsibilities is to maintain the Voyager integrated library system from Ex Libris. A new release (7.0) is now available and one of the features that is getting the most publicity is the new web interface to the catalog. It features dramatic architectural and feature improvements from its predecessor, as well as adding new features that weren’t possible before. The Voyager product manager and folks from Ex Libris customer support have posted several enthusiastic reports on new features to come on the Voyager discussion list (closed to customers only), and I think they are doing a fairly good job of trying to build excitement. Except that all that I’ve heard and seen so far leaves me cold.

Why? Well, although I definitely agree that there is much to like about the new interface, it’s not really that new. During my last stint at what was then Endeavor Information Systems three years ago, I participated in user studies at some existing Voyager customer sites that were based this same interface. The functionality and changes I see in the Voyager 7.0 web interface (a.k.a. WebVoyage) were all designed and finalized, as far as I can tell, three years ago. That’s light years in technology time.

Worse still, the things that are so “exciting” about this new interface (persistent URLs! WHoooHeee! — different “skins”! Oh my! — a truly simple, Google-like basic search! Isn’t that original!) are features that have been available and taken for granted in other systems for years. And they are ones that in some cases have been implemented better than what I have seen so far in Ex Libris’s Voyager offering.

Sorry, but this is just a new flavor of lipstick applied to an old pig. It would take a lot more than this to get me excited about this particular product again.

Extreme focus on user experience in the context of the web

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A recent post from the Publishing 2.0 blog really got me thinking. Somewhat provocatively titled, “If Your Users Fail, Your Website Fails, Regardless Of Intent Or Design,” the author shares his views on the extreme importance of user experience in the context of the web. He holds up Google as the gold standard and frankly, I think he has a great point. He says that Google succeeds, and deservedly so, because of its intense focus on the user experience. One statement of his captures this view:

“Google is obsessed with making sure its users never fail, no matter how “stupid” they are. Google makes users feel smart. That’s why they keep coming back.”

Wow. All I can say is, read this post and think it through very carefully and you will gain some insight into the problems we who work in libraries face when it comes to user experience. This model or viewpoint — making users “feel” smart — is so radically different from what many libraries have tried to do in the past. I’m encouraged by the noticeable proliferation of job announcements or library initiatives that contain tasks relating to user interface design. See here and here for examples.

Having computers understand what humans write

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Jon Udell of Microsoft recently referred back to a quote from Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, who stated the following in response to a question about RDF and the Semantic Web:

“Look, putting angle brackets around things is not a technology, by itself. I’d rather make progress by having computers understand what humans write, than by forcing humans to write in ways computers can understand.”

I find this statement really interesting. I’m not sure that I’ve sufficiently wrapped my mind around its implications but I think it is part of the core of what has made Google search so successful. People, especially librarians, may be critical of the so-called “Google effect” but I just can’t fault them too much frankly on that because I think this statement or philosophy is spot on. It puts the human as front and center and in control, not computers or technology.

It is really, really hard work to make technology look easy for humans, or to make it work effortlessly for them. I’ve often used the analogy of how serene a duck looks as it glides across a lake. What isn’t seen is the tremendous activity taking place below the water’s surface as the duck actively paddles its feet to propel it across the water. Google is fortunate to be in a position to throw tremendous amounts of brainpower and sheer numbers of people into projects to make technology understand what humans want or expect. As a result they can offer the simplicity and ease of use of their search platform (and other offerings).

I love the Spanish word, ojalá, that captures what I feel about this: “Oh how I wish” that we who work in libraries had the luxury of more brainpower and more manpower to crack tough technological nuts to provide better services for our users! I am not meaning that technological solutions are the only ways to provide better service; that is just what I am focusing on as I think about this statement of Brin’s. I am not sure what to do about it personally or professionally, although I am in strong support of open communities of practice rather than closed silos where data (and to some extent, technologies for utilizing that data) are kept under lock and key.

Faster is better

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When it comes to the Internet, faster is better, just about always. I have been thinking a lot about this since reading a post about this issue in the Official Google Mobile Blog a few weeks ago. In that post the author wrote about how Google used analysis of their search logs to see the dramatic effect of improving search response time for mobile users. If things are slow, they lose users. If things are fast, users want to use their service more.This one simple reality has so many big implications for me and for library technology. In an environment in which I feel constantly unable to satisfy user demands, where there is so much work that needs to happen in order to create a good user experience, it behooves me to focus more on this one thing. Make things go faster for users. Faster = happier users.I have spent time thinking about how true this is in my own experience. I am a bit of a new technology gadfly, willing to try new things and jumping from one to the other. Take for instance my web browser habits. I have used just about every web browser there has ever been, and also just about every version or iteration of them there ever has been. Overall I am most satisfied with Firefox and that has been my main browser of choice for a very long time. But I have tried Flock, Opera, and of course Internet Explorer. I know that IE is my absolute least favorite. So, OK: Firefox is mostly my favorite, IE is my least favorite. Sounds simple. But it isn’t. I can’t stop myself from jumping around to try others or different iterations of all of the above. For example I have used all different kinds of browsers on my mobile devices, different ones on my home computers, and still others on my work laptop. I am not 100% satisfied for long with any of them. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons but one constant issue I have is speed. I want lightning-fast response time. Period. No matter what. Any delay is frustrating.This is why I have always played around with Safari, both for Mac and Windows. The earlier iterations of Safari for Windows were just awful. But even so, it was lightning fast, faster than anything else I’ve ever tried. I hate that I can’t customize it like I can Firefox. But I’m at the point now where speed trumps “like to haves”. Last night after reading some good reviews of the latest version of Safari for Windows (3.1), I decided to once again take the plunge and try. I am really happy with it so far. It’s early days yet and perhaps my fickle heart will eventually tire of it. But it is stable, and lightning fast, and that really counts for a tremendous amount in my book.So…I do believe faster is better, even with some caveats. It’s like the time back in the late ’90s when I moved away from dial-up to cable Internet access. I have never looked back nor wanted anything else but the fastest connection. I can’t imagine going back.We who work in libraries, especially with technology, would do well to simply try to make things work faster for our users. I bet we’d have a lot more happy ones if we emphasized this aspect of our online services more.