jcksn

Don’t dive head first…

via Google founders mentor Rajeev Motwani found dead in swimming pool | Technology | guardian.co.uk .

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

via Goodbye Google | stopdesign.

Andy mentioned something that was brewing in the back of my mind:

Chrome, the browser, or Simon Says, the game?

• Dean’s back. A man, with witt and character to be reckoned.
• Joe has a nice set of Captioning Sucks! banners up on flickr.
• I can now create a google on top of google – if I wanted to. Related, “cloud computing” is really popping onto the radar.
• BMW 520d Beats a Prius in Efficiency:
  

  “…on a 545-mile London-Geneva run, when a diesel-powered BMW 5-series posted better MPG stats than a petrol-based Toyota Prius hybrid. The BMW 520d with a 2.0-liter diesel engine and regenerative braking posted an impressive 41.9 mpg – about 0.9 mpg better than a full hybrid Prius. The difference may not seem huge. But given that the Prius weighs about 500 lb less, BMW’s fuel economy lead was significant enough to raise new questions about which drivetrain technologies are more envir [via motoringfile]

• Japan sings Turkey’s national anthem:

Google is getting their hands on your data for features.

Arriving in my email inbox:

“We are writing to let you know about a change in our service offerings. If you have logged into your account recently, you may have noticed that you can now choose to share your Google Analytics data. By providing data sharing options, we hope to provide you with transparency, control, and new services based on your preferences.”

In an email, from google.com to customers

and then under the sharing options it says:

Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service

Enable benchmarking within Google Analytics by sharing your website data in an anonymous form. Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report aggregate trends in the benchmarking service. Google will also use this data in anonymous form to improve our products and services.

“Industries Trend Map,” ???

I’m surprised I haven’t heard more organized conversations about Google Analytics and what they are doing with our data. (I have been glazing at the “Google is evil” conversation, because it mostly sounds like craziness. But, now I’m interested.)