Little Running Bear

Can someone explain to me the relationship between Google+ and Buzz and Reader? When I share something in Reader, shouldn’t I have the option of sharing it with my Google+ circles? The people who follow me or who I follow on Buzz have no relationship with the Circles on Google+.

It all seems a bit messy and ill-conceived.

Google’s social media platforms need a good spring clean and while I love all the potential Google+ offers I want it to be really very bloody good. I want seamless integration into my daily activities.

It worries me that Google abandons good ideas too quickly rather than updating them, improving them and, quite frankly, behaving like the company that brought them to the position they’re currently in.

Without the seamless integration, early adopters will just forget about Google+ like they did with so many other recent Google products.

If you’re sitting around worried about your life and how hard it is, you could do a lot worse than to listen to some recordings of Mike DeStefano (here’s to absent friends).

I first came across DeStefano when I heard him do a story on The Moth Podcast about his wife dying in a hospice. Then I heard him tell another story about wanting to commit suicide.

The thing about DeStefano: He was really funny. He was laugh-out-loud-for-minutes-at-a-time funny.

In this interview with Marc Maron (fast forward about 20 minutes to get to the actual interview) he comes across with a philosophy that can only be described as simultaneously positive and misanthropic.

You’ll be glad you listened and if he doesn’t motivate you to be a better person you deserve all the shit you get dumped on you.

In a response to something we had going on on the Boxcutters website, Danny Danger Oz wrote a great post about everything we were all thinking.

If when you do speak up it’s only to point out mistakes, complain, or offer what you believe is constructive criticism, no-one takes the times you are silent as affirmation of their work.

Thanks to John Richards for pointing this out.

Back in April my parents bought an iPad and wanted me to help them set it up. Everybody says it’s really easy to do but how easy, really?

So I decided to not help them but film it and look at what they went through to get it done. Then I wrote about it on Big Red Tin.

Here’s a taste:

The only computers my parents have ever used are Windows machines. They call viruses “bugs”. My father still complains about the purchase of a seemingly unnecessary maths co-processor in 1990. My mother writes down all the instructions I give her and follows them one by one. These are not people to whom computer technology naturally presents itself as being in any way obvious to use.

Read the rest