Circles

Stoned wallabies fingered as crop circle culprits

Stoned wallabies, high after snacking on local opium plants, are responsible for carving out crop circles on Australia's southern island state of Tasmania.

OK, we had the same "say what?" reaction upon first hearing about this story. But Lara Giddings, Tasmania's attorney general, recently told a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops that the animals get "as high as a kite after munching on the plants before trying their artistic touch with the local terrain.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Giddings told the hearing, according to the BBC News.

And then they do what any self-respecting wallaby would do in such a state: They crash.

"We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high," Giddings said.

OK sure. But who got the wallabies stoned? Aliens, that's who.

This article originally appeared on CBSNews.com.… Read more

Facebook exec: Google is blocking my book

Last year, Paul Adams rose to prominence as the Google designer who detailed an idea for grouping social contacts that's now the core "circles" feature of Google+.

Since January, though, Adams has been working for Google's social-network rival Facebook, and he's not happy that Google blocked a book called Social Circles he'd written on the subject.

Yesterday--two weeks after Google+ launched--Adams described why he left Google for Facebook. It wasn't because of the book, though.

The main reason I left was that there was an opportunity at Facebook that I felt I couldn't turn down...Having said that, there were other factors that made my decision to leave for a competitor easier. Google is an engineering company, and as a researcher or designer, it's very difficult to have your voice heard at a strategic level. Ultimately I felt that although my research formed a cornerstone of the Google social strategy, and I had correctly predicted how other products in the market would play out, I wasn't being listened to when it came to executing that strategy. My peers listened intently, but persuading the leadership was a losing battle. Google values technology, not social science. I also moved because the culture had changed dramatically in the few years I was at Google. It became much more bureaucratic and political.

But the book clearly is a sore point. "Google blocked me from publishing my book," Adams said flatly. … Read more

Katango's algorithmic approach to Google Circles problem

It's not just Google that's been thinking about easing the awkwardness of social interactions with your work, school, social, family, and other types of contacts online. A new start-up called Katango promises to automatically detect natural groupings of people on networks like Facebook.

Like Google Circles, the management interface for the new Google+ initiative, Katango is a tool for individual users to better understand and segment their own contacts, rather than a group-creation tool where everyone opts in to participating.

"We wondered why there wasn't any automatic in social, why with all this technology we were … Read more

How a Google+ gap keeps me on Facebook

I've been using Google+ a lot the last few days, and I like it--especially the circles idea that lets me put people I might want to address into specific groups.

Circles are a lot more nuanced than the all-or-nothing broadcast technology I'm used to with Facebook and Twitter. But unless Google figures a way to fix one particular shortcoming, circles don't fix a problem I've had for years: the social networking tension between personal and professional use.

Here it is, in brief: I want to offer public commentary on the tech world through Google+, but I don't want my ceaseless techno-talk to clog friends' and family's Google+ streams.

It was for this reason that last year I unplugged my Twitter stream from Facebook and this year set up my separate professional Facebook page.

I'm willing to cut Google, Twitter, and everybody else with an online service some slack here. It's genuinely hard to create a product that can withstand the duality of people's different roles. Most of us have grown accustomed to having separate home and work e-mail addresses, for example. Facebook offers an ability to run linked personal and professional personas.

I'd hoped that Google, which explicitly boasts about Google+'s ability to handle social networking with both your boss and your family, would have handled the situation better. So far I think it's got the best start, at least, with circles.

Circles let me specify a certain audience to receive a message, which is great for a targeted note to coworkers, close friends, or people who live nearby. But my targeted messages--about my weekend family trip, say--are very different than my public messages about subjects such as Web browsers.

The only sensible way to handle the work-related messages is to post them publicly. I want people to read them, after all, and I certainly don't have time to manage some constantly expanding circle of people I presumed would be interested.

If they're public messages, though, I would be burdening my family and friends with the controversy of WebGL security when all they wanted to hear about was the adventure with the inebriated hooligan in Dover. … Read more

Does the social graph really need rebuilding?

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Itamar Novick's bio below.

The social-networking war between Google and Facebook is officially on with the introduction of Google+ this past week. How ironic that it happened on the same week that Facebook's old nemesis, MySpace, was sold at a fire sale price to an advertising company.

The battle is already filled with intrigue, as we hear about Google+ invite scams, a competing Circle Hack alternative, and how Mark Zuckerberg has the most followers on Google+ so far.

For a social-media fanboy like me, it's all fun to watch. … Read more

This Day in Tech: Interview with Mac pioneer and Google+ contributor; Twitter handles 200 million tweets daily

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, July 1.

Google+ contributor and Mac pioneer talks with CNET (Q&A) A core feature of the new Google+ service is Circles, which makes it drag-and-drop easy to build "circles" of friends in the browser. Meet Andy Hertzfeld, the man behind Circles--and the original Mac. More

Living life without unlimited data CNET's Maggie Reardon helps current Verizon customers understand their data options, and also offers pointers on choosing among Apple, Google Android, and RIM … Read more

Google+ contributor and Mac pioneer talks with CNET (Q&A)

Thirty years ago, Andy Hertzfeld was a young computer engineer working at Apple Computer on the first Macintosh under the leadership of Steve Jobs. As Jobs had repeatedly promised the small team, their creation would change the world, and he was right.

Today, Hertzfeld's passion for technology and his experiences at Apple have been baked into a new product that Google unveiled to the public this week. Called Google+, it's a suite of features for helping people communicate across the Web with friends, family, and co-workers. If that sounds like Facebook, it should. Google+ is openly described as … Read more

The 404 776: Where it's Steak and Pi Day (podcast)

Happy Pi Day; it's March 14, which means it's the day to commemorate the mathematical holiday started by Larry Shaw, who created it in 1989 while working at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. We're all about celebrating nerds, so enjoy a sweet or savory pie today with us!

Wilson's enjoying Pi Day with a slice of his own Apple iPad 2; he and Jeff waited patiently in line to become two of the 500,000 estimated iPad 2 owners over the device's launch weekend. Many Apple stores officially ran out of stock this weekend, and now analysts are expecting up to a two-week backlog on orders reserved online.

You can read CNET's official review of the iPad 2 here, but we also want to talk about the new features being added to the iPad 2 with the public release of iOS 4.3.… Read more

Talk about pressure

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Google compiles pre- and post-earthquake images of Japan

AT&T allows U.S. customers to call and text to Japan for free through the end of March

Rumors circulated over the weekend of a new Google social network called Circles

Sony temporarily shuts down Final Fantasy MMO games to help Japanese utility companies save power

Netflix is not interested in selling movies

GPS manufacturers protest the LightSquared broadband spectrum

The iPad 2 sold like gangbusters this weekend

A new iPhone app mocks your performance in the bedroom

Google to launch new social network at SXSW?

Updated at 10:20 a.m. PT: Sources within Google deny that anything will be launched at SXSW this evening and say that the ReadWriteWeb report is inaccurate.

When it comes to social networks, Google has not managed to garland itself in too much glory. Critics suggest Google doesn't quite understand what makes people buzz.

And yet an interesting report has emerged that says Google might be using an event at SXSW this evening to launch--or, at least, preview--a new social network.

According to ReadWriteWeb, Google's social network is to be called Circles. At its heart it purportedly … Read more