Touchscreen Laptops: How the Surface should have been awesome but Microsoft marketed it all wrong

Touchscreen Laptops: How the Surface should have been awesome but Microsoft marketed it all wrong

TOUCH ME. 

That's basically what modern tech has become. Things we touch, all over, with our sweaty fingers and clawing...claws. TOUCH THE FUTURE, BABY, RIGHT THERE. 

Starting with the iPhone and then moving on to the iPad (which one was the bigger game changer, who can say?), computing has taken a dramatic shift from "how can we make this as unnecessarly complex yet powerful enough to render every freckle on Nathan's face in full 3D?" to "let's make a computer even GRANDMA could use and somehow not get a billion viruses on!"

Poor grandma. 

But needless to say, making everything dumb and for babies doesn't necessarily fill every need. While tablets are an awesome, portable, streamlined, and malleable way to engage in computing, they are (like everything) limited by the software platforms they are built on. And while iOS and Android offer varying levels of software customization and options (one more than the other...), they're still a far cry from regular desktop computers. Even with the "mobile" version of multitasking, it doesn't have the true multitasking features of a standard desktop computer, with cascading windows and the ability to have fifteen programs open at once because YOU BOUGHT 16 GB OF RAM AND BY GEORGE I'M GONNA USE EM.

Even on Android, the best of the bunch when it comes to "openness" in a mobile platform, multitasking is still a massive pain in the butt that requres several steps to get to. So long as I can't have a browser and EverNote on the same screen so I can pretend to pay attention in class while still taking emergency notes, tablets just ain't gonna compete with my laptop.

Pictured: Not actual useful multitasking. And yes, this is on my android tablet. 

But then Microsoft (who, to be fair, got snubbed hard early on by developing tablet computers but suffered the crime of "not being Apple" and thus saw them fail horribly) presented something new. Something Hot! Something AMAZING! It's called...the SURFACE. And it's gonna be totally rad and blow you completely away! What is it?! Is it a tablet? Is it a computer? Is it BOTH!? Have all my dreams come true?!

Uh...that's actually a good question. And here we get into the first problem.

Pictured: The actual future of Laptops, and a garbage Tablet. Which is which? You'll find out!

Microsoft's Surface is, to put it simply, an attempt to hybridize laptops and tablets into a more business oriented, practical machine. Sort of. At least the Pro is. These things have USB ports (like actual USB ports, no weird adapter required), run Windows (though we'll get on that later), have both touchscreens and attachable keyboards (or you can just bluetooth or plug one in) and nifty little stands. And the use Windows 8, and are currently the only device in existence that Windows 8 actually sort of works as advertised for. Unless you stay in Desktop mode 99% of the time, which is how I usually experience my Windows 8.

So the Surface had a lot of fanfare when it was announced, but people were skeptical. What really made this different? Was this a tablet interface, or a Windows interface? Would it run all my old Windows software, or was it limited to the Metro (or whatever the heck it's called now) style apps? What IS this thing? And what is the difference between the RT and the Pro besides cost?

And then Microsoft did the worst thing possible. It didn't tell anybody. In addition to that, it released two tablets that (as we'll show in a minute) do completely different things but still have the same name and because of that some marketer was like "Screw this noise" and so no actual marketing got done because how do you market a product that has two of the same name but both actual products are entirely different in terms of functionality?

Answer, you don't, and Microsoft now has crates and crates of Gen 1 Surfaces lying in their warehouses untouched by humanity except to occasionally show up on deep discount on ebay or something.

Hanging out with the Ark of the Covenant probably, who knows. 

The fallout for Windows 8 is known by pretty much anybody, even people who haven't touched the software. Traditional Windows users were pissed because Metro was clearly designed for a touch screen but had awful functionality on a mouse/keyboard setup. Grandma, who was used to her iPad and Windows Vista, had no idea how to do anything because the Metro interface was also interspersed with desktop only apps (like Office. Seriously? You couldn't have made a Metro version of office? At least Ubiquitize your crappy interface, dudes!) and so she lost her mind and bought an iPad Mini instead. Hardcore users, business users, casual users; everybody was pissed off with Windows 8. The only people who weren't pissed off were the five people who bought Surfaces, because they realized that Windows 8 is actually kind of the best touch UI ever on a touch-screen device as it preferences Multitasking above all else and allows multiple full screen apps to run simultaneously on one screen, unlike any other mobile OS to date besides that crappy bootleg thing Samsung puts on their phones, but again...five people.

I dunno why I put the new Windows 8 bluescreen, but the fact it has an emote is delightfully stupid. 

And now, in some attempt at damage control, hardware laptop manufacturers (and desktop ones too) are hurriedly slamming touchscreens into their traditional laptops in some attempt to make this OS useable in some weird Hybrid environment (and selling touch screen monitors), Microsoft released Windows 8.1 (which actually isn't that bad but still has problems on a non-touch interface) as some token of goodwill that nobody noticed, and the new wave of Surface 2s came out and nobody knew why, and everybody just went back to buying Android and Apple tablets and ignoring the Surface entirely.

Which is totally Microsoft's fault, because they actually have a great product that that completely failed to market correctly.

This image could probably sell more Surfaces than all of Microsoft's marketing team. 

Ok, so here's a key thing to point out: the two versions of Surface are actually really different. Let me break it down for you in easy to use convenience. And if you didn't already know this, don't feel stupid. I'm a huge tech geek and I didn't know the exact differences until like a few months ago because Microsoft somehow intentionally made this stupid confusing. 

Pictured: Surface RT, not Pro. Really. I swear. 

Surface RT: This is the "regular" surface. The important thing about it is that it is not a laptop replacement, even though it runs Windows. It has a Desktop mode (though I don't know why; probably to run Office. Again...why is it not a Metro App?) but it can't run much of anything on it. It runs Windows RT, NOT WINDOWS 8.1. This is HUGE and Microsoft never bothered to tell anybody how dramatically different it is. Which is the biggest problem out of all of them: calling the OS "Windows" on a tablet that cannot run Windows programs. What does it run? Full-screen Metro "Apps" from the Windows Store (of which, on launch, they had next to nothing. They only barely got an official Facebook app).
It's worth noting: If you buy almost any windows "tablet," you are getting Window RT, NOT regular Windows 8.1. Again, I don't know how the heck Microsoft screwed up telling people this. The SURFACE RT will not run 90% of the software you already own for Windows. It is a tablet, not a laptop. 

This is the Surface PRo, not RT. It is completely different from the RT.  Wow, I can't possibly see how this could have caused marketing confusion!

Surface Pro: This baby is a tablet with legit laptop specs, an actual version of Windows on it, an i5 Pentium processor, a decent SSD, and a desktop that can run just about any Windows app. It has an integrated Intel video card so it can run some stuff (this thing ain't for hardcore gaming, but what laptop is?), but can also run all the same Metro apps from the Surface RT. In short, this thing is a laptop that has the sexiest form factor of all time, an excellent keyboard, extreme portability, a stand, and full Windows functionality. Basically, this is the best Windows laptop and the evolution of laptops as a whole.
And you wonder how they screwed this up.

I googled "Tablets" and got this picture. Note the lack of Windows tablets on here. Sad day. 

Did you know the difference between those two? No? Well, neither did anybody else, and with that moment of hesitation nobody bought them. Customers were left thinking "are these tablets? Or laptops? Or is one a tablet and the other a laptop? I know the Google Nexus is a tablet, and the Apple iPad is a tablet, but this Surface RT thing runs Windows...is it a laptop? I have a computer, I want a tablet...I think? Where's my dentures?"

So let me break it down how I would have fixed this if in some bizzaro world I was in charge of selling these puppies at Microsoft. Which will never happen because I know nothing about marketing, but bear with me here. Here's how you fix this.

I can get you your job back, Steve. 

1. Either dump the Surface RT, or Mash it into the Windows Phone line to prevent confusion. 
This is a big thing, maybe the biggest, is nobody knows what Surfaces are supposed to be. Well, maybe tech geeks do, but other people don't. Even now, nobody knows why they should get Windows tablets over other tablets. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say Windows Tablets are actually pretty cool, if only because 1. They run Office and 2. They have the best multitasking UI interface out of any tablet to date. In fact, Windows 8's touchscreen interface is alarmingly good, absurdly intuitive once you learn it's basic nuances, and extremely powerful while still being totally unique from both Android and iOS (and let's be honest, there's a reason Apple tried to sue Google over Android's early interface. Originality earns a lot of points in my book). In addition, they have great UI ubquitiousness across Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Xbox, with their new UI. Point being: these are solid tablets.
So market them as tablets, not laptops. Call them Windows Tablets. Call them Slates. Call them something that isn't the same as your laptop replacement. And for the love of all that is good, don't call the interface Windows and make it look exactly like actual Windows, because it isn't actual Windows. Or at least call it something like Windows Mobile or Windows: The Edition That You Can't Do Much On or something, because nobody knows what Windows RT means.

2. Oh hey better yet, how about you just rebrand all your Phones to "Surfaces," and pull the Surface Pro out and name it something else?
Call Windows Phones "Surface Phones." Call the tablets the "Surface." Problem solved. Better yet, you now are grouping your less powerful device in with Phones, where people expect them to be less powerful. Now you've beat market confusion because people expect Surface RT (which is now just "Surface Not Phone") to be a more powerful phone, not an actual laptop replacement. And you get to rebrand your phones (which probably wouldn't hurt) and you have market consistency. Wow, what a good idea.

Presented without comment. 

3. Don't market Surface Pro as a tablet, market it as the Future of Laptops
Here is the biggest thing out of all of this: the Surface Pro is NOT A TABLET.
Yes you are all scratching your heads now, but hear me out.
What do you think of when I say tablet? You probably think an iPad or a Nexus 10 or something. Basically, something that runs a phone OS on a bigger screen, right? So when you pick up a "tablet" you expect to have that limited amount of functionality, because it's inherent to both the name and the design principles behind the system. It's going to be a somewhat closed system, it's going to run full-screen apps one at a time, and it's going to rely heavily on touch and not really work with older software. It's a closed system, in a way, but it is intentionally designed to do just one thing.
Surface Pro is not that at all. The Surface Pro is a laptop that is really thin, has a detachable keyboard, and looks super sexy. So market it like that. 
Go out there and say "Hey, remember laptops? Those bulky things with keyboards attached? So blasse, am I right?! We have this NEW laptop, where ALL LAPTOPS WILL BECOME THIS. It's called the SURFACETOP (ok the name need work; I can't do everything here), or the LAP...URFACE. I don't know. Look, the name doesn't matter as long as it isn't 'Surface.' This is the way laptops are gonna be. We're gonna talk to Asus, and Dell, and Gateway, and Acer, and all those guys and be like 'Yo, you make laptops that are actually flat and portable and have detatchable keybaords, aight?!' and force the market to move in that way because we are freaking Microsoft, the biggest software company in the entire world and the king of the computing scene."
Then they drop the mic and head off stage to the cheering of geeks and geeketts everywhere, prepping the evolution of laptops and moving everything forward instead of having the market try to play catch up with these bastard hybrid laptops with touchscreens.

To be fair, I own a touch screen windows 8 laptop, and all I can think of is how much better it would be if I could just pry the screen off every now and again. 

This is where Microsoft screwed (and is still screwing) it up. As an added bonus, in the wake of the Windows Tablet (again, we have totally different branding for something that doesn't run a real copy of Windows. All Surface RTs are Windows Tablets, but not all Windows Tablets are Surface RTs. Wow, such confusion, much headache) some companies are putting Atom processors into their Windows Tablets running RT, meaning these sort of "in-between" tablets can now actually run some programs in desktop mode, but not all. So now you have something between Surface RT and Surface Pro which can't replace laptops really, but can kind of do some laptop things? Like...whaaaat?

And I really like Surface Pros. They're a bit too pricey for my taste, but that's where good marketing could have fixed it. Rather than all these weird hybrid atom tablets and totally not tablets windows RT tablets, laptop makers could be making slate laptops at affordable, competitive prices. Does anybody make Windows slates with i5s in them besides Microsoft? If I did research before writing this I'd probably know, but I'm going to go with either "no" or "not enough for me to notice."

Warning: Bad language caption. Now I'm ruining my family friendly blog appeal.
(source: JonTron)

That is the key point. Microsoft could have become Apple. Back in 2010, Apple completely changed the entire way the market looks at computers. It was arguably one of the most brilliant shifts in how we perceive computers since the invention of the personal computer (plus it opened up a new field, HCI, so I finally can do something with my psychology degree!). While they couldn't have rivaled that, Microsoft has the stopping power in this industry to force a change in their direction. They made an OS that is completely reliant on touch technology, and works best on a tablet-like interface, but can still offer a full Windows experience if the device is powerful enough. If they'd just gone out and been like "Yo, this is what a Laptop is now, PARADIGM SHIFT!!!!" like Apple did with the iPad, they could have been pioneers (and gotten back at Apple for ripping them off after their tablet PCs failed years ago). The market would have moved with them. Laptops would (finally) be phased out and moved into this newer, more portable and more convenient system. And they could have still made their derpy basic tablets and just tied them into their phone line and everybody would have been happy.

I honestly don't blame Bill Gates for being annoyed at Apple. 

Instead, they made two-part tablet nightmare that nobody understood, fewer bought, and they're still attempting to fix the fallout of. Which is too bad, because Surface Pros are pretty damn cool, and I'd much rather have one of them than my laptop. As a bonus, since they're like a laptop but can be used like a tablet, people who need both devices (like me) could have just bought one device and beaten both markets. Microsoft would have, in a sort of sideways way, provided real competition to Android and iOS, while still remaining safely in the market they have supreme dominance: the laptop and personal computing market.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. And with the new wave of Surfaces simply being the exact same brand with a "2" at the end, it appears mistakes haven't been learned from, and history is doomed to repeat itself. So shed a single tear for the Microsoft Surface Pro, children. You were too beautiful for this world.

You deserved better, Surface Pro...WAIT. THIS IS THE SURFACE RT?! CURSE YOU MICROSOFT NOT AGAAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNNN!!!

On why Google Plus is brilliant, but nobody cares (including Google)

On why Google Plus is brilliant, but nobody cares (including Google)

Let's start this off with something everybody loves. The social network that brought the world to it's knees. The one that was so big a movie was made about the company that founded it, the one that became such a social iota that not having an account is unheard of, and the one that could very well shape the entire face of how we interact with our technologies, our social networks, and the interconnections between all our various apps and internet...dohickies. The social network that will end them all.

What? Facebook? Are you crazy? Wait...Myspace? Myspace?! That was your second guess? What is this, 2002? No, you fools, it's Google Plus, the most brilliant thing Google made and then somehow completely failed to capitalize on.

And the movie, of course, is the 35% rotten tomato blockbuster The Internship. 

So...what's up with Google Plus, you might ask (or, Google+ for the hipsters)? Well, if you have a Google account, you've got one: that much is known. "Ok," you respond, "that's great, but what  is Google +? Don't people hate it? Didn't YouTubers just whine about it like crazy when they integrated it? Isn't it Google's biggest failure and also biggest darling that they can't just bring themselves to kill so it's leeching onto other Google products like a paracistic leech in an attempt to garner some sort of life support and live on as an undead social network zombie?"

To that I say, "Wow, take a breath. And yes, that one. But listen up, voiceless internet man: Google+ is actually totally the future."

It just doesn't know it yet itself.

Pictured: The FUTURE. AGAIN. 

It might be a good time to point out two things: I don't work for Google, and I don't actually post social stuff to Google+. I am on Facebook, yes, and that's primarily where I limit my online social networking interactions. In my experience, there are basically two key users who are currently on Google Plus for the status-updating based social networking bits: 1. Computer hipsters who reject Facebook and 2. Google employees.

So now you're wondering how I can talk so highly about this thing when I don't use it. Well, that's the thing, I do use it. And you use it. And everybody who has a google account  uses it (whether they want to or not). And if you reread my sentence above, you may note I said that I use Facebook for my "status-updating based social networking bits." That italicized part is important, because it's not G+'s strength. What is? Ubiquitous...ness.

Pictured: Ubiq computer, as interpreted by MS Paint. 

In very basic layman terms, the idea of ubiquitous computing is that everything you have can be interconnected. You have computers in everything, and they all talk together and work together seamlessly and so you don't even know they're there. It's important and cool and great and everybody wants to do it in one way or another.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me talk about the new internet. And I swear I'm not going to say "Web 2.0" in any of this, because that's just dumb.

Ok, so the new wave of internet stuff is about being social. I think we can all agree on that, yes? As evidenced by the fact that everything in the entire world wants to post to your facebook now, the idea of sharing things you like, things you do, and stuff you enjoy at the easy click of a button is quickly becoming standard. And, as such, Facebook has become a decent unifying system for that. You can post anything to it (or it'll do it for you, often without your permission) and share all your information. Write a review on Rotten Tomatoes? You can toss it to your FB so your friends can know how much you loved The Host. Buy something off Amazon? Post it and show your friends you needed more HDMI cables for some reason, again, after buying ten last month. This idea of total social interconnectivity between multiple spheres is not new, but it is getting big, and it makes for a better, more connected, more social internet.

So here is why Google+ is perfect at that and how it completely screwed it up.

Pictured: Sadness. 

Flash back to 2011. Facebook is All Da Rage. Twitter is still...there (it hasn't really re-surged like it did the past year or so). Google announces it's gonna do something, something cool. It's called...Google Plus! and the Plus (+) is Plus you!

Yes, you! And if you have a Gmail, you are now a part of it! All your friends can join, and you can follow their feeds in their "circles!" You can follow businesses too; anybody! Add 'em all! Isn't this great? IT's almost exactly like Facebook only Google made it!

I remember it very distinctly. With Google Plus as their Moses, the mass exodus from Facebook occurred. Then, like a week later, the mass exodus back occurred. Why did this happen? Why didn't it catch on?

Well, here's my theory in two bite sized reasons:

1. It was pretty much Facebook, only with about 1/3 of your friends
and the big one...
2. It didn't offer anything new. 

At the time, Google + was basic. It was just a status-sharing system. Yeah, it had a few games, and it was tied into google so everybody who had a gmail was added super easy, but that was it. Facebook had already a running head start, and it had grabbed everybody already. Why switch to what is, basically, a crappier version of the same thing? The answer is don't switch and that's what happened, and now G+ is a status-updating wasteland.

But then something happened. Something magical. Something that everybody hated. Google plus started to sneak into other stuff like the creepy house arrest guy you see on the signs to look out for.

Pictured: Google+, circa 2011-2014

First it was google maps. Stores found their pages now somehow having Google+ circles tied to them. Maps tied directly into Google +, including the google reviews of the various locations: all in one spot. Uh oh. Then there was the big one: YouTube.

Oh man, the riots are still going on.

And Google Play store. And Google Music. And on and on and on. But for the sake of not making this longer than it already is (and since I still havent' explained the whole point, which is why G+ is brilliant), let's just say this: Google+ has wormed it's way into many different google apps, and the general consensus is that it sucks, right?

As this scientific diagram explains, Google Plus is, and I quote, "THe WoRST"

Right guys? It sucks having everything unified, right? Everything combined under one banner? A place where you can see what your friends like and dislike across apps, a conglomeration of social information integrated into apps previously used strictly for business or personal interest, that's...baaaaaaaad?

Wait, that's not bad. That sounds awesome! Totally awesome!

And now we get to the good stuff.

See, the big problem with Google+ is how they marketed it, and the fact that they released it too early. I was going to save this part of my article for later, but I'm doing it now because I feel good about it. Maybe I'll copy paste it later, who knows.

When G+ came out, it was bare-bones. It had nothing but an improved "circle" system for friends, and...Google integration. That was it. You could post statuses, and...well...play some really bad games? Yeah, that was basically all it was. It was a social network nobody needed, and they advertised it as a social network that was exactly the same as the other ones, at least in terms of functionality. Yeah, you could follow people like on Twitter but also have friends like on Facebook, big whoop. I already had Facebook and Twitter. I don't need what you's peddlin', Google +! Who is gonna +1 search result, EH?! That's just BANANAS!

That's right, DK, you could have all your Google systems unified under the G+ banner.

But as time passed, Google Plus began to spread out. Now when you go on the Play Store and look at an app, it'll tell you if your friends +1ed it. If you go on Google Music, it will tell you what your friends listened too. If you hop onto YouTube, you can see what is popular amongst G+ friends. You are being social (or having a social interaction) not through a status update, but through the tools and products you are going to use anyway. It's brilliant.

And also appears hamfisted in as some attempt to keep Google+ alive, which makes everybody hate it. Because it was released too early.

Ok, so the idea of unifying all this stuff is great, right? So it's the users' fault for not recognizing it, right? RIGHT?

Well, no, it's actually Google's fault. Sort of. At least for not using it as well as they could. Let me explain this using an example: Google Now.

Google Now is basically what the future will be when we decide privacy is for noobs and we'd rather have everything be convenient. It's a nifty little tool on Android phones (and maybe in browsers? I dunno) where google will glance over a bunch of data it's been gathering anyway (your recent searches, map lookups, location data, etc.) and use algorithms to attempt to generate an interesting news feed for you. If I pull up my Google Now right now, here is what it looks like.

I like Archer and Game of Thrones, OK?

It's brilliant. And that's not all it does. It scans your email for tracking numbers and gives you updates on your packages. It checks your calendar and provides important updates for upcoming events. It can even look at your Play store history and recommend apps based on that.

So that leaves me one question: Why is this not Google+?!

Social networking as integrated into different systems is very obviously the wave of the future. Companies like eBay, Amazon, and others are trying to implement it to get people to better talk about their products and build communities around them. Google, which has a plethora of tools at its disposal, already has a system that touches all it's apps. Actually, it has two systems. Why two? Why not one? Why is this not the biggest, most awesome ubiquitous internet thing that has ever happened?

Let me share my vision of what Google+ could be. I'd have made graphics or something for it, but I've already written like a billion words so they'll have to come later, so just use your imagination.

1. Change circles from people to products.
Right now you can add just about anything to a circle and follow it. Changing between circles isn't exactly super intuitive (it's easy, but it isn't in the forefront), and they're mostly used to do what Facebook already does better: share status updates. What if instead of people, each circle could be a Google product instead? Here's just a few examples:
      - My Google Music circle would read my data for how often I listen to a particular song, or artists I've Favorited. When I hit my Music circle, it would show me updates (like Google Now) for artists I've favorited. It could even look at my most recently listened to songs and put preferences for those artists higher up on the list.
       - My Google Apps circle could show me apps my friends have installed recently. I could add apps to a "Wish List," and the Circle's feed could show me which ones were currently on sale. It could post popular reviews from my friends (which, remember, are already in my google network thanks to G+ already, just never posting status updates) on various apps, and even offer to algorithmically recommend more apps (Google Play store does this already, but in the app itself, not in G+).
 These are just two examples. Don't worry, there will be more in #2. Speaking of which...

2. Uses Google+ as a means to unify everything in Google. 
My biggest problem with Google is that it is so close to being the Greatest Thing Ever. Google has brilliant people working for it with brilliant ideas. They create awesome stuff and provide free tools that are outstanding and are all web-based, which make them ubiquitous by nature. However, with their whole "One Account, all of Google" philosophy, that is really the only tool combining them all: your login. Apps don't talk to each other, and if they do (as evidenced by Google Now), they don't do so in a forward facing way. Why not have Google+ be that forward facing unification? By making an app that combines all the other apps, you have a hub of information for all your Google products. And rather than simply being a launcher to get to all these apps (like in the Google app on iOS), it's actually a useful system for giving a quick overview of your latest apps. Imagine if you could have a circle that, at a glance, could tell you in one app:
- What your next calendar item is
- If someone has updated files in your Drive (useful for us college kids with collab projects!)
- What the weather is like outside
- What your friends thought of that restaurant you looked up five minutes ago when you were dying for sushi
- How long it would take you to get home from your current location

All in one system! And yes, this sounds a lot like Google Now, but that's kind of the point: take Google Now, take Google Plus, and take the billions of apps Google has, and fuse them into a social networking app that unifies Google within your sphere of contacts. How useful would that be?!

3. Kill status updates, make the apps themselves the social network
Here's the big clenches for me, and it ties into the other two: make the apps social. The majority of people in this world will do something because their friends recommended it. I will preference not only apps I buy, but places I eat and movies I watch and games I buy and everything on what my friends say. Why not have that information readily available?
As an example, looking back on that Sushi example a minute ago:
I boot up google maps and search "Sushi Irvine." It pulls up a list, but next to every location you have a friend's review, preferencing the results my friends have been to. I click on one and it pulls up the G+ page, giving me both a map to the establishment, the time it takes to get there, but more importantly it tells me what my friends said about it. That is the key point: it uses my friends first. I then can decide where to go from there, or to go back and skim other reviews my friends gave of things in the area.
Now take that, and apply it to any app. I pull up Google+ and go to Music and see what my friends have been listening too, and Google knows (it's got all the algorithms) that these particular songs they liked are a similar genre to what I've been listening too, so it recommends them. It encourages me to recommend my tastes to the friend, or my friend has already recommended their tastes to me.
I pull up Google+ and go to Apps Circle and it shows me what my friends have not only been playing, but preferences based on how long they were in the apps. In addition, it shows their reviews, notices that I like a certain game that my friend might like, and recommends it.
I pull up Maps and, as said before, it shows me my friends activity. Not where they've been, stalkers, but their favorite locations and food reviews, or maybe (if they opt to share it with friends) where they've eaten or visited recently and enjoyed.
I pull up my Blogger Circle (which ya'll need to bring back) and I can see not only what blogs I follow have been updated, but what Blogger blogs my friends have been reading.
I pull up the YouTube Circle and I can see what my friends have been watching, based on my tastes, and can dig deeper and see what they like. Not the people I subscribed to, not who Youtube recommends, but my actual friends on G+ that have obviously been using youtube.
Google has the apps. It has the data. It has the inter-connectivity. Now use it.

Longest. Post. Ever. 

If you made it this far, congrats. I warned you brevity is not my strong suit. But, for the sake of summation, here it is in super brief:

- Google+, as it is, is a social status networking tool that nightlights as some sort of weird interconnecting, +1 system on the back end.
- Google+, as it should be, should be a ubiquitous system across Google apps that uses it's data on your friends to create social networking experiences through Google's products.

And that, in a nutshell, is the idea. We get our status updates from Facebook, Google. What people don't do is create social meaning through web applications, at least not yet. However, you can do this. You can take the sort of half-baked recommendation algorithms in Play and Music and turn them into something great. You can take the fact that everybody has a Google account and so does their friends and combine this data into something that unifies all your products. You can use all that information you have, both socially and statistically, and fuse it into a big, great, social-networking-meets-internet-productivity Frankenstein that lets you get everything you need from one source, and lets your friends know when and how you do it.

Google Plus could be the future. It could be the start of unifying everything we already know and love about Google into one giant, great, socially networked system. It could be the design that shapes how all future companies view their products, their customers, and how these two interact.

So please, kill the status updates. Kill trying to be Facebook. Google Plus could be the future. It could be. But as of right now, I ain't +1ing Google+.

A sad day, for us all. 

An Introduction

Hello readers, whomever you may be. Creepers, stalkers, tech enthusiasts, people at work and bored, awesome people, crazy cat ladies; whatever. Welcome to the blog. The blog of the future.

Pictured: The Future. (credit: Photo by Jonathan Stephens http://www.jrsfilm.com)

Ok not really the future, but close enough. Here's the intro in brief: My name is Nathan. I'm a Masters Student at UCI in Computer Science: Informatics. If you don't know what that is, that's ok. Our department even made a pamphlet to explain what it is. So again: it isn't you, it's me.

Informatics is a wide-encompassing discipline-type-thingy that includes such magical things as HCI (human computer interaction), UX (user experience) in both research and design, software engineering, game research, CSCW (computer supported cooperative work), and just about anything else your little mind can wrap itself around. Basically it's where people who like computers but don't like programming go to talk about computers and not code anything.

It's pretty majestic.

Pictured: Majesty. 

So what is the point of this blog? Well, I'm a man of many words. Brevity is not my strong suit. I'm also a man of a lot of really awesome (well, I think they are) ideas. That's why I write books, at that OTHER blog that I never update. And also why I review video games on that other OTHER blog I don't update. And play video games for posterity on that YouTube channel I actually do update. I also make things out of plastic beads for children. So yeah. Lots of interests.

Basically, I like to think a lot about a lot of things. And up until a while ago I was content keeping them in my brain (with a few spilling out into books, reviews, and occasional rants about which ramen flavor is the best), but now I'm going to blab about them on here. The topic, you might ask? THE INTERNET.

Yes that internet. 

Or, more specifically, technology, design, and how I think about certain things. So one day I might talk about Steam or something, and the other day I'll talk about Mapquest and AskJeeves.com (remember that? Ask Jeeves was great. HOW DID HE KNOW SO MUCH?!). It'll be a plethroa of mind barf from my head to Blogger's pages, and you'll hear things that will blow you away and make you think how brilliant I am.

Or you'll get mad and think I'm wrong, that's fair too. Either way, something interesting results from it.

So stay tuned, dear readers, whilst Nathan rambles about technology. And if you want to try and prime the pump (or ignite the fire) and give me something to ramble about, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a message and I'll probably ignore it and talk about something else. But I promise I'll at least think about it, if only for the duration of the message itself.

Happy reading!