In honor of Andy Rooney’s retirement i thought I would just rant for once. Usually I think I’m pretty measured about most of my criticisms so this will take a bit of effort.
I recently bought a google chromebook. I could probably be described as a technophile, if not that I am at least admittedly a google fanboy. I really like the products and software google designs, and I like their ethic. They seem to value transparency and make smart socially conscious business decisions.
I swear I have a beef coming up. You see one thing i like about their software is simplicity. they give me the bare bones and i get to choose want I want to add on to it. However there is a consequence of this approach that can be bad. This is a complaint usually lobbied at facebook, but I think with google’s various mediums it should be a bigger concern for them. When you choose simplicity you also make a lot of decisions for the user. Google makes many privacy and setting decisions for you under the hood. A lot of times, because they are under the hood, and google is good at making simple designs it is mind bending trying to know where to turn for a specific issue.
Case in point is with my new chromebook i decided I should set up google calendar. Within a day of setting it up I had some of my high school students making inappropriate events all over my calendar. I was able to delete them, but I have no idea how my students were able to do this. How did they even know about my calendar withing a day of me making it? Where is this information available? Can anyone see or edit my calendar? I am not really sure where to turn, there is no google hotline that I’m aware of. I could e-mail a tech support perhaps but I’m still not sure how helpful that would be. I’m seeing my students tomorrow, I suppose when technology fails the best route is to use old fashioned person to person communication.
I recently bought a google chromebook. I could probably be described as a technophile, if not that I am at least admittedly a google fanboy. I really like the products and software google designs, and I like their ethic. They seem to value transparency and make smart socially conscious business decisions.
I swear I have a beef coming up. You see one thing i like about their software is simplicity. they give me the bare bones and i get to choose want I want to add on to it. However there is a consequence of this approach that can be bad. This is a complaint usually lobbied at facebook, but I think with google’s various mediums it should be a bigger concern for them. When you choose simplicity you also make a lot of decisions for the user. Google makes many privacy and setting decisions for you under the hood. A lot of times, because they are under the hood, and google is good at making simple designs it is mind bending trying to know where to turn for a specific issue.
Case in point is with my new chromebook i decided I should set up google calendar. Within a day of setting it up I had some of my high school students making inappropriate events all over my calendar. I was able to delete them, but I have no idea how my students were able to do this. How did they even know about my calendar withing a day of me making it? Where is this information available? Can anyone see or edit my calendar? I am not really sure where to turn, there is no google hotline that I’m aware of. I could e-mail a tech support perhaps but I’m still not sure how helpful that would be. I’m seeing my students tomorrow, I suppose when technology fails the best route is to use old fashioned person to person communication.
No comments:
Post a Comment