google+ and chrome

I gave google chrome a go the other week.

It has some nice touches.  The integration with other google features is quite nice, the back-end interface is quite nice and it seems quite quick.  I also got it because recent versions of Firefox seems to have some real memory leakage problems.

When I use Firefox to view crunchyroll or even do stuff on animepaper like download a bunch of scans, it doesn't seem to release the memory properly, so I keep having to restart it, which is crap.

chrome doesn't do that and also seems a little quicker than Firefox.  Trouble is, it doesn't seem to have some of the things I like in Firefox - separate download window, more traditional "file" type menus - but also, it's not very customisable.  So, for example, it has a bookmarks toolbar, which is basically fixed in its location, which is below the tabs and address bar, which I find annoying.  But, more importantly, you can't move things around (that I can find).

Also, Ezy sent me an invite to google+, which is Google's social network thing.

I've given it a go and registered, but I have to say I really struggle with most of the social networking sites.  I have facebook, myspace and twitter accounts and they're basically all totally neglected.  I mean, I have enough trouble trying to blog every day, maintaining something like a social network page is just way too much like effort.

Part of the idea of google plus is that it's integrated with all the other google things you use.  Now, while I like that for chrome, it actually has big disadvantages for me on something like google+.

See, a lot of the people I know have different relationships with me.  So, the people I work with don't know about my interest in anime and manga.  Certain circles of friend know I have an interest in it but don't know what it is or have any interest in it themselves.  Other friends that's essentially how I know them - through that interest.

Now that's okay, but the problem is I keep some of those groups separate for very good reasons.  While I do object to anime and manga all being classified as "cartoon porn", I'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist or that I don't enjoy such things.

And of course a lot of stuff is borderline.  I'll give you some specific examples - I used to make wallpapers, a fair few of which were ecchii to varying degrees.  Recently, I closed my wallpaper website down (hopefully temporarily) and moved all the images to a blog site.

That blog site was a google one and I used Google's Picasa site to host the images.

All well and good, but of course with google+'s integration, it turns out it shows all those Picasa galleries in your "my pictures" bit.  So, in other words, if I was to friend (they use circles and I didn't investigate it fully) someone at work, could look in my gallery and see all the anime stuff?  A good chunk of it is nearly pornographic so that would not be a good thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could set it up so they couldn't, but as I say, far too much like effort.

So I set all the galleries to "view only if you have the link" - but what does that actually mean?  Could they do a couple of clicks and get access to them or what?

Also, what about people I'd want to see the images?  Are they now blocked unless they're coming in via the blog that has them on?  But I'd actually be happy for them to just brows through them on google+.

And that's just a specific example for me.  Many people have flagged the whole thing google does that you have to use your real name and can't use an alias.

All these whole social networking things all just seems to open up more cans of problematic worms to me than I've got the time, effort or interest to really deal with.

But there's also something I heard recently that makes them all a bit scarier.  Basically, facebook are introducing a new version / tool that, in essence, operates on the assumption that everything you do you want to share with the world.  It's also facebook's vision that they will essentially become people's "portal to the internet".

Man, that sounds risky - imagine installing it with good intentions, or not understanding what it was going o do and then it broadcasts to the world all the stuff you'd rather that big chunks of the world did not know.  And imagine that teamed with them acting as the portal through which you do all your web stuff.

That would open up the possibility so many potentially bad things it makes the mind boggle.