Rubénerd!

Whenever you ask a question on a forum or answer site, invariably you'll be told to RTFM, to Google it, or have your intelligence questioned by someone hiding behind an anonymous pseudonym as they sit there in their home in their pyjamas with the Cheetos stains on them. Or whoever they are.

Oh sure, they'll provide reasons for these callous responses. They're tired of answering the same questions. There really are answers on Google if you try hard enough. If you haven't bothered to demonstrate you've done some research, why should they help you? Personally, none of these reasons justify being a rude douchebag, but that's just me.

Perhaps because I do perform searches, demonstrate research and ask politely, but I haven't had a reply like this in a long time. Instead, I have answers like these to contend with on a regular basis:

Why would you want to do such a thing?

This. In a nutshell. Is what's wrong with answer sites.

No matter what you're doing, there will always, always be people who either can't understand why you want to do something, or see it as an opportunity to be patronising. If they've never had to do something, clearly you shouldn't have to either!

A quick tip for people who answer questions on answer sites. Offer alternative suggestions for sure, but if your only contribution is a condescending why question, you haven't contributed anything. Congratulations, you're just as useless as those people who ask bad questions!

Om Malik on the new Facebook Home thing:

And most importantly it is Facebook, a company that is known to have played loose-and-easy with consumer privacy and data since its very inception, asking for forgiveness whenever we caught them with its hand in the cookie jar. I don’t think we can be that forgiving or reactive with Facebook on mobile.

Robert Scoble in response:

The "privacy angst" folks like Om Malik are wrong

I just read Om Malik's post about why Facebook Home bugs him. Sorry, it's time that we stop listening to those who have "privacy angst."

"Privacy angst?" Class.

Personally, I am supremely thankful we have honest people like Om Malik thinking about these issues, and voicing them in a public space. The true enemy to privacy is complacency.

Don't trust those who tell you to stop thinking or listening.

A new product announcement from Google:

With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

Not sure what they mean by "safely stored". What's certain (and unsurprising) though: no mention of privacy.

Update: Great tweet from @warrenellis, in light of Google Reader's closure:

Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?

While checking some replies to my Rubenerd_blog account, I noticed I got some feedback from Gizmodo Australia for their inflammatory blog post that included a photo of me under the headline saying I'm willing to look stupid.

@Giz_au: Hey mate. I haven't deleted your comment. If we had, we'd see it there as deleted.

I'm interested how people saw my comment, but then it disappeared.

@Giz_au: Second, your image is CCBYSA2.0 and if you don't want it used you should change that

Yes, and if you want to use share-alike images, you need to change Gizmodo Australia to use that same (or equivalent) licence. Otherwise, "you should change that".

But that's beside the point. My objection was the tasteless, inflammatory article itself. Arguing over a technicality (which you even got wrong) when the issue is calling someone stupid is even less classy.

@Giz_au: Third, I own an iPod Nano watch myself, and love it, I get the attraction. It was a chatroom post

You shot who in the what now?

@Giz_au We don't think you're stupid at all.

Could have fooled us with that headline.

Anyway, I'm done with this and moving on. It's my fault for expecting more from Gizmodo.

Without any touch of irony, Google have announced on their Official Google Reader blog that the service will be shutting down:

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

Uh huh.

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined

Because you actively made it less useful.

and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

In other words, you want us using Google+ instead. How many failed social networks does this make for Google now... seven?

Google Reader was my Twitter

In 2007 (or maybe 2006?) I made the shift from Bloglines to Google Reader, largely because all my Whole Wheat Radio friends had done so already. The initial early-AJAX interface seemed more cumbersome than the relatively simple frame-based design of Bloglines, but I liked that I could star and share posts and view my friends' comments.

Now that I think of it, Google Reader was my Twitter from back in the day. Rather than being a single user blog reader desktop application, the key was you were sharing thoughts and stories with people you trusted, as well as just pulling feeds. I discovered so much stuff from Jim and Sparx and Atuuschaaw and the whole gang.

Google tweaked the UI several times during the service's history, rendering the interface gradually uglier and more difficult to use, but with some simple Greasemonkey scripts you could be back to the old goodness again without too much trouble.

The beginning of the end

The wheels started to come off for me when Google+ launched, and all those social features were stripped out in favour of a +1 button. It was obvious at this stage that Google saw no future in the service, and that they wanted everyone using Google+ to share and comment on stories. Like so many applications throughout tech history, it had become an awkward stepping stone we were all expected to accept and move off from.

(To be fair, I also jumped ship at this stage because they said my name wasn't real. Stay classy, Google).

As with so many terminated sites, I'll miss Google Reader for the community of people we had there. They're probably mostly on Google+ now anyway given The J-Walk has abandoned blogging.

Final random thoughts

In looking for Google Reader replacements, it continued to baffle me that so many third party services relied on Google Reader to sync. I wonder how they'll be dealing with this?

Also, I find it ironic that Bloglines, the original web-based blog reader that's now owned by the tiny Merchant Circle, was able to outlive Reader, the service released by the Google Behemoth. The lesson here, backing from a huge company doesn't always (in fact often doesn't) buy security.

@risuchiin on The Twitters:

I must've spent 3 hours already just reading @Rubenerd's blog. It's incredibly interesting.

It's readers like you that make blogging worthwhile, thank you ^_^

Now that I think of it, it's all you readers. I blog partly so I don't forget stuff, but also in the small hope that what I write may be fun dash useful dash interesting dash mildly amusing to someone else in the future. There were more reasons, but I forgot.

A while ago I signed up to Pinterest, given a substantial amount of my uploaded media has been appearing there. Then I promptly forgot about them.

An email they sent me this morning:

Here at Pinterest... Get ready to change your life! We teamed up with The Biggest Loser to share tips from each episode. From Dolvett’s fitness guides to healthy recipes, The Biggest Loser (Mon 8/7c) on Pinterest has what you need to turn motivation into reality.

Something tells me I haven't been missing much.

Just so I understand what's going on: Gizmodo Australia writes an article asking how stupid people are willing to look for Apple, and uses a photo of me wearing an iPod nano watch to illustrate it. I leave a comment, and it gets deleted.

You can read the original in full on my post from earlier this week. In short, I calmly defended the reasons why I use an iPod nano watch, criticised their inflammatory headlines, and made a subtle dig at their US counterparts. Certainly nothing as rude, trollish or condescending as what Sam Biddle wrote in the original article, though apparently enough to warrant deletion.

I'm not looking for an apology, Gizmodo Australia have every right to delete my comment. It could have even been a technical or editorial mistake, or perhaps I was downvoted by the same users who have left far more inflammatory and rude comments than what I did.

Either way, stay classy Gizmodo Australia. I usually have a sense of humour about things like this, but this just wasn't cool.

Oh Goodreads, you so funny.

An hour ago, my sister tweeted that my wrist was on Gizmodo Australia. Sure enough, there I was on How Stupid Are You Willing To Look For Apple’s Magical iWatch?

My response (pending moderation):

I'm the guy in the photo who's "Willing To Look Stupid For Apple". My sister tweeted me and said my wrist was on Gizmodo Australia.

For me, this generation iPod nano is really useful. I use the built in pedometer constantly (a feature that's barely mentioned in the press). It's a memory key I'm guaranteed to always have around, more so than other keys that so often get left in the wrong trouser pocket. As a watch, it's easy to see at a glance. The wristband for it came from an official Apple Store. In a pinch, I can dump some podcasts onto it if my phone is running low on space.

And now I go back to ignoring Gawker sites and their regional clones with their sensationalist, click-bait headlines. "How Stupid Are You Willing To Look For Apple’s Magical iWatch?"... good grief.

It's a shame nobody has a stolen prototype iWatch for your American colleagues to buy.

Stay classy, Gizmodo. Reach for new standards in journalistic excellence and integrity, while insulting the people you sourced your free image from.