Joe Blogs

Image by Dublin City Public Libraries via Flickr

Google Reader is a service that I rate highly and I've become dependant on the feed reader for the latest news and updates. It's through Google Reader that I am able to digest and understand what is happening in the world. The web-based aggregator was the service I recommended as #1 in the 2008 'Best of...' collection and continue to use daily to consume information.

I noted earlier this year that Google Reader was Closer To A Social Destination with the introduction of friends trends that made it possible to view Friends' Sharing Statistics. Then the team made it possible for us to share our favourite feeds in bundles with our friends. Although these features were welcome additions to the functionality of Reader there was no easy method of locating friends shared items. I found this limited the improvements and instead I would interact with the shared content on services like Friendfeed and SocialMedian. The latest enhancements aim to give us more sharing control and help easily find other people's publicly shared items within Reader.

The improvements include the ability to find people with public shared items and subscribe to their shared items with one click through the new search feature (powered by Google profiles). Those that have already customized their URL for their Google profile, can choose to use a similar URL for Reader shared items. Instead of 11120470674029441509 I'm now available under my human reference "Joe Dawson" with an option to subscribe available :)

There's also better control, so while more socially available we can also protect Shared Items to allow only those we want to be able to see to view them. Also introduced is the ability to Like an item, Friendfeed introduced this and then Facebook implemented the feature and it's proved to be popular across those services. "Likes" are also public, so anyone who uses Reader will be able to view them. These features enhance the usability but to take the experience further I share the view of MG Siegler/Erick Schonfeld in regards to speeding up RSS. Especially new push protocol called pubsubhubub, which was shown off at the TechCrunch Real-Time Stream CrunchUp event.

Image by Vanessa Pike-Russell via Flickr

With Friendfeed introducing another theme which presents the ability to shoot cartoon ducks while you peruse the site. You could be forgiven for feeling that given the circumstances, it's not too different to the scenario at Twitter with the target firmly locked on the microblogging service, again!

Evan Williams, the company CEO of Twitter, declared that he was "Having a bad night" and Michael Arrington announced that he had managed to obtain (In Our Inbox:) Hundreds Of Confidential Twitter Documents. There have been so many problems and security breaches over the past couple of months that it’s becoming ridiculous. That a company with so much potential continually finds themselves under the spotlight for negative reasons. Twitter has serious problems, these documents are out there and it's difficult to not feel that behind the scenes the company has been seriously compromised.

TechCrunch have already begun releasing information including details from Through Eyes Productions that outlines the idea for a reality television show called Final Tweet. Twitter have since responded to state that user accounts have not been compromised and that this was not a hack on the Twitter service, it was a personal attack followed by the theft of private company documents -

We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We're not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.

Nothing is secure on the Internet, and this highlights that employees that communicate and send confidential/sensitive information on cloud-based e-mail need to be vigilant. Web applications and cloud computing services need to definitely embrace better security measures before they become more widely adopted!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Twitter Break-in Exposes the Major Flaws in Cloud Computing. We are simply not ready yet. (thenextweb.com)
• Twitter rape: Hacker accesses email of Twitter employees, and tells all (digital.venturebeat.com)
• Massive Twitter breach underscores the problem with "secret questions" (downloadsquad.com)

Image via Wikipedia