Over the weekend and into Monday, multiple tech blogs were reporting what appeared to be an uptick in the number of people removed from Google+ for signing up under assumed names.
"Google Profiles are designed to be public pages on the web, which are used to help connect and find real people in the real world," a Google spokeswoman said in an email. "By providing your common name, you will be assisting all people you know - friends, family members, classmates, co-workers, and other acquaintances - in finding and creating a connection with the the right person online."
The email did not specifically address complaints about the policy and account deletions.
The Google+ content policy says, "To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles," users must use the name their friends, family or co-workers usually call them.
"For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable," the policy reads.
Limor "Ladyada" Fried, a noted figure in the open-source hardware community, briefly had her account suspended over the weekend. Her name is an assumed one but one by which she's well-known (she recently was featured in a cover story in Wired magazine).
Her account was reinstated.
Former Google employee Kirrily Robert, who goes by the single name "Skud," said she also had her account suspended when she used the nickname to sign up.
She wrote that she expected the nickname issue to come up and largely wanted to test how the site dealt with it.
"I thought it would be interesting and educational for someone who understands the system quite well (my recent ex-Googler status helps with this) to poke at it from outside and see how it appears to work," she wrote on her personal blog. "My goals were, firstly, to help highlight the problems with the policy, and secondly, to test out and document the processes around it. This seems to be going well so far."
On the blog TechCrunch, Jon Evans wrote a strongly worded post saying he likes Google+ but calling its name policy stupid.
"It's too bad that the service has sacrificed a pile of goodwill over the last week by repeatedly publicly shooting themselves in the foot," he wrote.
Evans suggests that Google, which allows a "nickname" to be used along with the user's real name, limit how often a nickname can be changed and then let users decide which of their social circles see which name.
"Voila. Accountable identities and pseudonymity, all in one package: problem solved," he wrote. "You can thank me later, Google. After you reinstate all those accounts."
Critics note that dissidents and whistle-blowers have used social media like Facebook and Twitter under assumed names to fight corruption and contribute to political causes. Their safety might be jeopardized if they used their real names, critics say.
Facebook's policy also requires users to register for the site with their real names. That site's terms and conditions state: "We reserve the right to remove or reclaim [a user's name] if we believe appropriate (such as when a trademark owner complains about a username that does not closely relate to a user's actual name)."
Tech writer Robert Scoble (Google+'s sixth most-followed user, according to Social Statistics), has hosted a running dialogue about the naming controversy on his account.
Scoble wrote early Monday that he talked with Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president for Google's social networking products, and quoted him as saying that Google has made some mistakes while trying to nail down the naming policy.
According to Scoble, Gundotra said there is no intention to require legal names, just to delete obviously fake and offensive ones.
"After running through his reasoning, mostly to have a nicer, more personal, community, I feel even stronger that Google is on the right track here even though I feel they weren't fair or smart in how they spun up these new rules," Scoble wrote. "But Vic convinced me to hang in there and watch their decisions over the next few weeks."
Comment:
I think that is very good that Google Plus have this feature, because there are not going to be a lot of fake names and a lot of people. I also think is very good that they have include it in his privacy police, so nobody can argue with that
NOTICE 2:
The service will use VUDU, the video-on-demand service that Walmart bought last year.
"This integration allows us to introduce more Walmart.com customers to digital entertainment and give them access to thousands of new release and popular movie titles immediately through VUDU's high-quality streaming service," said Edward Lichty, general manager of VUDU, in a written release.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the announcement from the world's largest retailer comes two weeks after Netflix announced price increases that angered some customers.
Unlike Netflix, users don't subscribe to VUDU. The top movie rentals on Tuesday were available for $3.99 in standard definition and $5.99 for full high-definition.
At that price, it's likely that avid movie buffs would pay more than they do for monthly subscription services that offer unlimited streaming. (For example, the Netflix price hike that made some subscribers mad put the cost of a streaming-only plan at $7.99 a month and streaming plus DVDs at $15.98).
But with the 200 million customers its 9,000-plus stores serve every week, Walmart clearly sees potential in consumers new to streaming video and who may be more casual film watchers.
"By incorporating digital movie content into the Walmart.com entertainment shopping experience, we're enabling customers to easily choose how they want to enjoy their entertainment content -- whether that be through a physical DVD, digital streaming or both," Lichty said.
Walmart will offer a daily 99-cent "Movie of the Day" rental, letting users vote for the movie that will be offered each Friday on its Facebook page.
COMMENT thats nice now you dont only buy stuff online in walmart now you can watch movies and videos and buy them thats nice now we all have a reaosn to go and buy to walmart man now i can see mos of the movies online NICE.
NOTICE 3:
A 14-year-old American citizen has been found guilty in a Mexican court of torturing and beheading at least four people and kidnapping three others. Judge Jose Luis Jaimes sentenced the teenager, known as "El Ponchis" ("The Cloak") to three years in a correctional facility -- the maximum sentence allowed under Mexican law because of his age. The teen also must pay a 4.5 million-peso fine (about $400,000).
Mexican authorities also said the 14-year-old was responsible for at least three kidnappings as an operative for the South Pacific Cartel.
The teenager's age -- and his on-camera description of the slayings -- brought international attention to the case. Analysts said the dramatic example showed how Mexican drug gangs were increasingly recruiting youths.
Neither the public nor the media had access to the trial because of the defendant's age. Only the judge, attorneys, family members and a human rights observer were inside the courtroom.
Prosecutors called 43 witnesses to the stand during six days of testimony that ended Monday, prosecutor Jose Manuel Serrano Salmero said. There were no witnesses for the defense, juvenile court spokesman Irvin Vergara said.
Family members were present, but Vergara wouldn't specify who was at the trial held in Miacatlan, near the central Mexican city of Cuernavaca.
According to Vergara, the defendant showed good behavior during the proceedings that normally began at 9 a.m. and lasted until the early evening.
"He was calm, relaxed, and serious. There were no interruptions or disturbances during the trial," he said.
Shortly after authorities apprehended him, the slim teenager with curly hair answered reporters' questions.
"How many have you killed?" one reporter asks.
"Four," responds the accused, who seems calm and collected in a video of the interview.
"How did you execute them?" the questioner continues.
"I slit their throats," the teen replies.
Authorities recorded the video only hours after they arrested the teenager near Mexico City last December as he was allegedly trying to catch a flight to Tijuana to flee to the United States.
A YouTube video that circulated last year purportedly showed the teenager beating a man with a two-by-four while the man was tied at the wrists and hanging from the ceiling, as other young people watched.
COMMENT: This is a really worst situation becuase we are talking about a teenager that is practicing some crimes that are out from the limits. I think this could be the effect from missing education, and its good that he goes to a correctional because he is a danger for society.
