Please, developers: give us a choice

This is not really a photo related post, but since I'm using Google Buzz, Picasa Web Albums and Reader, I might as well share the daily annoyances that go along with them. Maybe I should add a new keyword "rant" and make this a regular feature of my blog? :) It's another post that could be filed under "I mean... someone's got to say it out loud, finally."

Annoyance #1: connection of Google Reader and Google Buzz

When you follow someone on Google Buzz, you're automatically following that person in Google Reader. If that person has Reader as a connected site in Buzz, you see their shares twice. In Buzz, and in Reader. Great.

Of course you can mute Reader posts in Buzz, all right - but that doesn't mute the shares in Reader itself (naturally, because both are stand-alone products - muting Twitter posts doesn't kill the posts on Twitter either.) So... if the person you wish to follow on Buzz is a "Reader mass sharer" they'll clutter your "People you follow" list in Reader. You have to go into that list manually (instead of simply browsing all unread items) and mark their shared items as read to leave you with a readable list of shares from people you want to see. It might be shocking indeed but yes, it does happen: I want to follow a person on Buzz, but I do not want to see their Reader shares.

But there's no way out of this: if you use Reader's "antisocial" flag, you're not seeing any shares. But what if you want to see Reader shares of a person who's not using Google Buzz, or does not have Reader as a connected site in Buzz?

(correction, thanks to Sven - see comment below: you can simply "hide" a person in Reader - doesn't change my point though that the two products shouldn't be connected since it's still another step that needs to be taken care of just because the products are connected.)

Please, developers: give us a choice. Let us follow people on Buzz without following them on Reader. Remove the connection of these two products. Injecting some faux "social" component into Reader is plain and simple nonsense (I'm sorry), and it doesn't make Reader a better product. Let Reader be a feed reader, and let Buzz be the social toy.

Annoyance #2: Picasa Web Albums in Buzz

I've buzzed about this before, and I also posted a warning in my Picasa Web Album, but it's still worth mentioning again because nothing has happened ever since: when you connect Picasa Web Albums to Buzz, it will turn PWA's sharing model upside down. Here's how:

1. create a private album (nothing happens in Buzz)
2. share it with someone via PWA's "share" button (nothing happens in Buzz)
3. add more photos to that album and...
4. a private Buzz post appears with the people whom you shared with as recipients
5. the recipients of the Buzz post can @ address other people (whom you did not share with!)
6. these other people will be added to the PWA's sharing list (getting notifications when you add new photos.)

In essence, you're not in control of who's seeing your private photos anymore - instead, your recipients are.

Granted, they could just as well pass on the private link to the album (if it's an "unlisted" album) or just show the photos to whomever they want (if it's a "login required" album), but since the problem that people want to "reset" the link of an unlisted album because someone passed it on pops up in the Picasa help forums repeatedly, it's a clear indicator that there's a demand for the feeling of staying in control over one's content that was marked as "not for public consumption."

I do use private and unlisted PWAs to share private photos from my "new life in San Diego" with my friends. And I could delete the corresponding Buzz posts immediately, right. But erm... if I'm on the road, or hiking, and share some snapshot from my smartphone, it's not exactly what I see myself doing every time.

But worst of all, when this feature was announced by the Picasa product manager Jonathan Sposato in his blogpost, there's not a single word about this (IMHO quite dramatic) change of control over your own content. Not exactly transparent, sensitive or user friendly. :(

Please, developers: give us a choice. Let us choose if we wish to connect our private and unlisted albums with Buzz.

NB: to avoid the problem, I removed my Picasa Web Albums from Buzz altogether, and replaced them with my photo stream from it's competitor: Flickr. Actually, that change has boosted my activity on Flickr quite a lot, which might not exactly be what Google wanted to happen. But that's the only choice I had.

Annoyance #3: Picasa Web Albums and the Google Profile URL

If you're using Google Buzz, you must have a Google Profile. For a short period of time, this profile was made a requirement to use the social components of Picasa Web Albums as well, but after a storm of protest, Google removed that requirement. (a quite striking example that, even if you're offering a free product, you still have to sell it to your customers. Welcome to the 21st century economy.)

I don't have a problem with the Google Profile, I actually like it. However, you can't have a custom URL for your profile (and thus, your Picasa Web Album - another rather useless connection if you ask me because at one time "back in history" we were able to set a custom URL for our web albums.)

That means you can either use the 21-digit numeric ID, or (if you're using GMail)... your GMail alias! Yes, that's right: you make your GMail address public if you don't want that endless row of digits as your profile and webalbum URL. Spammers ahoy, come grab my address, I'd like to get more emails!

If I want to direct someone to my PWA on their computer, I visit my blog and click on the link that I put there, because there's no way that I could memorize that darn 21-digit long ID - and there's also no way that I'm going to expose my email address to the public.

Please, developers: give us a choice. Let us have a custom URL that is both easy to remember and does not expose our private email address to the public.

I've been beta testing software voluntarily for more than 20 years in my spare time now, and there's one thing that connects all the products, all the services, everything I tried and used, and that is: the users are not left with a choice over what are - from a users perspective - rather simple configuration options.

It's not a major product design change to remove the connection between Reader and Buzz. It's not a major design change to only push updates to public web albums to Buzz. It's not a major design change to offer a custom URL for our profiles and web albums. And so on, and so on. It's just configuration options. They make a developers life a little more complicated, maybe. But they would add greatly to the user experience. Which one is more important?

Have a nice weekend, everyone.