Google just launched a very ajaxy web page creator. It doesn’t work with Safari as of yet. You need a Firefox on Mac to make it work. Also, does anyone else get the feeling – Geocities, minus the clutter? No wonder Larry Page is going ape shit about that whole 20% time on pet projects thing.
Scott Rafer just emailed, and pointed out that “pages.google.com is a multi-user wiki. I happened to be flipping between two browsers when checking it out and got a message … which said “Page Being Edited by Other User, Break Lock and Edit?” “ Here is someone talking about Pages being a magnet for spam people.
Ross Mayfield of Social Text says, no this is not a wiki. “But google pages is close to single page editors positioned as office 2.0, like Writely,” he says. Whatever it is, when compared to Apple’s iWeb, it is butt ugly.
It definately will let some of my friends finally make sites. I’ll stick with WordPress.com though.
Hey Om,
Google Pages looks great and my first thought was exactly what CarLBanks said “It definitely will let some of my friends finally make sites.”
But then I realized the URLs turn Gpages and Gmail into a giant magnet for spammers, phishers, stalkers, and predators.
I posted details over at One Degree:
http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/02/23/big-problem-with-google-pages
About the email addresses being easily found I have something to say.
People can easily guess my email address by looking at my name. So for me it’s not a big issue. Now, I think it should be a choice.
OM,
This is classic example of missing focus. I think every google engineer is thinking more about the 20% project than putting 100% into the work he/she are assigned. You create something using 20% of your time and then don’t even follow up in for of upgrade/support is taking users for a ride.
Orkut sucks, Google reader sucks, pages suck, blogger sucks, Google talk sucks, they are a behind other competeting products list is just increasing….let the 20% effort or lack of effort project continue to flow in.
As a user, i would say to google, “Please don’t expect us to use products, which even google thinks doesn’t merit 100% effort.”
As Big Bill says, not long before the honeymoon is over
google rolls out another one of
its long list of sucky me-too products
that underwhelm.
Looks like some adult supervision is
required for the 20% engineering playtime –
only goes to prove that more free time
to more engineers is not a formula for
innovation.
Sorry I have to disagree with Ross Mayfield. It is a wiki – editable web page and ability to link to each other is called wiki. Word processing (Writely) documents are not page driven other than in presentation and printing.
Well if they’re doing the 20% as one day a week they’re idiots.
Work 40 weeks on what you’re supposed to be working on, work 10 weeks on your own project, then go on vacation for two weeks.
That way you can focus on your real work, without getting distracted once a week. Plus, in ten weeks you have enough time to make substantial progress and see if your own project is something that is worth persuing.
I’m not sure what it is either, although I also noticed the collaborative editing trojan horse that appears to be lurking under the skin of the first release.
I pasted the relevant error message/clue into my post on this, here: http://tinyurl.com/pkmn6 in case you’re interested.
/m
Too much time spent thinking about the same thing will not yield better results. It is essential to spend some time each day thinking about something else. Otherwise you spend 40 hrs/wk (at a company like google probably more like 60-70 hrs/wk) doing the same amount of work you could have done in 30. Too much concern over how an employee is spending his time is either a sign of a bad manager or an incompetant employee. Either way, the only way the company benefits is by losing the offending party.
Agree, this is yet another example of the infamous 20% rule at Google.
Nothing wrong with giving your creative types freedom to innovate, but the latest Google ideas seem to be only 20% baked and have 0% management oversight or strategic value. Time to grow up!