The Google Way (5×8 – 3/14/13)
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The risk of the free app, there's money in parking spots, the search for Kira Trevino, the price of progress, and it's Pi Day!
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Google puts the kittens in the blender, prepares to push the button. Remember when the Web promised mind expansion? fyre.it/1OBiHS.4
— Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk) March 13, 2013
Is Google too big for its britches, and have people too willingly adopted its free products as part of everyday life?
The conglomerate announced yesterday that it is shutting down its Google Reader service, the latest free service that its decided to drop. Reader is a service that organizes RSS feeds in a single spot. This daily effort, for example, would be impossible without Reader.
"This wasn't exactly unforeseen," Wired.com says." Reader had long been basically ignored, its updates were few and far between. Last month, when many users started reporting problems, Google simply ignored the issue for several days before even commenting on it. The end of Reader has been in plain sight for some time."
Tim Worstall at Forbes writes today that this is simply the Google way:
They're just not romantic about these things: they're very hard headed. Which is what we all want in a would be profit making company of course. It might sound pretty hippie and relaxed that all engineers get the time to pursue their own projects. That an ad company (which is what Google really is) designs driverless cars for example. But exploring the space of possible technologies is a good basic policy. But only if, as Google is, you're prepared to kill off those things which "work", but which don't make a profit.
The real story, Jamie Thingelstad writes, is we should stop expecting to find useful apps and products on the Internet for free:
If your replacement for Google Reader is another free app you picked up in the App Store, you are going to be here again. You need to pay for this service. Either with a direct fee, or by hosting it on your own web server or running your own application on your computer. I don't believe RSS Readers are products that can be offered for free. They use resources, and are complicated. If you agree to pay for this valuable service, you'll make a market for it! If Google couldn't do it for free, do you really think others can? I say no.
There are alternatives to the product -- Lifehacker has some here. But the larger question is whether it makes any real sense to allow Google to spread into critical elements of daily life?
Related: Google Concedes That Drive-By Prying Violated Privacy (NY Times)
Google Glass: The end of privacy? (Marketplace)
2) THERE'S MONEY IN A PARKING SPOT
What are 55 parking spots worth, MPR's Curtis Gilbert asks? About $400,000. Saint Paul, making room for a new stadium for the Saints in Lowertown and needs to buy the parking spaces from a condo association it sold the spaces to years ago for less than half that amount.
There's money in parking, which seques nicely -- thank you, very much -- to the latest Freakonomics episode which reveals that there's no such thing as free parking.
There's still no sign of Kira Trevino, the Saint Paul woman who apparently told her husband she was leaving him, and hasn't been seen since. He's charged with killing her.
Her cousin, Nicole Krause, writes an op-ed in today's Star Tribune that offers a small piece of humanity -- a recognition of the people who helped search for her:
But as the group discussed more search details -- like digging, dragging the river and ultimately finding a body -- I felt sick and had to look away. When I turned around, I found myself facing Mark's girlfriend, and I felt the compassion and strength that radiated from her.
People we didn't know and never could have imagined meeting banded together and started combing the park, shovels over their shoulders and two-way radios on their belts. Each person was willing to climb the steepest bluff to investigate plastic garbage bags and scraps of clothing.
In fact, this group of 30 to 40 strangers quickly bonded -- united by a single mission: Find my poor cousin Kira.
At times I had to stop, barely able to see the ground in front of me through my tears, having to be held up by my husband. My stomach jumped and my heart sank each time someone yelled, "I found a bag!"
We all want to find Kira. But honestly, it's a mix of hope and horror.
Yet amid the agony I felt a renewed sense of humanity when we needed it the most. Last week, these dedicated searchers had never heard of Kira, nor of my family. Yet here they were -- and it moved me to tears more than once.
There is little similarity, perhaps, in Saint Paul's old Rondo neighborhood and the Vermont farm of Romaine Tenney, who milked 25 cows by hand at the farm with no electricity. He wanted to be left alone to farm. But like the people of the Rondo neighborhood, the interstate highway came calling and, like them, with tragic results.
You will not read a more compelling story today than the Yankee Magazine article on Romaine Tenney and the price that's paid when progress comes calling.
It's Pi Day!
Bonus I: The mechanics of the pull-up (and why women can absolutely do them) (Scientific American)
Bonus II: Poll: 60 percent of Republicans want the party to move in a more conservative direction. (Pew)
TODAY'S QUESTION
Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, who last year accused fellow church officials of hypocrisy for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes, was elected pope Wednesday. He chose the name Francis, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. Today's Question: What should Pope Francis focus on?
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Daily Circuit (9-12 p.m.) - First hour: The battle over the budget in Washington.
Second hour: How can a nation so wealthy have a hunger problem? Plus: The future of the Macy's building in Saint Paul.
Third hour: Should Minnesota lawmakers ban Triclosan?
MPR News Presents (12-1 pm): Live broadcast from the Westminster Town Hall Forum. Speaker: Anna Lappe, on food, sustainable farming, and the root causes of hunger.
Talk of the Nation (1-2 p.m.) - Where's the line between thought and deed?
All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) - -- The 40th annual Twin Cities Auto Show is underway at the Minneapolis Convention Center. It runs through this coming Sunday. Many folks come to admire the pristine new vehicles and just dream of owning one. The show takes place as the industry is rebounding. New car and truck sales have been on the upswing. Martin Moylan reports.
University of Minnesota student leaders say too many of their classmates don't call 911 in an emergency when they've been drinking. Many hesitate because they're not sure how serious the situation is. And they're afraid police will cite them -- and their friends -- for underage consumption. Alex Friedrich will have the story.