This is exactly what I am dealing with right now. On July 6, 2010, I attempted to log into my Gmail account and received the following error message:

The username or password you entered is incorrect

I tried a few more times. Then a few more times. Nothing. Hmm. I tried logging into some of my other Google services,… Calender, Reader, Docs, etc…, and got the same error message. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I gave up and decided to initiate a password recovery, only to receive the following message:

There are no Google Accounts currently registered to the username skyecade@gmail.com.

Panic ensued. I spent the morning trying to figure out what went wrong, but to no avail. My Google Account was gone, and with it, my Gmail, Gtalk, Docs, Reader, Calendars, Buzz, Profile, Youtube, Wave, Voice, Analytics, and Feedburner account. Half a decades worth of content and several gigabytes of emails, feeds, documents, appointments, contacts, voicemails, and videos, all vanished without a trace. Incidentally, I can’t access my Blogger, Picassa, Orkut, or Jaiku accounts either, but since I rarely use them, I didn’t mention them in the list above. (Scratch that, I do have access my Jaiku account.)

At this point, I’m going to assume that my account still exists on some server out there in Google land. That may be wishful thinking though. For all I know, my account may have been hacked, molested, and then deleted. The worst part is — I can’t get a hold of Google to find out. Their support is nonexistent. They have an account recovery form that you can fill out (assuming I still have an account to recover), but it seems to be completely automated. I get this response within minutes of submitting the form:

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation and cannot
return your account at this time. We were unable to verify that you own
this account based on the information you provided.

And then after a few more submissions:

Thank you for your report. For account security, we limit the number of
requests that can be processed about the same account. Please wait a few
days and try filling out the form again.

The account recovery form consists of questions regarding Gmail, Blogger, and Orkut. Two of these services I don’t even use. The third, Gmail, I created 5 or 6 years ago and can’t remember a lot of the specifics, such as the exact date I opened the account or the recovery email address I used when I signed up. But I did the best I could and submitted the form over and over again hoping to get a different response. Perhaps even a human response.

The part that kills me is that it would be so easy to verify my account. Google has my cell phone number. They could just call me. Or text me. I also have a verified name on my Google Profile that can only be obtained via credit card or social security number. How much more verification do you need than that? Or perhaps they could verify my account through my Google Analytics or Voice or Docs. Anything is better than having to answer questions about Orkut. The process seemed a bit antiquated for a company that all but dominates the Internet.

So yes, I’m frustrated with this whole ordeal. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t come any closer to finding out what happened to my account and I can’t find anyway to contact Google. This has, however, made me seriously rethink my stance on cloud computing. For one thing, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Having all Google services tied together under one account probably isn’t the best idea. Two, sync (formerly known as backup). Once upon a time I used to tell people that the harddrive would become obsolete. I hope I’m wrong. Being able to access your data on the cloud is a huge advantage, but as I’ve learned, there is nothing like a good old fashioned local copy. Developer’s of applications such as Dropbox, Evernote, FeedDemon, and even Google, to an extent, see the benefits of syncing across multiple computers, while still utilizing the cloud for convenience. I really hope this trend continues.

So that’s my sad story. Google, if you’re out there, give me a call. You have my number. In fact, you gave it to me. If my account is gone, so be it. Life goes on. I should have been more proactive in safeguarding my data and a lot less reliant on the cloud. I take full responsibility for that. But it would still be nice to know what exactly happened and whether or not I can ever expect to get my account back. For now, I guess, all I can do is sit back and wait…

I recently read somewhere that, for this next generation, the Internet is the new television. What?!? That made me slightly depressed, considering the Web has the potential to change humanity in ways we can’t yet imagine — and can do an infinite amount more than just aggregate gossip and entertain the masses. Luckily for me, there are people in high places that share my convictions. Luckily for you, they’re a lot smarter than I am.

Enjoy!

TIME TO START TAKING THE INTERNET SERIOUSLY By David Gelernter

I also changed the name of the site from :skyecade online to simply robertsinclaire.com. It’s been something I’ve been toying with for a while now. All the original URLs will still work, however, so feel free to keep plugging in skyecade.net if that’s what you prefer.

Lastly, I added a “Subscribe Via Email” section to the side bar for people who would like all my wonderful posts sent directly to their inbox. Never again will you miss out on the pure awesomeness which is :skyecade online robertsinclaire.com. Just pop in your email address, hit “Subscribe”, and wait by your inbox. Oh yeah!

Okay, off to jury duty……again.

Click to enlarge.

But it’s not enough just to be a niche. Flixter.com is a social networking site devoted to movies. The problem with that site is that its design and content attract a younger crowd. It’s sort of like a Myspace for movie lovers. Case in point, Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift averaged 4 stars. — Seriously?

Goodreads is a little more neutral, like Facebook rather than Myspace. And the simple fact that it’s a website devoted to the love of books, helps it attract a much more sophisticated crowd. My only criticism would be with regard to the website’s design and usability. Though it’s not awful, it’s definitely not great. They need to make it a little more intuitive to navigate around the site. The website could also use a Web 2.0 face lift; it looks very 1999ish.

Other than that, I think it’s a really fun site with a ton potential. It was launched in January of 2007, so it’s still young in Internet years. The user reviews (though not quite as good as Amazon’s user reviews) are extremely helpful, and I have to imagine they will become even more helpful over the years. If you’re a bookworm like me, go check it out. I’m going to try shelfari.com as well. Shelfari is another social networking site for book lovers, and is bit more established than Goodreads. Shelfari also seems to have all of the Web 2.0 features that I mentioned were lacking in Goodreads. But I can’t be sure until I try it out for myself.

Speaking of books, I just finished Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. It was fan-freaking-tastic. I would highly recommend it.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dispense with the pleasantries and move on to the second point of business — where the hell did October go? My last post was on September 27th! Have I been so caught up with Team Fortress 2 that I’ve neglected my lonely little blog in cyberspace? I’m sure that has had a lot to do with it, but to tell you the truth I’ve been fairly unplugged for the last month. At least relative to my normal life-style. A few other projects have been sucking up my time too. Hopefully they will reach fruition soon so I can get back to my life on the interwebz. (The sole purpose of that last sentence was so I could use the word “fruition”. I feel so satisfied now.)

Now on to the main topic, Google. These guys are on a roll. I know, I know, they’ve been on a roll since 1999, but the stuff that they’re gearing up for now is bordering on epic. That’s right, I said epic.

First, let me go through the Google services I use by choice, the Google services I use by acquisition, and the Google services I currently do not use.

Google Search - Okay, who doesn’t use Google as their primary search engine. Seriously, I’d like to meet you. I remember stumbling across Google way back when it was just an itsy-bitsy little search site. They grow up so fast.

Gmail - Phenomenal. That’s all I have to say about that.

Gtalk - This is my primary IM client right now. I still use all the others out of necessity, but if I had my choice, I would make everyone switch to Gtalk. I’m selfish like that.

Google Calendar – I would be lost without it. On the rare occasions when Google Calendar goes down, I can be found wandering the streets aimlessly. I even sync my calendar to MS Outlook so I can sync it to my Blackberry. It’s an ugly hack, but it works.

Google Reader – I used to read all my feeds in Netvibes. Now I’m 100% GR. It’s so smooooth.

Google Maps – This service is getting more incredible by the day. I use it religiously.

Google Images – I use it by default. It does what I need it to do.

Google Groups – Deja was one of Google’s first acquisitions back in 2001. Actually, I think they just acquired Deja’s Usenet archive, but I guess it’s all the same. I started using Deja back in 1999.

Google Docs – Formerly known as Writely. This service was fantastic as Writely and is even more fantastic as Google Docs.

Youtube – Okay, so the whole world was using this before it became part of the Google conglomerate. That’s why they bought it.

Jaiku – Google’s most recent acquisition. I tend to lean more towards Pownce and Twitter, but I have been known to Jaiku from time to time.

Orkut – I’m not a big fan of social networks (though I love the concept) and Orkut is no exception. With that said, I have an account with almost every social network on the face of the Earth, and Orkut was one of the first. This is back when you had to get an invite from someone who already had an Orkut account in order to sign up. **They’ll let anyone in nowadays! ** Google has recently redesigned the entire site and it will most likely play a key roll in upcoming future developments. But more on that later.

Feedburner – If you’re a blogger or some other kind of content creator, then chances are you use feedburner. This is a fantastic service if you’re trying to syndicate your crap….I mean stuff.

Here is a great list of Google acquisitions in chronological order. It’s fascinating to see how the company has changed throughout the years and the obvious direction they are heading just by analyzing the pattern of acquisitions on this list.

Google Photos (aka: Picassa) – I don’t foresee myself leaving Flickr anytime in the near future. It’s just too much of a great service and it’s really integrated into everything I do online. I do, however, use Picassa’s stand-alone software to organize my pictures on my PC.

Google Bookmarks – Sorry, this service doesn’t even compare to del.icio.us. Then again, it’s not really suppose to. Like Flickr, del.icio.us has really worked its way into everything I do online in some fashion or another. I love it too much to part ways with it. FYI, Flickr and del.icio.us are Yahoo owned companies. Acquisition is the name of the game.

Blogger – Nothing against Blogger, it’s a really nice platform, but I started with WordPress and I’ll most likely end with WordPress. –Wow, that sounded morbid.

iGoogle – This is a really nice service and I would recommend it to anyone, however, I have found that one personal start page just doesn’t cut it for me. They just take so long to load. Instead, I launch Firefox with multiple tabs. My first tab is plain old Google, followed by Gmail, followed by my calendar, followed by a blank tab. I find that this loads a lot faster and I can get all the same data as I could from a bloated start page. But hey, that’s just me. If a start page is your thing, then have it…..dork.

So that about wraps up what I use and don’t use out of all the Google services. Everything else is either still a novelty in my eyes, or hasn’t yet graduated from Google Labs. Speaking of which, if you’ve never been there, make it a point to stop by.

What I’m excited for, and this is kind of the point of this long and overly bloated blog post, is how Google plans on pulling it all together. I read a great article on Techcrunch called Google’s response to Facebook: “Maka-Maka”

“Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications. Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds. But Maka-Maka goes well beyond that.”

It’s a really good article outlining Google’s master plan to bring all their services together into one social-networky-type thing.

“Huber is on record as saying that the way Google plans to compete is by using the Web as the platform instead of trying to lock developers into Google’s own platform.”

“Web as a platform.” Sound familiar? It’s a term that is often associated with Google and one that I am a huge proponent of. AND, as if Maka-Maka wasn’t exciting enough, now throw into the mix the highly anticipated Gphone and the 700mhz spectrum auction which is slated to begin in January. I can barely contain myself! These are exciting times for Google and Internet enthusiasts.

Exciting times indeed!

Well, I just had a great customer service experience and I want to give credit where credit is due. Last week I ordered a book from Amazon.com called Getting Things Done by David Allen. The book arrived, I went home, cracked open a beer, sat on my brand new lazy boy, and slowly opened the book — savoring that new book smell. Oddly enough, the book jumped right into the thick of things. No table of contents, no preface, nuttin. I was three pages into it when it dawned on me that I might be missing some pages. Sure enough, pages one through fourteen were no where to be seen. I was a little bummed, but I know that these things can happen from time to time. The first thing I did was to see if anyone had had similar problems with this particular title, and they had.

So I did the next obvious thing, I contacted Amazon. Or more precisely, they contacted me. While I was on their site searching for contact information, I came across a “Call Me” button. Being the spontaneous adventurer that I am, I clicked it. It then prompted me for my phone number and options for when I would like them to call me back; right now, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 15 minutes. I really wasn’t doing anything at the time, due to lack of reading material, so I clicked right now. Almost the same instant I clicked the button, my phone started to ring. “No Way!” was all that came to mind. So I answered it. It was a recording telling me they were connecting me to Amazon. A few seconds later I was talking to an Amazon customer support representative. Since I was logged into my account when I clicked the “Call Me” button, he had all of my information already up on his screen. He politely asked me a security question to verify that I was who I said I was, and then went on to ask me how he could help me this evening. I went on to tell him my sad story. He apologized to me and assured me that he would send out a replacement immediately. All I had to do was print up the prepaid mailing label that he emailed to me and send my defective copy back to them free of charge.

It couldn’t have gone any better. The whole experience took less time than it did to write this blog entry. Anyways, that’s my story. I’ve always loved doing business with Amazon, and this is just one of the many reasons why.

It’s a must read for Internet enthusiasts.

Photograph: Murdo Macleod

The original…or at least the site that launched the microblogging craze. Twitter is also the most simplistic of the three sites. Where some people would criticize its simplicity, I would praise it. It’s this exact feature that makes Twitter so outstanding. There’s nothing to think about. You make a post, 140 characters or less, and off it goes for the world to see. You can follow other people’s tweets by adding them as friends, or by going to the public timeline to watch the entire community. It can be surprisingly addicting. You can tweet from your mobile phone or from an IM client too (currently AIM and gTalk). Twitter also offers some nice javascript and flash badges for you to put on your blog, Myspace, or Facebook accounts. I prefer a more minimalistic approach as seen on my sidebar. Just straight HTML and RSS. I call it sidebar blogging. Pretty clever, eh! Think it will stick?

Twitter’s prettier sister. Jaiku has almost all the qualities of Twitter and then some. One of Jaiku’s greatest features is the ability to pull all your feeds from around the net (including those from Twitter) and place them into your Jaiku. For example, I have my flickr photos, my blog entries, my del.icio.us bookmarks, and my tweets all streaming into my Jaiku. It’s like one stop shopping for everything I do on the net. They also have an improved commenting system and the ability to subscribe to different channels (groups). Think of Jaiku as a more robust and complex version of Twitter. For me, I just set it up and let it run on autopilot. My Jaiku is constantly updated by my feeds. I do pop in from time to time and post something in person or check my channels. If you’re looking for something with a little more kick than Twitter, Jaiku is probably right up your alley.

The new kid on the block. So new in fact that’s it’s invite only. Pownce almost doesn’t fit in the microblogging category. There are no outgoing (or incoming) RSS feeds to broadcast your posts. Everything is done on the site and is a very closed atmosphere. While it may not be a full-fledged microblogging platform, it does share some characteristics with the genre. I would describe Pownce as a hybrid service. A cross between microblogging, chat, and file sharing, and this is where it gets its strength. Pownce gives you the ability to choose who to send various entries to, whether in be to the public, a private message to a friend (or friends), or to a predefined group in your contact list. You can also determine what type of post to send them, i.e., a message, a link, a event, or a file — the latter of the four being the most useful. With a standard account you can send up to 10 megabyte files, or upgrade to a pro account for $20.00 a year, and send up to 100 megabyte files. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet, I’ll keep you posted. Pownce is still in its infancy as a web app and I’m sure we’ll see some new features rolled out over the next few weeks. They also just gave us 6 more invites, so if anyone would like to check it out for themselves, just say the word and I’ll shoot you an invite.

The last thing I’ll mention is that all three services above have stand-alone programs that allow you to monitor and interact with their respective communities. This is nice if you don’t want to keep your browser open all the time to receive/post new messages.

And that’s it, those are my thoughts. If you leave here with anything today, it should be this:

• Twitter = simplistic / minimalist
• Jaiku = robust / feature rich
• Pownce = hybrid (blog + chat + ftp)

twitter.com/skyecade
skyecade.jaiku.com
pownce.com/skyecade

For those of you who don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, allow me to enlighten you. Pownce is sort of like twitter + ftp + instant messaging, all rolled up into one neat little app. Of course, I’m just assuming it’s rolled up into one neat little app, since I haven’t actually tried it yet for myself.

FYI, Pownce is a new “Kevin Rose” startup — the same guy responsible for digg and revision3, as well as various podcasts and T.V. shows. He has yet to disappoint me, hence the reason why I’d love to try out his new service. I’ll keep checking my inbox.

From Google:

Welcome to Google Voice Local Search

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

* search for a local business by name or category.
You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.

* get connected to the business, free of charge.

* get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
Just say “text message”.

And it’s free. Google doesn’t charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Note: Google Voice Local Search is still in its experimental stage. It may not be available at all times and may not work for all users. We’re fine-tuning the service to get better at recognizing your requests. It’s currently only available in English, in the US, for US business listings.

If Google can iron out all the kinks in this technology, the possibilities will be endless. Why limit themselves to a mere phone directory. You’re already connecting to (and searching through) Google’s massive databases via a phone connection, why not pass them other search terms? For example, need to know John Adams birth date in a pinch? – Just bare with me.- With this technology, Google could simply forward the user’s query to a site like Wikipedia, or even use their own built in define operator, i.e., define: John Adams. Now all Google would have to do is read you the results, which is what they are already doing in Goog 411.

It will be interesting to see where they take this.

It’s completely free and it takes only a few minutes to get a new video on your site. I signed up, created a video, and embedded it into my site in under 5 minutes. Sorry for the bad quality. I used the built-in mic and camera on my MacBook. But imagine the possibilities.

Not only can I annoy people with my writing, but now someone has made it easy for me to annoy people with my face too. Thanks bubbleguru! Their slogan should be “We are Web 2.0s version of blinking text”.

All kidding aside though, this looks like pretty cool technology. You might see me pop in from time to time. Prepare yourself.

Here’s the thing, I am a Netvibes addict — I honestly don’t remember what life was like before Netvibes came along. The only problem, Netvibes really isn’t prettiest thing to look at. At least not until now.

Read the full article on the Netvibes blog.

Twitter is sort of a cross between a blog and an away message. Unlike a blog, you can only post 140 characters at a time. You have the ability to post entries, or tweets as they are so affectionately called, via the web, a cell phone (sms), an IM client, or from a variety of desktop applications. Twitter asks the very simple question, “What are you doing?”. All you have to do is answer that question. It’s strange, I know. It’s even more strange that people are doing it. Not a few people mind you, but thousands. People use it to keep tabs on their friends. Organizations may use it to keep interested parties up to date. Some people even use Twitter to campaign for the Presidency.

I know, still a little strange. In fact, be sure to bookmark this page, because you’re probably going to dismiss Twitter pretty quickly. I know I did. It’s the natural Twitter cycle — a couple of weeks will pass and every time you hear the word twitter your ears will perk up. You’ll start hearing about it more and more, until finally, curiosity gets the best of you. You’ll sign up, you’ll post your first tweet, and you’ll be hooked. It’s usually around a 2 to 4 week process. At that time make sure to come back here for a list of some pretty handy Twitter resources.

Ah good, you’re back.

Let’s start with twittervision. This site pretty much sums up the Twitter experience. It grabs tweets from the public Twitter timeline and places them on Google maps in real-time. It’s addicting all by itself.

Remember those desktop apps I referred to up above? They allow you to post tweets and receive updates right on your desktop. You can choose to receive updates from the public timeline or limit it to people in your friends list. There are a few different applications to choose from, depending on what operating system you are running. Let me make it easy for you:

Twitter Desktop Applications

• Twitterific - for Mac users
• Twitteroo - for Windows users.
• gTwitter - for Linux users.

Recommended reading:

I really enjoyed the Twitter write-up over at Kottke.org. Check it out if you get a chance. While you’re it, another good article to read is Hacking Twitter for Fun and Profit. Good stuff there.

Some extra tidbits:

The founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, was also the co-founder of Blogger.com and more recently Odeo.com. Blogger.com was eventually acquired by Google and Odeo.com has since been put up for sale. From what I understand, Evan’s company Obvious Corp wants to focus all it’s time and energy on Twitter. That’s good for you Twitterholics.

And there you have it. Now go give it a try. You can look me up at twitter.com/skyecade. Just in case you want to know what I had for breakfast,… or what movie I’m watching,… or what pants I decided to wear,… or what project I’m working on,…or what I’m thinking about at any given moment, etc…

The JenniCam has since gone dark, but not before firmly cementing itself into Internet lore. There is a new phenomenon sweeping through the net now. This phenomenon is called justin.tv. Who’s, Justin? Justin is a guy who strapped a video camera to his head 11 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes ago, and has not shut it off since. It streams live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He claims he will wear it until the day he dies. That would be interesting to see. :0

I watch it on and off while I’m at my computer and I have to tell you, it’s pretty cool (in a weird sort of way) and surprisingly addictive. I reminds me of the Truman Show with Jim Carey where anyone could turn on their televisions at any given time and see what Truman was doing, even if he was just sleeping. In fact, Justin is sleeping right now. It’s soooo wierd! Don’t worry, he’s not lazy — he’s just on west coast time.

This week’s Website of the Week choice is musicovery.com. Like Last.fm and Pandora, musicovery is a music discovery site which helps to match listeners with music that they might be interested in based on their musical tastes.

The first thing you see when you go to the site is a control panel of sorts on the left hand side of website. From here you can choose what you want to listen to, and there are multiple ways of doing this. The first set of options include LoFi and HiFi. To listen to HiFi you need a paid subscription. I don’t have a paid subscription, so LoFi it is. The next set of options include Hit, non Hit, and Discovery. You can choose any combination of the these three options, but at least one must be checked. Hit and non Hit are pretty obvious as to what they are, the Discovery option isn’t so clear though. I assume it grabs independent or otherwise lesser known artists and adds them to the play list. I can’t find any documentation to confirm this though, so I could be wrong.

Up next is an interactive time line. If you leave it as is, it will simply tell you the era in which the song being played originates from. For a little more control, you can use the time line to narrow down your music discovery session to a specific decade, or even year.

Below the time line is the matrix. There are four points on the matrix: calm, energetic, dark, and positive. By clicking on the matrix, you are telling musicovery what kind of mood you want the music to reflect. Experimenting with this is half the fun of musicovery. Once you click a spot on the matrix, a variety of songs will appear to the right. These songs are all color coded by genre, but all share the same characteristics of the matrix, i.e. calm, energetic, dark, positive. So, if you clicked somewhere in between energetic and positive, all the songs that are displayed will have these specific traits in common, whether they be reggae, blues, funk or disco.

What if you want to listen to something energetic, but you’re only interested in one specific musical genre such as rock? No problem. Below the matrix are color coded buttons which list specific genres. When you click on one of these buttons, a mini-matrix is displayed for that particular genre. This mini-matrix works the same way as the main matrix, but only the results of that specific musical genre will be displayed. You may have noticed that the songs displayed to the right of the control panel are now all of one color, in this case dark blue. Dark blue represents the musical genre rock. Pretty cool, huh? They do seem to be missing some popular genres though, but we’ll chalk that up to them being new. All in all this is a very fun website to play around with.

Another great feature is the ease in which musicovery lets you purchase the songs you are currently listening too. Each song has an iTunes and Amazon link associated with it that will take you directly to that product for an easy check out. Actually, it’s probably not a great feature for impulse buyers, but for everyone else it’s great.

I could write more, but I don’t think I’d do the site any justice. It’s one of those things that you just have to try out for yourself, but if you love music, you’ll most likely love musicovery.

http://musicovery.com

How much cooler is that?

The website isn’t the most pleasing website to look at, but don’t let that deter you from trying it out. It’s well worth a look.

There’s tagging, tracking reports, logs, all sorts of goodies.

I was surprised by some of the domains that were on this list and equally surprised by some that weren’t. Read/Write Web makes some comparisons to Alexa’s top 20 websites, along with some other interesting commentary.

Secondly, YouTube has discretely implemented a new feature which allows you to record videos directly to their site via your webcam. No software is needed, other than a web browser.

Check out the full article on Ars Technica.