The Data Liberation Front – a team of engineers at Google tasked with making it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products – has announced its first service, Google Takeout.
Despite the weird team name, this is just another Google service, which you log in with your Gmail username and password. It lets you easily take your data out of several Google products. It supports Buzz, Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, Profile and Stream, but Google promises support for more services and products later on.
Once you recover your data, you’ll be able to save it in open, portable formats, so you should be able to import it to other services easily.
We’ve tried out the service, and it’s really straightforward. You can either recover all your data at once or choose individual services. Google will automatically calculate the estimated size and the number of files in the package, which will show up under the Downloads tab. You might need to enter your password again before downloading the package, which Google says is for security reasons.
For testing purposes, I recovered my Picasa Web Album files, and I quickly received a neat zip file containing all my images in several folders. As a side note, I had no idea those images were there, so you might want to try out Google Takeout just to remind yourself what data you keep on Google’s servers.
We like Takeout a lot. It’s a neat, quick and easy way to take your data from Google, whether it’s for archiving purposes or you want to move it to another service. The timing of this release is not accidental, either; Google launched Takeout shortly after showing off its new social networking service, Google+, probably to show how much it cares about user’s data and privacy. We got the hint, Google, but you’ll still have to prove yourself in the long run.
More About: Data Liberation Front, Google, Google Takeout
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Kittens and beer for everyone!
New York Times Reduces Character Limit of Readers’ Comments by 60%
The New York Times has announced it’s cutting the character limit on site comments from 5,000 to 2,000. In Twitter terms that’s like going from 36 tweets to slightly more than 14 — a 60% drop.
According to a note on the site’s homepage Monday, “The shorter length will allow for an improved experience for commenters and readers alike.â€
The statement is good news for readers who roll their eyes when commenters hog the soapbox. But for Internet users who view commenting as an opportunity to see reactions that would have otherwise been limited to personal letter or email, it’s a step in the wrong direction. Though 14 tweets’ worth of discussion is still a fair amount, the change opens the door for further character cutting in the future.
The new limit was inspired by feedback from readers and Times employees, Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, told The Wrap.
“5,000 [characters] is a lot,†Pilhofer said. “That’s not a comment, that’s an article.â€
The shorter character limit will change community behavior. Readers who are used to writing essay-length comments may become more blunt as they aim to get to their point faster. Or they may work around the limit by breaking thoughts into multiple comments. Still, the shorter length will help Times moderators get through comments more quickly, allowing them to quell inappropriate threads with greater speed.
In late May the BBC dropped its limit to 400 characters — 20 characters less than is allowed for a Facebook status update.
The BBC’s character cut inspired Martin Belam, lead user experience and information architect at The Guardian, to survey the comment character counts of a range of U.S. and UK news media sites. Here’s a sample of his findings, updated to include The New York Times‘ recent change:
*The actual limit imposed on Huffington Post is 250 words, which equates to 1,820 characters.
What do you think of The Times‘ comment character cut? Will it truly make for a more inviting commenting space or is the site infringing on commenters’ rights? Sound off in the thread below — we won’t cut you off.
Mashable’s comment character limit: 16,384
More About: commenting, comments, community, new york times
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