I was in need of a new laptop, so I bought a cheap ChromeBook - mostly because Amazon could deliver it the same day. Sadly, the trackpad was broken. Before I sent it back, I thought I'd try using a mouse with it. That's when I discovered that accessibility is very much a second thought for all the young and healthy people Google employ. I have RSI and use a vertical mouse. After decades of…
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Google is a company with nearly unlimited resources. It often chooses to use its power for the greater good of the Internet. Creating amazing projects like digitizing every printed book, bringing Internet access via high-altitude balloons, and offering high-quality language translation. And sometimes it just gets bored and abandons them. Google Noto is such a project. It is an attempt to create …
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Blogging - because Google don't offer a bug bounty for spam reports... Back in 2007, Google introduced "My Maps": Easily create custom maps with the places that matter to you. Allow friends to see and edit your maps, or publish them to the whole world. Like most Google products, it was effectively abandoned after launch - receiving a superficial update in 2014. Now it is a haven for spammers …
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I've been playing with Google's Cloud Vision API. It is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) - but in THE CLOUD and uses MACHINE LEARNING! When it works, it is indistinguishable from magic. When it fails, it reveals a very limited understanding of human text. Let's take a look at this quick example - a piece of evidence from Leveson Inquiry Considering that the document is a digital scan of…
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I've started using Google Cloud Vision for running text detection on OpenBenches images. There's just one problem - Google limits the size of the files that it will accept to 4MB. Why? Who knows! Obviously, it's easy to shrink an image server-side, but how do we do it in the browser? First, let's take a bog-standard file chooser and add a <canvas> element. <input id="userFile" type="file"…
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It is impossible to contact large companies to report a bug in their software. So I'm reduced to writing snarky blog posts about it in the vague hope that a Social Media Manager will see the issue and raise it with the appropriate team. Welcome to 2017! Google Pay now supports American Express cards in the UK. Hurrah! But if you try to ring Amex from within the app - a problem occurs. Can you…
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I've written before about Solipsist design - those services which have been designed to work only for a very specific type of family. I was taking a look at Google's "Family" proposition - which allows users to share their purchases with other family members. What I found didn't impress me. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentFile under "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Families."…
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AMP is Google's attempt to re-fight the transcoding wars of the early 2000s. It is actively dangerous to the web ecosystem, helps disseminate propaganda, and is disliked by many users. If, like me, you made the mistake of trying out AMP on your website - you're in a tricky position if you try to remove it. Google doesn't like anything leaving its clutches. After a few weeks of AMP, I decided …
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I was contacted by a Google recruiter the other day - and I turned them down without a second thought. Part of the reason is that I'm happy in my current role (hi boss!) - and another part is that last year Google deleted me. But perhaps the biggest reason is Google's awful reputation when it comes to hiring. Google's attitude seems to be similar to that of a top-flight university. It knows…
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If you've been following this blog, you'll know that Google unjustly shut down my YouTube channel. They've now reinstated it - but I can no longer trust them as custodians of my data. So, here's a quick tutorial on how to download all your videos - and metadata - from YouTube. The Official Way Google offers a "takeout" service which will allow you to package up all your YouTube videos for…
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(Trigger Warning - violent swearing and criticism of your employer / focus of your fanboi-ism.) Google knows me. I've been using Google since long before they were fashionable. I have a Gmail account (in my name), YouTube (also in my name), an Android developer account (name and bank details), Play account (name, credit card, and PayPal), and I've successfully reported security bugs to them. …
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After much kerfuffle, the world has finally got used to the new Google logo. Well, almost. My eye is continually caught by the poor contrast of the yellow "O" against its background. Take a look... This is Google's default logo on its regular grey background. The contrast ratio between the yellow and grey is 1.50. That fails to meet current accessibility guidelines. This is just awful - I …
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