www.wagweb.co.uk: IT

Google+ is Google's latest attempt at breaking into social networking. They've had several ill-fated attempts before, (Orkut and Google Buzz are the ones you'll hear people talking about) but it seems that they've really achieved something with Google+. But of course most social networkers are already on Facebook, and it will take something special to lure many of them away. So how do the two compare?

Facebook is well established, and has lots of nifty features as well as many annoying ones. Google+ is the new kid on the block - it's features are fewer, but what they do is a bit better. I'm sure there will be many people offering their own comparisons of the two, but you're here now so here's mine.

Organising friends

The Circles feature of Google+ has been a big talking point among those who talk about such things. It's a great, intuitive way of categorising the people you're connected to through Google+. One of the big selling points that Google+ are keen to trumpet is how easy it is to share things with some circles and not others, so you can limit family stuff to your family, work related stuff to your work colleagues, and so on. And it's true, Google+'s circles are great - to a certain extent.

On the other hand, you can already do this with Facebook. It's not as easy and intuitive as circles in Google+, but it's there and it does work. And, actually, the Facebook user interface for managing your friend lists (as they're called in Facebookland) isn't too bad. Google+ Circles is certainly nicer, with it's drag-and-drop interface compared to Facebook's dropdown menus - but once I've categorised someone I'm unlikely to keep moving them around different categories. There is one aspect to this where Facebook actually has the advantage - because Google+'s circles are big and bulky on the screen you can only see 5 at a time, and have to scroll to see more, whereas Facebook goes with a much simpler list, allowing me to see all my friend lists at once.

Verdict: it's a draw. One point each. Facebook 1-1 Google+.

Organising feeds

This is where Google+ makes some serious headway. In Facebook, no matter what friend lists your friends are in, their updates appear in one single news feed. You can choose to hide certain friends' updates from your news feed, but you can't view a news feed of all your old mates from school separately from your current mates from work. With Google+ circles, you can do exactly that; each circle has it's own feed (called a stream in Google+), so as well as your overarching everyone-you-know stream you can filter it according to the circles you've created.

Facebook, quite simply, doesn't do this. So that's two points to Google+. Facebook 1-3 Google+.

Groups and hangouts

What Facebook does offer, though, is it's groups feature. Facebook has old-style groups and new-style groups; the old-style ones are gradually being transitioned to the new-style ones, or archived (amid much controversy). You can't see the status and other stuff that's shared by other people in a Facebook group, but you can see things member share specifically with that group. It also allows you to chat as a group using Facebooks inbuilt chat feature. It also gives you a group email address, so that emails sent to that address appear on the group in Facebook (a bit like Google Groups, which is currently completely separate from Google+).

Google+'s hangouts, however, threaten to eclipse Facebook's groups completely, because they're about sharing in a group chat involving actual chat, using voices and webcams so you can see one another an interact. It lets you view stuff together - a frequently used example is the ability to watch a video from YouTube together, at the same time, and comment on it. Of course this could equally be extended to use in business; video conferencing and web conferencing just became that much easier (and freer). As soon as Google+ was launched Facebook cobbled together a deal with Skype to try and offer something similar - but it's clear they're playing catch-up on this one, and the Facebook/Skype offering only offers one-on-one video chatting, not the Hangout-style group video chat.

But remember this is my comparison of the two and therefore there's an important consideration to bring into play here: I don't have a webcam. I do have speakers attached to my PC and a microphone that I could plug into it (but never have done) - and I could feasibly use my digital camera as a webcam - but I've never found reason to before now. I'm quite happy with the instant messaging kind of chat; if I want to talk to someone I can phone them in the traditional way; if I want to see them then I get off of my backside and pay them a visit. Granted, not quite as easy if they're on the other side of the world, and Google+ will enable that for me if ever I want it, but I can't see it happening any time soon. I'm certain Hangouts is a great feature but right now it doesn't score any points from me.

But Facebook's groups aren't going to get the full two points either - because they're limited to people who are on Facebook. I play in a band, in which all but two of the members have accounts on Facebook. We set up a private Facebook group to interact but can't use it to it's full potential because those two people would be excluded. With Google+ that's no longer a problem, and there's not really any reason why Facebook should make it one either - but it does. So Facebook's groups kind of win, but I'm only giving them one point.

The score is now Facebook 2-3 Google+.

Sparks

Google+ has a feature called Sparks, which lets you search for blogs, news etc. on a particular subject and, if you want to, share it with one or more of your circles. You can save your favourite search terms in your Google+ account.

Frankly I don't see the point. I can search the internet outside of a social network environment, and share interesting links I find via Google+, Twitter or Facebook (or Yammer, or any other network I choose) quite happily without the need for something like this built in. I may be missing the point of Sparks, but I'm not really convinced there is one.

Facebook doesn't offer anything similar - but it doesn't need to. The score stays put, Facebook 2-3 Google+.

Instant messaging

Google+ makes use of the native Google Talk system for this. Google Talk requires that you send a separate invitation to anyone you might want to IM with - even if you've added them to one or more of your Google+ circles and vice versa. Which is really annoying. Google's justification for this makes perfect sense - you don't want to chat with everyone, and you don't always want everyone to see that you're online, so you can pick and choose who can chat with you. Certainly it can be frustrating when you're minding your own business on Facebook and suddenly someone starts chatting away to you in a popup window (you can make yourself appear offline on Facebook if you want to, but who remembers to do that?!).

Facebook's chat is much more instinctive - if one of your friends in online at the same time as you, you can chat with them. Or you can use the Groups feature and IM with a group of people. Google Talk also lets you add several people to an IM conversation. There are some key differences though; to group-chat in Facebook you have to create a group containing the people you want to chat with; with Google(+) you do it on the fly. So Google is a bit clunky because you have to invite someone to chat before you can IM them, and Facebook is a bit clunky because you have to create a group before you can group-chat.

So far, then there's not much between them on this topic - until we think about selective chatting. On Facebook you're either online or offline, and the same applies to everyone. With Google+ you can choose which of your circles you're open to chat to. So you can spend a while on Google+, available to chat to your mates, but with your work colleagues blissfully unaware that you're online - conversely you can safely use Google+ at work for a work related IM conversation without the risk of one of your mates interrupting with pub talk. And if someone really winds you up, you can block them altogether from chatting with you on Google+ / Google Talk. No such functionality on Facebook. Another win for Google+, making it Facebook 2-5 Google+.

Applications (gaming)

Facebook has a rich set of applications built onto its platform, covering a wide variety of purposes - but probably the most popular are the games. Now I love a good game, and I can be competitive at times, so I enjoy comparing high scores and I enjoy playing the online equivalents of Scrabble and the like. But, frankly, these things are not part of Facebook. They're wider internet applications that you can access through Facebook. And there are some games I'm really not interested in - especially those that spam my news feed. I don't care how many sheep you've sheared today on your virtual farm if I'm not competing with my own virtual farm. I don't want to know. What started as one of Facebook's plus points is now one of its biggest pitfalls. Yes I can block Farmville and its ilk from my news feed, but then the friends who play Farmville go and discover something different but remarkably similar, and then I have to block that too. It becomes a constant battle to keep my news feed clean, and that is just not fun. So actually the lack of such things on Google+ is no bad thing.

That said, as I mentioned at the outset, Google+ is in its infancy and I'm sure there are plenty of new features and applications to be added to it in due course. But whereas Facebook is bloated and polluted by its apps, Google+ is cleaner, slicker, and has the opportunity to learn from Facebook's mistakes and keep it that way.

Social networks are about being social. Spamming me with your Farmville activity is not social. The occasional online game of Scrabble is, but that doesn't need to spew anything into a social network's stream/feed and so can be done outside of the social network environment. Having said all that, these applications are a feature Facebook offers that Google+ doesn't, albeit an annoying feature - so it seems a bit mean to award Google+ points for it. We're still at Facebook 2-5 Google+.

Interactivity

I can use Twitter to update my Facebook status, and if I really wanted to, I could do the reverse too. I can also update Facebook (and Twitter) by SMS message, or by email - so it's great for when I'm on the move with my very old and outdated but nonetheless operational smart phone. Google+ will no doubt offer much if not all of this in the future - in fact the SMS option is already available to Google+ users in India, but not to the rest of the world yet - but I have to judge the service on what's available to me now rather than what may come in the future. This is an easy win for Facebook. Two points. Facebook 4-5 Google+.

Photos

One of the things I love about Facebook is the ability to tag people in photos, and share albums. Well, Google+ lets you do that too, and as with the IM thing they've brought in an existing Google technology to help out - the brilliant Picasa photo sharing and organising system. As I use Picasa anyway this makes my life much easier. With Facebook I have to export the photos I want from Picasa, then upload them to Facebook, in my case using a third party uploader because Facebook's native one is utterly pants for Ubuntu users like me. With Google+ and Picasa, it's much simpler - just a couple of clicks and I'm done.

The photo albums themselves display much more nicely on Google+ too; the pictures are bigger in album view, they grow slightly when you hover over them, and the tagging is more flexible that Facebook's version. Best of all, deciding exactly who can and can't see your albums is much easier and more intuitive in Google+ than it is in Facebook. When I first heard about Google+ I was hoping its photo sharing would be somewhere close to Facebook's, because I thought Facebook's was great. I was wrong; Facebook's photo functionality is actually poor compared with Google+'s excellent offering.

The score is now Facebook 4-7 Google+.

Ownership and sharing

This is the crunch point. This is the thing these two companies have been very publicly fighting about. And in that fight I have sided completely with Google, because they've got it right. What am I talking about? The issue is a simple one: Facebook's terms and conditions.

Facebooks Ts and Cs have improved a lot over the years. They were once worded to imply that everything you submitted to the site - every status update, every photograph - belongs to Facebook. Once you put it up there, they own it, they can share it with whoever they like, and your privacy is at risk. Fortunately they've now changed that clause and your information is your own again.

But your information alone is yours alone. The fact that your friends have shared information with you is irrelevant; you're not allowed to take that information away with you. Facebook forbids you downloading a list of all your Facebook friends, complete with email addresses and phone numbers, even though those friends of yours have taken the decision to make that information available to you. Facebook dress this up as protecting privacy - but if your friends wanted that information kept private, they wouldn't have shared it with you in the first place. The real reason Facebook do this is obvious - they don't want you to take your friends' contact information and put it anywhere else.

Google have vehemently argued against Facebook's attitude to this. Google take privacy seriously, but they also take freedom of information seriously. I want my friends to have my phone number and email address. I want them to be able to download them into their address book or whatever. I trust them with that information - if I didn't, I wouldn't share it with them in the first place. (To clarify, not all of my Facebook friends can see my full profile. There are some who can't see my contact details or pictures of my children, for example.)

Unlike Facebook, Google's terms and conditions haven't ever claimed that information I enter into their system belongs to anyone other than me. And neither do Google intend to prevent me from sharing my information with the people I want to share it with, and allowing those people to take that information and do whatever they want with it. I trust that that won't be anything nasty because those people are my friends.

It's for this reason that I've been looking forward to Google+. Up until this point in this post Google+ has had the edge over Facebook, and justifiably so - its features are better, its user interface is cleaner, and this is only the start - but I wouldn't have been too worried if Google+ was a bit of a poor cousin to Facebook as long as the basics are right. And one of those fundamentals is that my information is my information, and when I share that information with someone I share it wholeheartedly.

Facebook absolutely fails to give me control over my information. Its privacy settings are notoriously difficult to manage (although better than they used to be) and the people I've shared information with can't do anything with it because Facebook won't let them. This is a biggie, this is worth much more than two points; more like two hundred.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The contest finishes with Facebook having 4 points, and Google+ having 207. Google+ was winning anyway, but Facebook's refusal to let me control my own information - including setting it free if I want to - makes it a big time loser.

Bye bye Facebook, hello Google+.

The version of the anti-virus software we use has recently prompted us to upgrade to the latest version, which has in turn prompted me to write this article, which I've been intending to do for a while. This, I hope, will provide you with some handy advice about how to keep your computer safe, at no expense.

Many people adopt the attitude of "you get what you pay for" when it comes to computer software, but you couldn't be more wrong. Often you can get free software that does exactly the job you need. Often, in fact, it's better than the stuff you get charged for.

What software do I need?

Let's start, though, with the various bits of software you need to keep your computer safe. In this article, I'm going to assume that you're running Microsoft Windows on a personal/family computer. There are many different types of "securityware", with different purposes. Sometimes all the terminology can be confusing to a novice, but all usually becomes clear when you think about the various ways someone might try to attack your computer.

Terms that just about everyone has heard of are "hacking" and "virus". A hacker is someone who tries to access something they shouldn't have access to. They might try to access your computer in order to spy on you, to read your files, to add malicious software, or even to try and take control of your computer. The way of preventing a hacker is to have a firewall installed. Essentially a firewall acts as the gateway between your computer and the internet; everything that pases from your computer to the internet, or (more importantly) the other way, must go through the firewall. This way, the firewall stops any unauthorised people from accessing your computer, and it stops any unauthorised software on your computer from accessing the internet.

A virus is a piece of software designed to spread itself to other computers, often causing some damage along the way. A virus isn't necessarily stand-alone software - it could be encoded inside an email or a web page, or even a word processing document or other file. Because of that, a firewall alone won't necessarily spot a virus and stop it. Instead, you need to have specialist anti-virus software installed.

Usually, anti-virus software can do all of the following:

monitor your computer constantly, checking every file that opens for viruses
scan your computer for viruses
obtain information on the latest viruses from the internet to keep you safe from the most recent threats.

The combination of a firewall and an anti-virus programme is the absolute minimum you need to keep your computer safe. But there are other bits of useful software too - because there are other forms of malicious software ("malware") than viruses. Because these other threats don't necessarily try to spread themselves or harm your computer, they don't classify as viruses. They come mainly in two forms: adware (which displays adverts or opens websites without your consent) and spyware (which tries to track your activities and possibly obtain personal information about you, or your passwords and other security data). There are a number of specialist anti-spyware and anti-adware utilities available for free. These aren't traditionally seen as being as essential as anti-virus software and a firewall, but these days the need for the wider range of securityware is increasing rapidly.

So what do I need to do?

One thing you don't need to do is fork out a load of money. You can get everything you need to secure your computer for free, without parting with any personal information or viewing hordes of adverts. There are a number of freebies available out there. Here are a selection. Remember, you need a firewall and an anti-virus utility as a bare minimum.

Free anti-virus software

AVG Anti-Virus - free for personal use. Very easy to download and install, works well with most other securityware. Easy to update and interact with, too.

Avast! Home Edition - we haven't tried this one, but it's there if you want an alternative to AVG.

Free firewalls

ZoneAlarm - very easy to install and use, and works well with other security software. The updating process used to be a bit clunky but is now beautifully smooth. One friend of mine doesn't like ZoneAlarm because he says it's hard to uninstall. I haven't heard of anyone else having problems though (and I know several who use it) and besides, why would you ever want to uninstall your firewall?!?

There are a number of other free firewalls around but often they require your email address - so that they can send you spam... er, no thanks!

Other free securityware

AVG Anti-Spyware Free is a new kid on the anti-spyware block from the same people as AVG Anti-Virus. It's thoroughly excellent, I highly recommend it.

Adaware SE Personal is from a company called Lavasoft, and is one of the most established and most efficient anti-malware applications. It focuses on removing adverts from your computer, but also scans for some viruses and spyware at the same time. This free application doesn't have a continuous live system scan like the AVG products, though. One other point of interest is that despite its name, last time I read the terms and conditions there was no "personal/non-commercial use only" clause.

Spybot Search and Destroy is a very well-known and well-established name. Personally I've never used it (just because I've been using the alternatives instead) but the people I know that have highly recommend it.

Privacy is about security, not shame

Google+ and Facebook compared