By David Malki – Wondermark

A while ago (sometime last year that I don’t remember anymore) I came across a quick blurb in a now long-forgotten Google blog entry telling users exactly how to get their names verified for their Google Profile pages.

It’s really simple, and free — the whole thing’s furnished by Knol, which has itself become somewhat forgotten when compared to Google’s many other ventures. I hadn’t given it much thought since, but with the recent advent of Google Buzz, our Google Profiles have taken on a whole new responsibility.

I also feel like I should have told more people about it when I got my own name verified, but that’s neither here nor there.

As I said before, it’s pretty easy to do, and should only take a couple of minutes to complete if you’ve got the right information on hand.

Disclaimer: This only works for Americans. Sorry (whole rest of the world), but the company is based here and the data they need to reference for verification is the kind that they can’t go looking for elsewhere.

Step 1: Go to Knol.

Google used their Knol service as the one-stop shop for name verification due to its extant system based on reputation, credibility, true name usage and basically the fact that it’s existence is contingent upon its users not being trolls.

Once at Knol, look up to the top right corner of the page and sign in. Even if you’re already logged into other Google services, it’s likely that when you load Knol you won’t be signed in yet. It uses your regular Google account so this won’t be a problem for anybody already using Buzz or Gmail.

Once you’re signed in, look back to the same top right corner and see that the options have changed to include a link to your Knol preferences. Click the link.

Step 2: Choose the tab for Name Verification.

Seriously, I wasn’t kidding when I said it was easy. Once you’re in Knol Preferences, choose the tab that says Name Verification. You’re almost done.

Once you’ve clicked the tab for Name Verification, you’re presented with two options:

Step 3: Verify.

Now you’ve got an easy decision to make. You can either verify your identity by using a credit card, or by using your Social Security Number. Either works just as well as the other, but since there are still masses of people who seem to think their SSN is somehow both secret and special in some way, the credit option is a safe bet.

Once you submit your info, the system processes it rather quickly. In fact, you may have a note in your inbox telling you it’s done before you close the tab. Now simply go to your Google Profile page, et voila! You’re verified.

It seems they’ll never learn. Yesterday, this pop-up introduced itself to Facebook users across the globe, and it wasn’t to the warmest of welcomes, either. Out of the millions of users who see this pop-up, roughly half can be expected to actually follow through with the indoctrination into new privacy features, while the rest will simply click the comfortable-looking “skip for now” button. Some users logged into their accounts and were never greeted with the pop-up at all, even though the changes had already taken place.

There’s an explanation for that — apparently they’re rolling this out incrementally, and it only seems like a full release because of the site’s massive user-base. Facebook’s Ana Muller explains thusly:

If you haven’t yet seen the three-step transition tool for reviewing and updating your privacy settings, you will shortly. We’re asking all 350 million people who use Facebook to go through this process and are rolling out the changes incrementally to make sure it goes smoothly. Keep in mind that you also won’t see the new Privacy Settings page until you’ve gone through the transition process.

These new changes weren’t a surprise by any means, but were actually known and expected; when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently posted his An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg (I honestly never get tired of saying that, I can’t believe how pretentious that guy is…), he concentrated on the eventual phasing-out of regional networks while only mentioning the privacy update. He pointed to a post from way back in July of this year, which basically talked about Facebook’s willingness to move toward the present privacy-controls as quickly as possible. The whole thing was dragged out and veiled in maybe’s, but it’s happening now.

Is it really so bad?

In short: Yes.

The picture above is a direct screenshot of the new, ultra-simplified privacy options presented to users when they follow through with the pop-up. The settings shown in the picture are the default settings that Facebook has pre-selected for users. The move to push users to inadvertently over-share is so brazen that even the BBC said something about it in a post this morning.

I’m not even about to lie; this blog is and has always been extremely critical of Facebook, especially since breaking the story about Facebook ads and privacy earlier this year. I will, however, be fair in explaining my stance on this new round of changes.

With the sole exception of sharing posts (which I left set to “everybody”), I immediately set all options back to the right-side column. This is a personal preference, and I’ll admit that it’s one largely based on principal and a history with Facebook that’s left a bad taste in my mouth. The reason I’ve gone ahead and left the posts option public is that I usually post things that are open to anyone to see — I don’t generally get very private in Facebook status updates.

That being said, there is an issue that needs attention.

The Actual Settings Are Still Confusing

I watched somebody attempt to configure their new privacy settings without the aid of the pop-up, only to find that they hadn’t really changed at all from the hopeless jumble of confusing mess that’s already known and hated. It turns out that the shiny new simplified version is only for users who follow through with the pop-up, while everyone else is stuck with the same poorly-worded quagmire that we’ve become so accustomed to bashing. Facebook calls these legacy settings “extensive and granular” — I call them just plain shitty.

Read the full, official Facebook blog post here.

I’m one of over 350 million Facebook users. Being extremely generous, I’d be willing to say that one million users both attempt to locate and successfully navigate their way through the privacy settings, and finally affect a desired change in them. That’s being extremely generous, because we all know that the odds are heavily against that there are anywhere near that many people who even know there are privacy settings.

The number of people being manipulated into sharing more information than they’d likely choose is nothing short of mind-bending. The ad-revenue is staggering, and the information gleaned from extensive data-mining is equally astounding. Just something to think about.

Yes, they’ve finally done it. After months of talk about incorporating the mounds of real-time data to which Google has access, they’re finally piping it all into their own search results. The sources they listed are some pretty big names: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, and Jaiku, among others — and that’s not counting the major media outlets they’ve also tapped to glean time-sensitive information.

See the official release for more details.

Annoyingly, of course, all anyone can say about this (aside from it’s about damn time) is that “Bing must be nudging them to be more competitive.” I can’t help but recall the fact that Google was in talks with Twitter regarding real-time search results several months before Bing ever existed.

Yep, completely and utterly missing. It’s been the better part of a day without the much-maligned pile of fail feature that Twitter’s massive ego of a CEO insisted we’d all grow to love — and they’ve not said a word about it. Unfortunately, because of their noted silence on the matter, the odds are about 50/50 that the horrid thing will be back tomorrow, bright eyed and bushy-tailed. I believe this to be the likeliest case because it’s what I don’t want to happen.

I’m still crossing my fingers.

We mustn’t discount the possibility that Twitter may actually have killed the beast, once and for all. I wouldn’t count on it — there’s that whole sticky issue of Twitter’s self-affirming infallibility being at stake here, after all.

[UPDATE]:

After hours of pleasing me with their absence, Twitter’s foul retweets are back. It was nice while it lasted.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s official blog. Aside from the hilariously redundant title of the post, there’s not too much fun stuff in this one — but it does put some final affirmation to the long-run rumors.

The main point of the release:

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

Read the full release here.

Yes, those are “stacks” of “benjamins.”

His Twitter page was hilarious enough as it was without the G-Money MySpace retard-shot he has plastered as a background image. The MySpace theme runs throughout his scam-site too, including badges that lead back to his profile. And this really hits the mark; nothing says gaudy like a sleazy MySpace page…

WARNING: MySpace pages have been known to lower IQ, view at your own risk.

This guy is amazing. At the end of his MySpace youtube video, he gets in his Nissan 350Z and drives off, and yes, the camera keeps running until he drives down the street. He has two separate youtube videos, one for his MySpace and one as a greeter for his site. I’m sure he’d have one for Twitter as well, if he could. But these profile pages are just runners up compared to the grand-daddy of them all, his actual website.

Behold, in all its trashy glory: MiragesMoney.com

After laughing at his ridiculous Twitter background image for a solid five minutes, I clicked the link to his website, where I sat and laughed for another solid five minutes. Then I watched his terribad, self-promotional youtube video that he uses for a site-greeter, and laughed for another five minutes, and then it just got better as I clicked through to see the “Success Guide” portion of his site.

The Success Guide

This is truly hilarious; it’s his step-by-step guide to “become a baller.” Seriously.

From the guide intro:

Alright alright, so you want to pursure this make money from home thing and you want to stack $$$ like Mirage huh? You got some work to do. But hey, if Mirage can stack thousands a day then so can you. So here it is you wanna be ballers, the ultimate guide to making money online. Aka the success guide. I don’t know why Mirage did it, but I guess he just has a sweet spot in his heart for those who are struggling like he was. Now dont even think about jumping ahead in any section! Read each section diligently, join the networks he tells you to and structure everything the way he teaches and start ballin.

It only gets better from there, including a life history, written in nearly seventh-grade reading level, and many, many paragraphs of juicy internet-marketing secrets. This guy lays it all bare for the world to see, so that we can all become ballers just like him. Go ahead, cruise his pages, it’s good for about 20 minutes of uninterrupted laughter. When you’re finished, just be sure to gouge out your eyes, burn your computer, and lament the sad state of humanity to which the world has now bore witness.

After rolling out their lackluster new retweet feature not but one day ago, Twitter today announced that it’s been “temporarily disabled.” According to Twitter, they’re simply working on “a few problems” that have occurred during the rollout.

Twitter: Here’s Your Problem

Nobody likes your failed feature. The fix is simple, just remove it and act like it never happened. That’s how everyone else is acting, because it’s garbage. Thanks.

Responsible reporting starts with what you choose to report, and turning something as toxic as Facebook games into high-traffic news is beyond ridiculous. Slow days happen, but there are better things to talk about than this garbage.

Some more app-pandering filth:

• Top 10 Facebook Applications for Music Lovers
• The Top 10 Facebook Apps [Poll Results]

Take particular note of their “poll” results. The poll in question is a reader-poll, which, by definition, means it’s a few points south of retarded. And on that note…

On Mashable Polls:

They’re disgusting. Take a look, and get a feel for just how ridiculous it is that Mashable pass these off as polls. You get the general idea when you read an article like Windows 7 beating OS X in a reader poll, only to realize that Mashable’s reader base is likely to be along the lines of 80% Windows users. I’d be willing to bet that nine out of ten of those users aren’t even using Windows by choice, but have never used OS X and therefore had no place participating in such a poll to begin with. You’ll see a similar tragedy in a Firefox vs. Chrome poll included in the list below:

• Facebook vs. Twitter
• Favorite social network
• Favorite Facebook application
• Favorite Twitter photo-sharing service
• Firefox vs. Chrome
• Favorite Twitter client
• Is Google losing its focus?
• TweetDeck vs. Seesmic
• WordPress vs. TypePad
• Tumblr vs. Posterous
• Would you store your files with Google?

I haven’t even touched on the obvious load of failure and half-assery that they’re calling the Open Web Awards yet. I’ll save that one for later.

No matter what you’ve heard, Wave does work on iPhones.

There’s recently been a bit of a murmur about Waveboard, a “client” for Google Wave, and whether or not it’s worth the download. I’m going to say the answer is a technical no. Please, feel free to give it a try for yourselves, but for those of you out there who are curious — but not that curious — don’t bother.

Waveboard: What is it?

I’ll open up by saying what it’s not: Waveboard is not an app. It’s presented like one, it’s referred to as one, it’s even downloaded and installed like one, but it’s not. It’s nothing more than a site-specific browser (see: Fluid) with Growl built into it. That being said, there’s no monumental reason not to use it — there just isn’t any reason to use it. The only plusses you’ll get in using Waveboard will be notifications popping up on your screen (which will inevitably get annoying), and a separate browser devoted singularly to Wave that will not crash when the most recent Facebook app breaks in one of your open browser-tabs.

Waveboard is available as both a desktop application as well as an iPhone app. At the time of this article, both run poorly.

What about the iPhone?

People have thus far been pretty quick to see the uselessness in Waveboard’s desktop app, but they’ve not been so quick to see the same logic concerning the iPhone. The problem is a simple one, it’s just misunderstanding. When a user goes to wave.google.com on their iPhone, they are greeted with the very same warning splash that users with unsupported browsers receive. The key here is to read the whole splash warning, which ends in a tiny clause that gives the option (via hyperlink) to proceed at one’s own risk.

Those intrepid enough to select this option and press their luck will then proceed into Wave. They’ll find an iPhone specific, gmail-esque webapp in fully functioning and very efficient working order, and they’ll see their inbox populate before their eyes. People need to realize that when they’re surfing the web on an iPhone, that they are in fact using Safari, that they’re browsing a full-blown webkit browser. As you can see from the image; Wave works on iPhones.

The first thing that you’ll notice when using Wave on an iPhone is the speed, or lack thereof. Wave is extremely intense for browsing on the iPhone, and its framework is young. That being said, it’s a shaky experience. As it stands, Wave in a desktop browser is already plagued with constant loading activity. This is because unlike emails, which simply show up, waves are always checking in and updating. All that data can be a bit much for the iPhone to handle, and the overall user experience suffers in the long run. None of this changes the fact that it’s actually working.

The Logical Desktop Alternative:

Aside from the obvious “just be more careful about crashing your browser, and use less tabs” approach, there is a sensible alternative that works quite well. Simply use another browser. This is done as simply as opening two browsers, and using the second only for Wave. What I’ve found to work quite well, being that I currently use Safari 4 as my primary (default) browser due to its native 64-bit operating mode, is to open an instance of Google Chrome, which would be used solely for Wave and wave-related browsing. This way, when I hit a link in Wave, my activity stays within the same browser as Wave. Everything is clean and simple; no worrying about either browser affecting the other.

If you’re a big fan of site-specific browsers, there’s always the option of simply using Fluid on your own, to create an SSB for Wave. It won’t have the extra clunky business that the folks at Waveboard have somehow managed to introduce, since it will be an SSB in its simplest form. Again, I honestly don’t see a reason to ever do this, but there’s also no real reason not to do it if it makes you happy.

Happy Waving.