Google recently released Google Scribe, an experiment on auto-completing words for the user in advance, instead of spell and grammar checking what he’s already written. Go try it for yourself.

I myself had some fun letting Google write stuff for me. Just start with an arbitrary word, and keep accepting whatever the first suggestion is. The UI slows down quite a lot after a dozen or so auto-completions, so sometimes you need to delete the last space and type it again to get some performance back.

For example, here’s what I got after seeding their algorithm with “I’m”:

I’m not sure if it is not a valid stream resource in C minor for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to share videos with friends and family to enjoy a good meal and a drink for the first time in the future and the future of the world and the world of the living room and dining room with a view to share videos with friends and family to enjoy a good meal and a drink for the first time in the future and the future of the world and the world of the living room and dining room.

Obviously, the algorithm quickly loops like crazy, and the sentence doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s pretty funny (at least to me!). Now, here’s what I got when starting with “You”:

You can turn Autoshare off at any time and without notice to you and your family to enjoy a good meal and a drink for the first time in the future and the future of the world and the world of the living room and dining room with a view to share videos with friends and family to enjoy a good meal and a drink for the first time in the future and the future of the world and the world of the living room and dining room.

That’s pretty interesting, as the looping is very similar to the first one!

Now, here’s what I got when starting with “let’s”:

Let’s see if we can not guarantee each coupon ‘s authentication and authorization data between security domains and do not want to be related to the search result can be bookmarked to maintain the filter for future use at Recent Searches for neutral Higgs bosons in e minor for clavichord and the harpsichord and the clavichord and the harpsichord and the clavichord and the harpsichord and the clavichord and the harpsichord.

This time, the loop is short and kinda catchy. The harpsichord and the clavichord! The harpsichord and the clavichord! The harpsichord and the clavichord! Maybe that’s gonna be the next internet meme?

Everybody knows, or at least says without really knowing, that Facebook has a few privacy issues, but there’s one thing I never quite realized until recently…

It all started with my friend Bertrand opening his new personal blog. He wanted a dedicated place to post personal stuff, which he previously posted alternatively on his professional blog or on Facebook. I’m pretty sure he also wanted an excuse to play around with his new cool baby, Orchard… Anyway. In order not to start completely from scratch, he imported those previous articles he wrote, along with their comments, to the new blog.

I immediately sent him an email to tell him he could work at Google Buzz, seeing how he just disclosed Facebook comments to the public… but as I was writing it, I wondered… were his notes already public in the first place? You see, Facebook gives you a lot of control over your content’s visibility. You can specify exactly who gets access to what, who gets to comment on what, etc. The problem is that, although the content creator knows what the privacy settings are, the content consumers don’t. Being on Facebook, I just assumed that those notes were, at best, visible to friends of friends… but of course, it wasn’t the case. Bertrand’s notes were public all this time, and as I commented on them, I unknowingly posted completely public stuff.

None of those comments being public bothers me, mind you. But it’s just annoying how, when you participate in your friends’ online social life, you don’t really know what kind of privacy level you’re dealing with. Obviously, Facebook should add some kind of indicator whenever you post a comment, telling you who will be able to see it. I’m surprised this hasn’t been such a big deal so far. Maybe people are too busy with “Company XYZ is evil!!”-type generalities to bother with actual details.