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Google Takeout Lets You Easily Export From Circles
An anonymous reader writes "If you ever wanted proof that Google's recently-launched Circles social network is angled as the antithesis of Facebook, check out Google Takeout. Produced by the Data Liberation Front, Takeout lets you export all of your data from Circles, Picasa, and Buzz in open formats that can then be imported into other, competing services."
I was hoping that Google Takeout would let me easily eat Chinese food for lunch today =\
They changed the name from Google+ that quickly and quietly after announcing it?
Well, it's better than no change at all, I guess.
Now I'm left wondering why Google Takeout isn't a robodialer for Chinese food...
(The Jargon File once mentioned a potentially fictitious MIT AI Lab project to use text to speech to order pizza. Long live the space-cadet keyboard.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I upload photos from my current phone. I used to upload from my old phone. Sometimes from my real camera, via my macbook.
I'd quite like to have all my statuses and discussions easily convertable to a journal.
I think an export/import facility should be standard, normal, required functionality.
FTA:
Hear, hear!
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Mod this up! If I export my data from Google+ I'm going to put it in what competing service? Yes it is nice that I can export it if a competing service ever does come up but unless the export removes it from the existing service they still have my data. Also we are assuming the new competing service will actually accept the data from the old one, not really a good business decision. I highly doubt Facebook would ever accept an import from another service. They may allow you to do a search to find friends that were on your old service but I don't see anything further being allowed. I don't really see the point.
K Man
it's not like facebook is holding a master copy of my data and not like there are any competitors to facebook right now
There are other social networks... LinkedIn, MySpace, Classmates, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.
If there was a service where I could keep all of my data up-to-date in a single place and then update the other sites periodically, that might appeal to me. Especially if it were done in a nice way. Facebook is a good "general" site, but Flickr is better for photos and Last.fm is better for music and MySpace is better for flipping out your browser with crappy Javascript. My point is that if there were a "general" site like Facebook that could act like a central repository feeding (and receiving from) the specialty sites, that might be something worth using.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think an export/import facility should be standard, normal, required functionality.
Facebook already has this functionality and it works quite well. You can get an export of your wall and all of your photos. It comes as an HTML-formatted document and a folder of the pictures. Building a parser to grab the HTML document into a database or spreadsheet would be trivial.
Google Takeout - lets you download all the data from google services that are almost completely unused in one easy step.
The Data Liberation group has a noble goal... but this is an incredibly lame step in that direction. Given how many years the group has been around, it is pretty sad that they've made such minor inroads. Perhaps this is the first real step in that direction... we'll see...
Picasa? - i have the master copies of all my photos
That's true, but I do not have a master copy of my gallery structure, such as albums, captions, descriptions, or even the selection of photos. If I wanted to take my Picasaweb gallery and recreate it on another website, or even create my own website, it would take me hours and hours of hard work.
AccountKiller
You can request all your data from Facebook anyway under "Account Settings->Download Your Information". I did... it takes several hours to a day and then you get an email with a download path to all the data you've ever put on Facebook.
E pluribus unum
Try asking Google that question. ;)
This is for those folks who don't completely trust 1) the reliability of the cloud or 2) the portability of their data once they commit to a particular cloud service and start working out of the cloud as their primary environment.
Look for a new feature in TakeOut which allows you to restore all your data from an archive. Also look for a new open data portability standard that Google will implement. This will put the onus on Amazon, Facebook and Apple to allow users to freely come and go (and easily take all their data/content with them).
The problem with putting all your stuff in the cloud is that you lose the sense that you still own it since you can't get your hands on it anymore and take it where ever you want. TakeOut solves that.
I'm not knocking the ability to extract your data from the service -- it's all good.
But open up the inter-service protocols, so that competitors can slot into the infrastructure, and then I'd be impressed.
i.e. I'd like to be able to choose Flickr over Picasa, while continuing to use Circles and Buzz, without losing a sense of integration.
Circles is one component of Plus- the one that deals with the different groups of people you connect with. I think the submitter was confused about terminology.
You'll want to read a more comprehensive post about Google Plus by an actual tech journalist (as opposed to an "anonymous reader"), possibly waiting a few days while people figure it out themselves.
Building a parser to grab the HTML document into a database or spreadsheet would be trivial.
The other two replies point out that learning enough programming to build a parser in the first place might not be trivial. Moreover, it would appear to violate Facebook's terms of service, item 3.2: "You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission."
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Facebook likes this!
A circle is the set of all points in a plane which are equidistant from a given point called the center. "Circles" would be a collection of such sets.
Palm trees and 8
Why was this modded down? It's true. You can download your stuff from Facebook.
Sorry about the mess.
Indeed, given the goofs that Google has made with respect to data over the years, I wouldn't trust them with my data without some means of creating my backup. Which is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for my using Google+, the ability to control where my data ends up is also in a smiliar state. Hence why I never got burned by FB, I wasn't stupid enough to trust them in the first place.
Oh I see. Google Is the Evil. Even if they let me take my data with me (unlike others), do not lock me in (unlike others), they are TEH EVIL.
It's the data, stupid. And they let you keep it. If you don't see what's the big deal about it, then probably you don't deserve to be here.
'takeout' implies that you, like, take the data out--you don't, you get to have a copy of it--whoo hoo, you get to have a copy of your own data /taken out/ and until you can actually take your data all the way out--until you can log in to a service which shows all the data google have on you and lets you delete it as you see fit--their claims to be privacy-respecting are hot air
as long as google get to keep the data, too, there's nothing being
Considering that those dialogs include other people's potentially private information, I'd be horrified if they allowed you to export those as well. Perhaps they could just export your half of the conversation.
Considering how poorly thought out FB privacy is, I'm not surprised that you expect to be able to export that as well.
But, then again, I don't use FB because of the myriad other privacy problems they have.
Hey now, as a member of the Front for the Liberation of Data, I find both of those groups to be degenerate to the FLD.
I thought this was in reference to Google's Demo for Circles, that matched meta-words from your chat history with local menus via GPS and google business listings. Since the circles demo is all about a group of people searching for a restaurant to eat at! I figured automatic ordering of food for take out was their facebook-killing app...
Today is the first day of Google+, Google's answer to Facebook.
I just thought I would mention it since I don't see news of it ( accept this thread ) on Slashdot and getting a story accepted on Slashdot is like winning the lottery.
I think I will forever be suspicious of Google due to the stunt they pulled last year with Buzz and censoring Tiannamen Square massacre information from Google China.
However, a CNet article I read stated that Google+ has better and simpler privacy. Hopefully competition from Google+ will force Facebook to do the same.
Your first sentence made it clear that the product will be a flop. If it can't be described in 1-2 sentences what it is and what it does then it's a waste and too complicated for most users.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
The story ran yesterday.
Myself and 3 friends all use Buzz!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Exactly, what we really need is an open interface that allows competitors to link people across social networks, something Facebook will never do until is defunct like AIM.
Your post makes it clear why governments suck: people who base their opinions on bad arguments are idiots and political hacks.
Just because I didn't describe it well doesn't mean it *can't* be described well. I'm not Google and I'm not trying to sell the product - just to answer a very limited question from a confused bystander. That's why I told people to go find a decent source of information. You opted instead to be a dick by taking a cheap shot at me and Google. I hope it helped you feel better about your shitty life.
No, but her grand-kid could.
Not everybody has a programming grand-kid.
Today, most everyone knows a programmer, or at least knows someone who does.
Again, not everyone knows a programmer, or even knows someone who does.
Pay attention to the products that DLF supports - nothing that isn't already easily exported, or that anyone cares that much about. The purpose of this marketing campaign is just to shore up Google's image as the opposite of Facebook - open and caring about your privacy. They want to use this image to push their Facebook alternative, Google Plus. Whether it is actually better with openness and privacy is yet to be seen.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
a place to sell your soul?
I really don't care if Last.fm knows my music listening habits, just as I don't care if the grocery store knows my buying habits when I use the store card. I put photos on Flickr with the express intent of sharing them, so obviously that's not a privacy concern. When job hunting, I send out dozens or even hundreds of resumes to total strangers - so really, what do I care that LinkedIn has the same info?
Everyone has a different level of comfort with privacy. I used to live in Manhattan, where you could see into hundreds of un-curtained apartments, and hundreds of apartments with the curtains drawn. Clearly people have different preferences. The people with the curtains open aren't "selling their souls", they just like the light and view enough to risk giving a bored stranger some jollies.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Splitter!!!
So like... a meta-meta site?
http://www.rakontu.org/
"Rakontu is free and open source software that small groups of people can use together to share and work with their stories. It's for people in neighborhoods, families, interest groups, support groups, work groups: any group of people with stories to share. Rakontu members build shared "story museums" that they can draw upon to achieve common goals."
My wife and I have been working on that. The first version was for Google App Engine, but our next version is being built for the deskop in Java using CouchDB for a backend (a backend that can be either server-based or peer-to-peer) that can also provide an RSS feed.
But, after a lot of time spent doing this for free, we need to raise some money to keep it going (like on the order of US$20K - US$40K to finish the next version of the design goals in the documents on that webpage). We've been talking about using Kickstarter. But maybe Diaspora has used up all the mindshare about that?
But in any case, my wife wrote a related blog post called "Steal these ideas":
http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/2010/08/steal-these-ideas.html
"I spent part of last year building an open-source web application for story sharing and sensemaking in small groups. It's called Rakontu. This was a dream that began in 1999 (when I first started working in organizational and community narrative) and has been growing ever since. I used up years of savings to do it, and I was able to build far less than I would like to build someday, but I had a grand time and I'm glad I did it. I wrapped up the project about a month ago and posted an excerpt from a lessons-learned document for the project.
In my lessons-learned document I said that I'm more interested in the ideas from Rakontu moving on than the actual software surviving as is. Since then a few people have asked me to elaborate on that statement. So I've reviewed and thought, and I've come up with a list of six pieces of advice for anyone who would like to incorporate ideas from Rakontu into their own effort to support online story sharing."
In any case, some people are trying. Maybe someday our society will have a "basic income" to ensure all people have more time for civic-minded pursuits if they are so inclined.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Only thing poorly thought is your comment. You could do with a bit more of common sense.
Because, the moment you posted those dialogs for your friend to see, you effectively made it less private than you think. Nothing is stopping your friend from copy-pasting the whole conversation into a file, and pasting *that* into a blog/forum/printing-and-framing-it-on-a-wall.
Do enlighten us how "exporting" the said conversation is all that much different from his simply copy-pasting the same information into a file?
Oh ok, we get it. Now you want to ban copy-paste. Carry on then.
I cannot download my stuff. 3 other account can be downloaded with my browser,but my primary account just refuses to download. after finishing and entering the password it just says "You have no downloads.". The other accounts befin downloading instead :(
Yeah, jack of all trades, master of none :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Not true. It does not include comments you've posted on others' walls, on groups etc.
I don't think that would be a problem. For example with flickr API, it should be fairly easy to write a script crawling the directory structure you get from picasa, and recreate similar structure in flickr. I don't know if flickrfs still works, but if it does, you can just basically copy all your files to the locally mounted flickr file system.
AccountKiller