Nick Moline's Blog: You can no longer buy more than 25GB of Storage for GMail with the Google Drive release

You’ll (never/possibly) need to delete another messageYou can no longer buy more than 25GB of Storage for GMail with the Google Drive release

2012-04-24T20:41:24Z

Remember when GMail first came out? 1GB of email was unheard of, especially in a free service at the time. One of Google’s big selling points was “you’ll never need to delete another message.” It was right there on the home page. If you compare the home pages from 2004 and today for Gmail you’ll note they still refer to it as being “Lots of space” but they no longer say you’ll never need to delete another message. The message about never deleting email disappeared sometime between March, 2009 and December 2009.

Why did the message go away? Because the users proved that 1GB (then 2GB, then 4GB, then 7GB) simply wasn’t enough to store EVERY email. To combat this, back in 2007, Google released a means of purchasing more storage space at a rate of 6GB for $20/year, this storage would be shared amongst your Google Docs, GMail, and Picasa accounts. Over time these prices got even better. Yesterday you could buy 20GB of storage for $5 a year.

Today however, with the Google Drive release, the prices have changed from being yearly, to being monthly, while yesterday you could get 20GB for $5 a year, today the cheapest plan is 25GB for $2.49 a month (which comes out to $29.88/year). This is a very significant increase, but it’s not what I find the most annoying: GMail storage space is now completely separate than Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) and Picasa storage. The 25GB you are purchasing is only for Google Drive and Picasa, not for GMail.

They soften the blow by ALSO giving you an upgrade to 25GB on GMail, but this is separate from the 25GB on Google Drive. Now this means that you are really buying about 35GB for the $29.88 a year (but you could previously buy 80GB for $20 a year so it’s still a sizeable increase), but the kicker is, the 25GB of space on GMail is fixed. If you buy 25GB of space on Google Drive, you get 25GB of space on GMail, if you buy 1TB of space on Google Drive, you get 25GB of space on GMail.

There is no longer any option available to purchase more than 25GB of space on GMail whatsoever, no matter how much you may want it so that you never have to delete another email

GMail's home page used to tell you not to delete email

I’d like to say I have hope that they will allow this option soon, but I don’t really. The premium Google Apps for Business has long given 25GB of space for GMail, and even though I have personally wanted to buy more space, Google has never given me the option to buy more on a Google Apps account. It seems the dream of limitless email storage is no longer alive.

Google’s Code Mistake, and what they did to make it right

2012-04-20T17:31:50Z

This morning Google opened up a programming competition using the same system as Google Code Jam (they called it the Google Code Jam Sprint to I/O) to win the right to buy 1 of 100 tickets to Google I/O. Normal Registration for the conference closed 20 minutes after it opened back on March 27th due to the incredible demand, so naturally those developers who couldn’t get in before were excited and ready to battle for the chance to buy a ticket.

The competition consisted of 2 problems, programmers could write their code in any language (as long as the compiler is free to use). It would work like this, you would write a program according to their specifications of the problem, and then you would submit it. When you submit it, google would provide you with a file of sample input data and then give you 1 minute to run your code against that sample data and then submit the output to them. They would then run a validator across the output and tell you if you were correct or not. If you were correct, it would accept your answer, if not, it would reject it.

The first question went like this (paraphrasing)

The Google Store has M new designs of android mini-statues available, and they have L of each design in stock. You, an avid collector and generous gifter, want to buy a certain number of each of these new designs (K₁, K₂… K_M). The problem is… the packages for these statues are all exactly the same, and don’t indicate what is inside, and you cannot open the package before purchasing. What is the minimum number of packages you need to purchase to guarantee you have all of the statues you want in a worst-case scenario

The sample data was a list of lines in the following format for different test cases:
L M K₁ K₂ ... K_M

For example:

5 3 4 2 1
5 3 5 5 5
5 2 1 5
6 4 0 0 0 0
2 4 5 1 2 3
0 3 4 1 2
9 5 1 1 1 1 1

Taking the first one (They have 5 each of 3 different designs, and you want 4 of the first, 2 of the second, and 1 of the third), the correct answer would be 14 (in order to guarantee you have at least 4 of the first, at least 2 of the second, and at least 1 of the third, you would have to buy enough that you would have ALL of all but 1 of them, and then the highest K for the remainder)
Answer = (L * (M-1)) + max(K)
The question also said that if it was impossible to get what you want, you should return -1 (like the 5th and 6th examples, you can’t buy more statues than they had available in the first place)

Now most programmers seeing something like the 4th test case there (6 4 0 0 0 0) would realize that if you don’t want to buy any of them, than the answer is 0 (minimum number to buy in order to get 0 statues is 0), so the basic pseudo code to solve this problem is:

function process_test_case(L = 0, M = 0, K = array()) {
     if (max(K) == 0) return 0
     elseif (max(K) > L) return -1
     else return (L * (M - 1)) + max(K)
}

There is just one problem… Google’s developers that came up with this test, didn’t think about the possibility where you don’t want any statues (max(K) == 0), so if you ran the above code and returned 0 on the sample 4, google’s validator would come across with “Incorrect”, on the other hand if you left that line out and only did the other 2 possibilities, it would say you were “correct”

Naturally a lot of the programmers who entered the competition were quite upset about this, and complained to Google via comments on the Google+ post that announced the competition. Eventually google put up the following message saying that they realize they made a mistake:

We’ve made a mistake in problem A. The correct output is 0, but it is being judged as wrong because 4 of our problem writers have independently made the same bug in their solutions. We would like to apologize for the confusion this has caused. We will send an email to all participants shortly, announcing our plan to resolve this issue in the least unfair manner possible. We take a lot of precautions to prevent mistakes like this, but we have messed up this time

Now I did not enter this competition (I did the coding example just for the brain exercise, but I did not submit it) because I am already registered for Google I/O and didn’t need the additional ticket for myself, but some of my coworkers did enter the competition, and they received an email a little while ago which included the following:

As you know, we intended to provide an opportunity to buy Google I/O tickets to the top 100 scorers. In light of our mistake, we’ve decided instead to offer this opportunity to all participants who have submitted any solution to either of the two problems. Please watch your inbox for a registration code coming shortly.

That does indeed seem “least unfair,” everyone who tried the contest, gets to go to Google I/O. If you are among those, (like my fellow coworkers), I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco on June 27th.

Perhaps it isn’t April Fools day after all! Pottermore Shop now open

2012-03-28T05:47:23Z

I mentioned last week that Pottermore is set to open to the public on April 1st, unless it is a cruel April Fools day joke to potter fans. It seems the Pottermore team is hoping to dispel the fears that it might be a joke by releasing part of the site (a part that wasn’t previously even available to beta users) today! The Pottermore Shop, where we can finally purchase Harry Potter e-books, is now available in the US and Britain (with other regions and languages coming soon).

I do almost all of my reading these days on a Kindle or Kindle related app because I love the portability of it. It has been extremely annoying for years that my favorite book series isn’t available on Kindle, because they are the books I’d most like to have with me at all times.

When I travel, I tend to need to bring several books with me because with all the extra reading time I tend to plow through a few books, and I just can’t carry the entire Harry Potter series in my carryon, so you can be sure I will be picking up the Complete Harry Potter Collection (for $57.54) very soon.

The Great:

Buy once, get both .mobi (Kindle) and .epub versions!
No DRM Crap to deal with, this will work on every .mobi and .epub reader
Still supports Whispersync on Kindle even though you aren’t buying from Amazon!
Also supports Google Play and Nook
Audio books also have no DRM, plain .mp3 files!

The Good:

Price for ebooks is good, if not great. (SS, CS and PA are $7.99 each, GF, OotP, HBP and DH $9.99 each, or the whole set $57.54)
Audio books are cheaper than the CD versions previously available
Store is easy to use and purchase

The NOT so Good:

Audio books are still way too expensive (SS, CS and PA are $29.99 each, GF, OotP, HBP and DH $44.99 each, or the whole set for a whopping $242.94)
I can’t buy the books on Amazon (or with my kindle directly) or on iTunes, kinda not very friendly to people who are used to buying that way.
It won’t let me buy the British editions, even though I prefer them (Actually being familiar with Alchemy, I’ve always preferred to read “Philosopher’s Stone” to “Sorcerer’s Stone”)

Google I/O 2012 Sells out in less than a half hour

2012-03-28T19:33:07Z

Google I/O sold out in Less than 30 minutes

Even though Google doubled the price (paid $450 last year, this year $900), Google I/O sold out even faster than last year. Last year it took about 45 minutes for Google’s Developer conference to sell out, this year it was all over in just over 20 minutes according to a post on Google+ by Google VP Vic Gundotra.

I’m glad to say I will be at I/O this year once again, but all but one of my colleagues who tried to buy tickets were unable to acquire them. Will I see you at Google I/O?

The Tale as old as Time, is new again (twice)

2012-03-28T05:46:56Z

Back in January, my wife and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D, part of a trend of older movies getting the 3D treatment we’ve been treated to this year. While I enjoyed the experience, I think I mostly just enjoyed seeing Beauty and the Beast in theaters again, the 3D was just so-so. It reminded me a lot of pop up books, each layer was flat and it was just a bunch of layers stacked on top of each other to give the 3D effect.

The Saturday before last however, I went to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts to see the travelling company of the Broadway Beauty and the Beast Play. The play was good overall. I like what they did to explain the characters appearing more “human.” In order to excuse the fact that the characters are played by humans instead of animated candlesticks and teapots, is changed the story slightly so that the change from human to inanimate object is a gradual one. A short time into the play the winder appeared on the back of Cogsworth, where previously he didn’t have it.

Not only did this excuse the human appearances, but it also had the advantage of increasing the urgency of the situation in the story. The implication is that eventually they will be completely inanimate, unable to move or speak, making the breaking of the spell that much more important to the characters.

The productions of the songs from the movie were excellent in the play, especially “Be our Guest,” “Gaston,” and the title song “Beauty and the Beast.” The song added to the play that was cut from the original movie (“Human Again”) was likewise excellent, however they also added many additional songs, presumably to lengthen the play, and not a single one of the additional songs was any good (in my not humble opinion). They were dull, and a times made me so bored I found myself wondering if the song would ever end so we could get back to the dialog (not what you are supposed to be wondering when watching a musical).

Overall I really enjoyed seeing Beauty and the Beast the musical, and I’m looking forward to catching Mary Poppins when it comes to town in late May.

Don’t be such a Drama King

Pottermore to finally open up on April 1st, unless it’s a cruel joke

2012-03-23T01:33:08Z

When will the Beta END?!

I’ve talked before about Pottermore, the website by J.K. Rowling and TH_NK. Well according to the Pottermore Insider blog, the site will go live on April 1st, it isn’t clear if this means that the ebooks will finally be available on that date too, although I hope so. Of course, April 1st is well known to be April Fools Day. And Rowling herself has been known to acknowledge the fun of an April Fools Joke (Fred and George Weasley were “of course” born on April Fools Day), so announcing an April 1st release date could be a very cruel joke. Here’s hoping it’s true!

What’s all the Hubbub about anyway?

2012-03-23T01:35:19Z

I’ve been fighting with the PubSubHubbub protocol over the last few days. I apologize for the test posts which have been causing annoyances to what few readers I actually have. For those of you who have no idea what PubSubHubbub is, it is a method of allowing people to get updates about new blog posts in real time (or near real time).

RSS and Atom Feeds have been around for a long time, and they are great at dispensing the content of a blog or site in an easy to consume format. However just like the home page of the blog, they are just files, sitting on a website waiting for someone to fetch them. When I write a new post, or change an existing post, people who subscribe to my feed must fetch the feed again in order to know something has changed.

Most feed fetchers do this by what is called “polling,” which simply means every X minutes, it goes and fetches the feed again and compares it against what it got the last time it checked the feed.

PubSubHubbub allows feed fetchers to instead subscribe to get notified whenever there is a new post on a feed. I won’t bother going into the details of how it works here, but the basic gist is that whenever your blog (the “Publisher”) gets a new update to it’s feed it posts this just once to the Hub (a server that handles the bulk of the process). The Hub then looks through it’s list of Subscribers, and does an HTTP Post to a callback url provided by each subscriber, which includes an abbreviated version of the feed’s contents (just the post(s) that have changed) which the subscriber can then process immediately, rather than waiting till it’s next scheduled update time.

Simple in theory, in practice it’s been a pain to work with.

No related posts.

Google I/O 2012 Here I come

2012-03-20T22:34:24Z

I’m all registered to go to Google I/O 2012 on June 27, 2012. I’ve been to every Google I/O so far (and Google Developer Day) before hand and am really looking forward to going again. The price was really hiked up this year ($900 as opposed to $450 last year), but they have done away with the Early Registration discount, and they have extended the conference from 2 to 3 days this year.

The “real” price last year was $550 with an early-bird discount of $450, so when you consider there are no early birds this year, the increase is 38.9% for 50% more conference, so perhaps the increase isn’t so bad.

2011 on Nick.pro

2012-03-23T01:43:16Z

Even though my blog is self hosted, I like many wordpress users use wordpress.com stats from the Jetpack plugin.

This year, the great people at WordPress.com decided to create some really great looking Annual Reports for blogs using wordpress.com stats.

In 2011 I wrote only 12 posts, which is really pathetic, but nowhere near as bad as 2010 where I posted a whopping 3 posts. I resolve in 2012 to write more often.

My most popular post of the year? Pottermore Cheats: Earning more house points through failure then success in potion making where I outlined the flaws evident in the Potions system on Pottermore, which have since been fixed as I mentioned in my second most popular post of the year.

Check out Jetpack.me’s full 2011 year in blogging on nick.pro report.

The Geek’s Night Before Christmas

2011-12-25T05:34:32Z

Last night I was trying to think about where to put my stocking, and when it dawned on me to put it on the shelf above the TV, it inspired me to write this parody. I hope you enjoy it.

Twas the Night before Christmas, and in the Geek’s House
The only thing stirring was the Geek’s mouse

The stocking was hung by the Plasma with care,
In hopes that UPS soon would be there;

He was busy coding, no time for bed
Visions of source code, danced through his head

Wearing a thinkgeek t-shirt, and a Tux cap,
He tracked Santa Claus on the Google Earth App

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
He clicked straight to Twitter to research the matter.

News site and blog he clicked like a flash,
When nothing he found, to the front door he dashed.

When, what to his wondering eyes should appear
but a big brown truck, it was finally here!

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
A UPS man, did you think St. Nick?

More rapid than eagles, his charges they came,
The Geek whistled, and shouted, and called them by name

From Amazon, eBay, ThinkGeek and Zappos,
Great gifts bought online, he wondered who sent those.

The man brought them out and stacked them up high
So many presents, they reached to the sky.

He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly

When finally done with stacking straight as a line
he brought out a clipboard and pen and said, “Sign”

Then placing one finger aside of his nose,
The man gave a nod and into the truck he rose

He turned his key, and drove down the lane
The geek looked down at brown packages plain

He opened the first, and smiled when inside
An iPod from his mother, wrapping paper did hide

The second he found, was a Blu-Ray from a friend
Such generosity, his heart it did mend

Boxes and boxes, each one he did ope’.
Each tech gift he found him with joy and hope

My story is done, to me it did Psych
A Geeky Christmas to all, if you enjoyed it click

No related posts.