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Too Much Noise on Google Plus? Here is How I Deal With It

Posted on by jessestay
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A lot of people are complaining that power users such as myself and Robert Scoble and others are causing too much noise in their stream. Scoble’s wife even quit the service because of it (and I can’t even convince my wife to use it even though I created an account for her). It’s nothing new, though – this is a problem Friendfeed had when they first released their real-time stream (Just Google “friendfeed noise” to see what I mean). However, there are ways of managing it. I’d like to share some of the ways I deal with the noise.

To start, let’s cover what generally causes the noise:

  1. It’s not necessarily about how many people you follow. Scoble follows thousands. I follow several hundred more personal contacts. However, as long as you don’t use the main stream as much, the number you follow really doesn’t matter. What matters is who you interact with.
  2. It is about how many conversations and what types of conversations you interact with. For instance, if you comment on one of my posts, you’ll get notifications for every comment on that conversation. On my posts, and people like Robert Scoble or Chris Pirillo or others, that will be a lot of notifications!
So, how do you fix this problem? At the moment Google+ doesn’t have a whole lot of noise filtering options for people. In some ways that’s why it’s growing so fast. It’s in your face, and forces you to interact. At the same time that’s pretty overwhelming for many people. Friendfeed overcame much of this by creating a pause button, and causing the stream to pause when you moused over it. They also collapsed many of the longer comment streams (Facebook does this too) so that only the first or last comment appeared. I imagine Google+ will do this in the near future. I don’t doubt they’ll find a solution. However, until that happens here is how I deal with it:
  1. Turn on your email notifications and ignore the big red circle. The first thing I did when I joined Google+ was turn off the email notifications because they were becoming too overwhelming (you can do this with the little gear icon in the upper-right of Google Plus). It turned out I found myself becoming too obsessed with how many things were happening in my stream, and it kept reminding me on every Google product I participated in. So I turned them back on, but with one caveat:
  2. Uncheck “Email” for “Comments on a post after I comment on it”. I leave every other email option checked. If you leave this checked, when you comment on one of my posts or one of Robert Scoble’s posts you’ll very quickly be overwhelmed by email. Not even I can handle that! The other options can be managed though, and won’t be nearly as frequent. If someone in one of those threads wants your attention, they’ll mention you with a “+your name” and you’ll still get an email (this is because “mentions me in a post” is still checked in your settings).
  3. Use Gmail. Gmail provides some great management tools for managing noise. First of all, you have priority inbox which you can train to not mark Google Plus posts as priority. You can create filters to send them to another label and skip the inbox if you like, and you can just skip over your notifications as you have time. And the best part about Gmail? Grouped conversations! Me personally – I like the notifications so I keep them in my inbox. Here’s what I do further though to manage that type of flow:
  4. Mute. Mute. Mute! When you’re in Gmail, just press “m” on your keyboard when you have a Google+ thread open, you’ll never see that thread again appear in your inbox. If you want it to appear again, just search for it and press “m” again and it will turn on the new messages to your inbox again. You don’t lose any messages this way. They just skip your inbox so you don’t have to pay attention to them any more. Also, in your Google Plus stream, if there’s a long stream that’s bugging you, you can just click the small triangle in the upper-right of the thread and select “Mute this post”. The post will no longer appear in your stream – no one ever knows you muted it.
This method has worked really well for me so far. It’s the same method I use on Friendfeed to manage my stream mostly. Please let me know how it works for you, or if you have any better ways of managing the noise in your stream better. You can do so in the comments below:
As always, you can follow me on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/107833107845497630206.

Where is Your Audience?

Posted on by jessestay
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Google+ is all the rage right now. For those that can get in, it’s all they can talk about on Google+. For those that can’t get in, it’s all they can talk about outside of Google+. Or so it seems – that’s what the people I follow and pay attention are doing. It doesn’t mean that’s what the people in your network are doing, and in fact, there are many people out there that don’t even know what Google+ is at the moment – I would predict that’s the majority right now.

Google+ is all about “Circles”. We all have different types of “Circles” of friends. Each of these “Circles” is a different audience and each of them probably talks about different types of things. I have an entire circle of hundreds of LDS friends (I work for the LDS Church) on Google+, and their conversations are much different than the Circle I have of Tech bloggers and influencers. At the same time I have circles that aren’t even on Google+. My family, for instance, minus one or two, are all over on Facebook – that’s where I go to talk about family related stuff, and you’ll probably find a much more personal “me” over there. In fact, if that’s your audience, come see me over there.

At the same time, I have certain “circles” over on Twitter that don’t exist on Facebook or Google+ – for instance, I’ll hear a lot more about what my Twitter employee friends are up to over there. Or, on LinkedIn, I have “circles” of professional friends – if I ever want to hire, or have a professional-related question, you better bet I’ll go to LinkedIn for such. The way I met people like Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo was on Friendfeed of all places.

Did you know that Myspace is still one of the most popular networks for kids age 13-18? Now, that’s quickly diminishing as kids move over to Facebook, but as a marketer, I’d consider going to Myspace if my audience is 13-18 year olds. That would be a major part of my business strategy.

The future of “Social Networks” aren’t social networks at all. The fact is, and Charlene Li at Altimeter Group has said this numerous times, social networks will “be like air” in the future. They will be integrated into everyday “circles” that you participate in.

For instance, at work many of use use Yammer to associate with other coworkers. It makes much more sense to participate on Yammer than Google+ if I’m to communicate with coworkers – there are many networks like this. The future will be full of these types of branded “circle” networks.

Imagine branded social networks for your company, or the ability to collaborate in a social way via your High School or College’s website with your classmates. You’ll never have to go to a site like Facebook or Google+ or Twitter to communicate with those closest to you, and they’ll all talk with each other. Or what if a site like FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com enabled families to communicate better with each other in a branded way, just for families? There would be no need to go to Facebook to communicate with family members any more.

As social networks are able to communicate better and better with each other, and more and more standards are built to federate the different circles you participate in, you won’t go to Facebook.com or Google+ or Twitter. You’ll go to the brands and the areas you’re most familiar with and your friends and family will “just be there”. Those are where your real “circles” are.

The fact is no social network is going to be a “Facebook killer” or “Twitter killer” or even “Myspace killer” (remember the stat I shared above?). If anything kills any of these it will be branded experiences that make it easier for you to communicate in the environments you’re most comfortable with. In the end, it’s about where your audience is, who you want to communicate with, and the best places to do that.

This will be different for every person out there – every individual, every professional, every family member, and every marketer. We all have different audiences and it’s up to you to decide which environments are the best places to reach those audiences.

New Images Suggest "Shared Circles" Coming Soon in Google+

Posted on by jessestay
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Florian Rohrweck has been on a role lately uncovering upcoming features to Google+ (including noticing features in Google’s code hinting at Google+’s launch days before it launched and as other bloggers were under embargo and being demoed top secret versions), and it seems Google isn’t keeping their upcoming features well enough behind a test area somewhere. In a recent blog post (language), Rohrweck uncovered some new images hinting at the possibility of sharable Circles to others you want to share to in Google+. Such functionality would be comparable to Twitter Lists, which anyone can subscribe to.

Looking at the image names, each one starts with “shared_circle”, providing open, closed, and highlighted versions of each, and an icon representing the circles. It would seem that Google+ is readying a way to let you share certain circles of yours that anyone can subscribe to and view. This would completely replace just about every feature Twitter has of benefit (other than perhaps the 140 character limit and SMS interface if you call those benefits) – it will be interesting to see what happens as more and more Twitter users get Google+ accounts.

In addition to Shared Circles, Rohrweck seems to have also uncovered that Google has added some sort of Questions icons to its default set of Sprites for Google+, hinting that they are readying a Questions product for launch soon to compete with the likes of Facebook Questions and Quora. Also among Rohrweck’s finds were a Chess piece icon, which may be one of the games also rumored to come out soon.

If you’re looking for a great blog to get the dirt on what Google is preparing, be sure to check out Rohrweck’s blog here. It will be interesting to see, with more CSS, Javascript, and other source digging, what will be found as we move forward (and if Google finally decides to implement a testing area for these types of releases before the products go live). Great job Florian! You’re always welcome to do a guest post or two (or three) here. (Someone should offer Florian a job at Google, or maybe Facebook?)

As always, you can follow me on Google Plus at https://plus.google.com/107833107845497630206.

Thinking of Creating a Business Profile on Google+? Better Wait.

Posted on by jessestay
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Danny Sullivan posted a great critique of Google+ today – the fact that in order to create a business profile on Google+, you have to go through the motions of creating a user profile on Google, which includes putting an age (of which is a minimum 18 years old at the moment to use Google+). It turns out Google doesn’t want users to do this though, as Bradley Horowitz, from the Google+ team responded with this:

“Let me be clear – and I’m sorry if this wasn’t obvious – we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial. While we should have been clearer about this, there are some fields in the registration form (asking for a first name, a last name, an age and a gender) that indicate that.

Supporting these non-human entities is an obviously great feature – we have no allergy to it at all! It’s just not part of the system we are currently testing.

The field trial has limitations that I know are frustrating – ranging from lack of “obvious” features to inability to invite the people you most want to share with… We weren’t kidding when we said this was early and a test… and if the product leads to more frustration than you can bear, then that’s understandable and I promise that you will see fast and meaningful progress… and you can jump back in when we meet your bar for minimum viable functionality.

+Danny Sullivan, there is good news also on the way regarding namespace – it’s something I believe you will like, but sadly it’s not here yet either.
Apologies again for the frustrating experience.”

Currently only a couple of brands – namely, Mashable and TheNextWeb, have tried this, but it may be a wise choice to wait until Google releases an official solution for brands.

Looking at experience from Facebook, many brands were left scrambling to create their own Facebook Pages after they had done similar with user profiles back in around 2007 or 2008. There are still brands trying to convert their Facebook Profiles over to Pages even today.

So if you’re considering a brand presence on Google+, for the moment, it might be best spent just learning about the service and getting your users and fans using it and promoting your brand there. It’s also unclear whether Google will start removing accounts that do this, so be careful. It’s great to see Google coming out and providing a roadmap on this – let’s hope they make this even more clear in other places so others can know as well. For now we just have to sit tight!

The Power of Google+: Privacy "Circles" the Entire Experience

Posted on by jessestay

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Facebook has always had one strength that no other social network (other than perhaps FriendFeed) has seemed to fully get: The fact that you could add friends to lists, and target your updates so only those lists, and specific people you chose, can see the updates you post. I share this in my presentations often – it’s Facebook’s best kept secret. The problem is just that – it’s currently buried in the Facebook interface and not many people know about it.
With Google+ it’s different though. The entire experience is built around its equivalent to Facebook lists: Circles. From the very beginning you have to choose who will be in what circle, and every time you add a friend it automatically pops up your list of circles with little to no effort. To “friend” someone, you don’t friend them – you add them to one of your lists. It’s that simple.
Not just that, but the default privacy setting on Google+ is nothing. If I just post on Google+ without saying where I want it to go, no one but myself will see it. I have to specify a Circle just for anyone to see this. It forces me to make a conscious decision before I post as to who will be seeing my updates. I think it’s genius!
With Facebook, the friendship is always 2-way. This forces a much more intimate environment, but a closed one as a result. No one can just “follow” me and get the updates I want them to see. I have to let everyone into my network, and as a result, they have to let me into theirs. As a result this does cause closer relationships and more of a social contract, but it also keeps me from posting updates that Google and other 3rd party bots can index, or that just anyone can follow.
On Google+ it’s not that way – they take more of a Twitter approach, allowing anyone to “follow” anyone, no matter what. In a sense, this puts Google Circles at a greater risk to putting Twitter out of business, as it takes the Twitter follow model and lists, and adds privacy settings to it, using those lists to make that happen. I bet we’ll see Twitter do this in the near future as a response to Google Circles. 
Regardless, Google Circles, alongside a “follow” strategy removes the need for any type of Brand page like Facebook Pages, and allows the poster to completely decide who, and what sees the posts that they share on Circles. Not only that but they are 100% conscious of those decisions the entire way (as long as someone doesn’t reshare their private posts to a more public stream, which is possible right now if you don’t consciously turn off the ability to reshare, which is buried).
The biggest thing Google did right this time around is they did what no other social network was doing. They took privacy, and put it smack in the face of the user to make their own conscious decisions. There’s no avoiding Circles in Google+. It greets you every step of the way and that’s quite a pleasant thing to see in a world of growing privacy concerns.
I’m excited to see where Google goes with this. I’m extremely excited to see how Facebook and Twitter compete in this new game. The cool thing about it all is the game is no longer focused on who has your social graph or your content (although that is certainly a part) – it is now about who has the best privacy controls and that’s a great battle to sit between as a user.
As always, you can follow me on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/107833107845497630206.

Google+ Just Beat Facebook to the Future

Posted on by jessestay
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Facebook’s entire purpose has been to get to this moment. The moment where they have brought your close friends and family into every element of your browsing experience, following you to every place you go. Allowing you to share everything you do, everywhere you are. They’ve already been rumored to be working on a much stronger mobile strategy, bringing Facebook’s powerful platform to the apps you use on the mobile devices you carry, to every place you go. It’s that which has had Google scared and hinging employee bonuses on the success of their social program this year. However, it seems in one fell swoop Google just beat Facebook to their own game. Google+ is that good, and it immediately puts them ahead of Facebook. Here’s why.

Google has a few things Facebook does not yet have. First, they have search. Google has slowly been integrating a few features into search, making search a much more social experience. Second, Google now has a pretty widely used browser (Chrome). Google even has TV experiences and desktop (Chromebook) experiences with even their own operating system. Lastly, Google has Android – the largest smart phone experience on the planet right now.
Facebook Should be Shaking in Their Boots
I was given access to Google+ today (sorry, no invites available yet unfortunately), and Facebook should be shaking in their boots figuring out a strategy to keep up. It’s that good. For the first time, a social network aside from Facebook has come up with a way to fully integrate privacy controls (called Circles in Google+) throughout the entire experience. For the first time, I’m excited about another social network that could potential see me flocking away from Facebook in the future. 
It’s inevitable, whether I actually fully leave Facebook or not (I likely won’t, but never say never), that I’ll be using Google+ regardless due to the number of integration points in the Google experiences it touches. You won’t be able to avoid Google+ in the future – it’s impossible. I can’t say that for Facebook right now.
Google+ Branding
Google has done some amazing branding with the whole experience, too. Remember the +1 button (seen on every post on this Blog)? There is no “like” on Google+. In place of the “like” is a branded +1 button that looks just like the +1 buttons you see here.
In fact, Google has integrated their branding throughout the entire experience, making it a unique enough experience you’ll want to try, and you’ll feel it to be a slightly different experience than that you get from Facebook or even Twitter. For instance, in Facebook and Twitter you use “@” to mention someone. On Google, it’s “+”, furthering their branding experience.
If you use other Google social products such as Buzz or Google Reader (excluding Orkut), Google+ automatically imports elements of your social graph into the experience. It brings in chat from Gmail (and on the Android device even adds an element called “Huddles”). It adds automatic news discovery called “Sparks”. It even integrates Google Video in an experience they call a “hangout”, allowing you to collaborate as groups over live video chat, something Facebook and other social networks do not do.
Throughout the entire experience a “Feedback” button in the lower right greets you, and they use some pretty innovative code to automatically take a screenshot of the page you’re on when you submit your feedback (I hope they share how they did this at some point, because JavaScript screenshots are not possible to my knowledge). The whole thing gives you a feeling that Google is listening, and that they care, something their competitors have serious issues with right now – I hope this stays around.
The Power is in the Permeation and Integration Points!
But the power of all this isn’t even where it’s at right now, it’s the fact that all this does, to an extent, and will even more in the future integrate with all things Google touches. I just went and ordered an Android Nexus S for this very reason – Google has the potential to deeply integrate Google+ throughout the entire mobile experience and platform, bringing your friends on Google+ to everything you touch, with privacy controls the entire way (through Circles).
One element of the new Google+ which you should already be seeing is a common toolbar that spans across all Google products. Well, in Google+, this toolbar starts to show notifications of new comments and likes across all of Google. It allows you to share more items to your Google+ activity stream, straight from the toolbar. The entire Google+ experience has been integrated throughout the entire Google platform.
Now imagine this same toolbar experience being put into the browser, through Chrome. Very quickly your friends will cross-pollenate the entire web browsing experience, integrating not only with the Google products you interact with, but with every web site you cross. The cool thing about it will be that websites will not even need to integrate Google+ into their experience for the experience to happen – the browser will automatically bring these things into your web browsing experience.
Google hasn’t yet reached their full potential with this yet, but if you ask me, integration-wise, they are already ahead of Facebook. Just a few more steps and it’s going to be pretty hard to catch up – I’d really like to see what Facebook has up their sleeves in response to all this (as I’m sure they haven’t been clueless on what Google is doing).
In the meantime, can I have dibs on writing Google+ Application Development for Dummies?
You can follow me when you have access over here. In the meantime, click the link anyway and you’ll get an idea of what a Google+ profile looks like.

Google is Not Facebook (and Vice Versa)

Posted on by jessestay
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Google seems to be trying of late to do everything they can to be like Facebook. They’ve restructured their executive management to do it. They’ve structured their company bonuses to get there. They’ve released an equivalent to Facebook’s “like” button. They seem to really want to be on top of social search, but I can help but think, “why?” Let’s “face” it – Google is not social. They don’t have to be.

As I’ve been playing with Google’s “+1” buttons I’m really trying to think what the benefit is. When I want something my close friends and family to see, I go to Facebook, or I send them an email. Google’s “+1” button does neither of that, and if it were to send an email that would just annoy them. I absolutely love that they’re trying, but I don’t get what benefit “+1” gives me.

It’s time for Google to realize that Facebook owns your social graph. Twitter owns some of that too. Yet, despite the new management structure and bonus incentives, I don’t see Larry and Sergey using Facebook more or Twitter more. I don’t see them checking into already social places like Foursquare or Facebook Places. Instead I see flurries of Google employees canceling their Facebook accounts and running away from what’s already social. I’d like to see them spend some time learning from those tools, starting from upper levels of management.

Google seems to really want to be Facebook or Twitter, but the thing is – they don’t have to. Their crown jewels are search. Their crown jewels are email. Their crown jewels are providing simple places to integrate advertising. Okay, Facebook has some of that, but when I truly want to search, I still go to Google. In the end, my Facebook notifications and messages go to my Gmail inbox.  I can’t help but wonder if Google would stop trying to pretend it’s a competitor with Facebook, Facebook would start letting them use their APIs and integrate where my social graph actually exists.

Here’s what I’d do if I were Google – stop trying to reproduce what Facebook is doing. They’re not Facebook! Instead, embrace Facebook as a partner. Integrate Facebook “like” buttons into Google search. Integrate my Facebook friend lists into my email experience. Integrate my Facebook friends into my Google Docs, or even my Google Buzz experience. Bring Facebook over to Google.

Then, see what happens. What will happen is people will naturally bring their friends and family from Facebook over to Google. They’ll naturally bring their interactions over to Google.  Google never even has to try to reproduce the experience. They know how this can be a success because Youtube is already doing it.

I realize all this is dependent on Facebook cooperating, but I really think if Google would stop trying to be Facebook, Facebook would stop pushing back. I wish Google would try this – it’s what I ask my clients and those I work with to do. I would ask nothing else from any other brand I like. The fact is when someone sees you as a friend, they’ll stop treating you like an enemy. It’s simple, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (also see Guy Kawasaki’s “Enchantment“).

Let’s re-approach this if we know Facebook, regardless of Google trying to cooperate, won’t work together. I’m still not sure Google’s tried hard enough in this area.

Privacy is Not an On and Off Switch – "Do Not Track" is Not the Answer

Posted on by jessestay

privacy-9756530Victoria Salisbury wrote an excellent blog post today on “Who’s Creepier? Facebook or Google?“.  I’ve been intrigued by the hypocrisy over criticism of Facebook’s own very granular privacy controls when sites like Google, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, and others have an all-or-nothing approach with some things (location and email in particular) that are even more private than anything Facebook is currently making available at the moment (if you want some good examples read Kim Cameron’s blog).  The fact is that Facebook, despite the amount of private data available, will always be my last resort as a hacker when I want to track data about an individual online due to the granular control of data available, and lack of default public data.  However, despite all this, even Facebook isn’t at the ideal place right now in terms of privacy. The fact is my private data is still enclosed on Facebook’s servers, and with that, there will always be some level of risk in storing that data, no matter where it is.  So what’s the solution?

Browsers such as Mozilla and Chrome are now beginning to implement “fixes” around this problem of tracking data about users across online services (note my article on how even Wall Street journal is tracking data about users), called “Do not track.”  The extension, or in some cases native browser functionality, seeks to give users the option of completely turning off the ability for sites to track a user around the web, removing any personalization of ads and in some cases the removal of ads completely from the browsing experience.  This experience is fine and dandy – it gives the user an option.  But as my friend Louis Gray puts it, “all it does is ensure off-target ads with a crappy experience.”  It is clear an on and off approach is the wrong approach, and I fear those behind these extensions and browser integrations are missing out on an important opportunity.

So where can we go from here if “Do Not Track” is not the answer?  The answer lies in the problem I stated above – the problem being that individual user information is being stored on 3rd party servers, without the control of users and assumed risk of relying on a 3rd party.  We saw this as Facebook made a temporary mistake earlier in 2010 when they launched Instant Personalization on 3rd party websites along with other 3rd party website features, but in doing so accidentally opened up a majority of their users private information with little notice to users (I did get an email warning of the change, however).  Facebook quickly fixed the privacy problem with even better privacy controls than before, but by that point the damage was done.  It was proof positive that there is huge risk in storing private information on 3rd party websites.  The advice I give to customers and users and news organizations in interviews I give is, “if you’re not okay sharing it with the world, don’t share it at all, regardless of privacy controls.”  It’s an on or off solution at the moment, and I’m afraid there are no better choices.

There is a solution though.  Chrome, and Firefox, and IE, and every browser out there should be working towards this solution.  We need to take the granular controls that sites like Facebook provide, and put them in the browser.

Awhile back I spoke of a vision of mine I call “the Internet with no login button.”  The idea being that using open technologies (we already have Information Cards, for instance), the more private information about users can be stored in the browser, reducing the risk of that information being shared by accident with 3rd party websites.  Rather than something like Facebook Connect (or Graph API), for instance, a browser-driven version of OpenID would control the user authentication process, identify the user with a trusted provider (Facebook, Google, Religious institutions, Government institutions, you choose), and then be able to retrieve private information about individuals directly from the browser itself.

The fact is I already use tools to do some of this.  1Password, for instance, allows me to keep a highly encrypted store of my passwords, credit card, and other data on my hard drive and provide that data, as I choose, to the websites I visit.  A browser-native experience like this would make this process automatic.  I would specify which sites I give permission to have my data – name, address, phone number, email, location data, etc. – and I would also be able to choose what users have access to that data.  I could then choose to store my more public data on services such as Facebook and elsewhere, with the same option to still store it on my own hard drive if I choose.  With such a fine-tuned integration my more private information is completely in my own control.  My browser controls access to the data, not any 3rd party website or developer.

At the same time keys could be given to 3rd party websites to store my data on their servers.  In order to render that data, they need my computer’s permission to render the data.  The solution is not quite evident yet, but some how a trusted, separate service should be able to provide the permissions to render that data, and when that permission is revoked, all data, across all 3rd party websites, becomes disabled.  Or maybe just a few sites become disabled.  The goal being control is completely handled by the user, and no one else.  Maybe sites get disabled by my browser sending a “push” to the sites, forcing their data of mine to delete completely off their servers (or render useless).

Chrome and Mozilla have a huge opportunity here, and it’s not to provide an on or off switch for privacy.  I should be able to decide what information I want to be able to provide to ads displayed to me, and that data shouldn’t come from Facebook, Twitter, or Google.  My browser should be controlling that access and no one else.  Privacy belongs on the client.

I’m afraid “Do Not Track”, in the browser or by government, is no the answer.  There are better, much more granular solutions that browsers could be implementing.  It is time we spend our focus on a dimmer, not an on-and-off switch, for the open, world wide web.  I really hope we see this soon.

Howto: Getting the Logitech Revue (Google TV) to Work With Comcast Cable Boxes

Posted on by jessestay

images-6625359As I’ve Tweeted, Facebooked, and Buzzed about recently, Google sent me a Logitech Revue Google TV unit shortly before Christmas which I will probably be using to write apps for.  There are many things I like about it, many I don’t, but I’ll save that review (no pun intended) for another date.  I did want to post briefly on an issue I came across that had me really frustrated, as there were no answers on the web.

The issue stems with Comcast Cable Boxes (mine was the HD PVR unit with HDMI out) not working well in receivers that have more than one HDMI cable input connected at a time.  I have the Harman Kardon AVR-247 and when I would connect the Comcast Cable box to my Logitech Revue unit, I would get Content Protection errors each time (HDCP – Google it, with “Logitech Revue”).  I tried every means of connecting, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to display TV without the HDCP error, a big green message on top of the screen from the Comcast digital cable box.

I Googled it, and came across issue after issue of Comcast customers having similar problems with the Comcast Cable boxes, with no answers, and no response from Comcast (Many were complaining that Comcast was sending them back to Motorola, some saying Comcast was blaming Google, etc.).  The only answer I came up with was that the AVR (your receiver) did not work well when it had more than one input in the box, something that was necessary in my situation because I also have an Xbox, an Apple TV, along with a Blu Ray DVD player.  The Apple TV and Logitech Revue only have HDMI ports, while the others I prefer to connect via HDMI where possible.  The only solution I found was to connect the output of the Logitech Revue unit out to the TV’s HDMI input port, and the Comcast Box into the Logitech Revue, then using the Optical out port of the Revue to connect to the Optical input of the receiver, giving me the sound I need (you may have to read that a few times to get it).  My problem was that my TV is still pretty old (but can you argue with 65 inches???), and only has one input HDMI port, which is already being used by the receiver.

So I thought about it, and realized the problem was because I had 2 HDMI cables connected to the receiver.  I also happened to have an HDMI hub, which I purchased from Best Buy for about $100, but is also available in various forms starting at around $30 or so on Amazon and elsewhere.  I was using this already to power some of the other HDMI devices I was using.  So I disconnected the second port completely, and put everything into the HDMI hub.  Voila!  It worked!  No more content protection errors!

So if you’re seeing the HDCP Content Protection errors with your Cable box on the Logitech Revue, you may want to consider going out and purchasing an HDMI hub, get rid of all but one HDMI input into your receiver, and connect everything to your hub.  I’m pretty sure this method will work for almost everyone.  In the meantime, Comcast told me on Twitter that they are aware of the issue, and they’re working on a firmware fix to hopefully fix the issue on their Cable boxes.  It’s good to know they are now recognizing the problem, although they can’t give any ETA on a fix.

It was actually this problem that convinced me to just go get rabbit ears – with a Google TV, an Xbox and Windows Media Center, and an Apple TV, do I really need cable TV any more?  Assuming you do, well, here’s the answer.