It seems that my gmail has been profiled and now they know who all my friends are and what we do together. They also know from my docs, calendar and spreadsheets what I’ve been up to and, I guess, if I had been using google web history, what I’ve been surfing. Big Brother make way for Darth Brother.

It’s all getting very emotional. So let’s take a step back and clear up why finding out all of my details would be an issue for me. I can’t really talk for other people (I’m interested in hearing other people’s opinions). What are the main reasons that I wouldn’t want anybody snooping around in my personal affairs? Here’s some questions I asked myself:

1. What do I have to hide?
2. Who am I hiding it from?
3. Who has acces to this information?
4. What happens if they find out?
5. Will their finding out negatively impact the lives of myself or others?
6. Do I need to avoid them and if so, how?

The privacy issue is really more of an ethical one that a legal one. If I were doing something illegal, chances are somebody else would be more interested than google, like the tax man or the government. Who don’t really care about my browsing history. I’d have to be pretty stupid to communicate major criminal plans online without covering my tracks. Conversely, if google were doing something illegal, like storing my personal bank account user name and passwords without my permission, there are laws against that too. Not that they can get that without installing malware on my computer. If google sold off information to third parties without my consent, that would be illegal too. Well, certainly in my country. If I were putting items of a personal sensitive nature online and somebody else found out who wasn’t supposed to, I only have myself to blame (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/30-ways-twitter-can-get-you-fired).  Finally, if I were  putting company secrets and patentable ideas online, I would be breach of my employment contract.

The article cast a shadow over google’s marketing practices. But it can’t be google’s advertising, because I can usually either remove or ignore that. The reason that google has cornered the online ad market is because it works and consumers don’t mid it. If they weren’t clicking, google wouldn’t be selling. I knew that google was poking through my mail before I signed up. Half of the mails are spam and the rest are pretty innocuous. Let them poke. Separate your private from your public digital life – we learned that in web 101.

I would have an issue if I felt they were lying or being deceptive. One obvious example of misleading behaviour is not playing fair in terms of e-commerce. Amazon made a bad blunder in this regard by charging loyal customers more and new customers less for the same product (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/914691.stm). Don’t know that it was illegal, but it was pretty daft. And there was a furore around the Beacon / Facebook controversy. But deliberate unethical practices usually get found out pretty quickly, so you’re pretty stupid to be doing that nowadays. Apparently google checkout stores your credit card details. Maybe, but surely all sites retain partial credit-card information? That’s why you have the 3 digit checksum on the back. I don’t know any sites which store that? And I’d get really tired of always entering the same details on a site which I reoutinely conducted transactions on.

Then there’s the theory that criminals are using google to plot their next move. Surely, if google enables crime, it also facilitates the prevention of crime too? Google may enable me to find somebody online and help me plot my next move, but I could just as easily open their mailbox or dress up as the cable guy. When the majority of crime committed is opportunistic, are you telling me that by stopping google, we will put an end to crime?

And, finally, we have the “IP address logging” issue. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I don’t know that any browser-based technology exists which can pinpoint your computer and location based a dialup IP address. If you’re dialling up, you’re using a service provider, who assigns dynamic IP addresses within a local address range. One day you have a certain address, the next day somebody half-way across the country has the same address. Sure, you can do a lookup on a static IP address and somehow trace that back to a server and it’s location, but I’m not so sure you’re running your own server at work or home. Countries are assigned address ranges, and ISP’s have subranges, but that’s as far as it goes to my knowledge. In terms of tracking my every click online, google offers this service… if I sign up for it. Which I haven’t – I have a history in my browser which works fine.

I guess I’m battling to understand why users feel betrayed google, their web-saviour. Maybe we all need to remind ourselves of how the free market works:

1. Assume that companies will act in their best interests. Assume that consumers will act in their best interests. Welcome to the free market.
2. Read the fine print.
3. You don’t have to buy the product. If you don’t like it, use something else. If a company isn’t acting in consumer’s best interests, the market will find an alternative solution and the company loses. Read the google story.
4. Research both sides of the story. Make up your opinion based on fact – not emotion. If you’re going to base your opinion on somebody else’s opinion, maybe keep it to yourself.
5. There’s no free lunch. Always ask what the catch is. If you’re being manipulated based on your fear, greed or laziness, ask if you’re happy to make the trade-off of convenience.

I don’t think google is such a bad evil overlord really. Are they worse than MSN or YAHOO? You can debate that yourself. They produce great software, which I prefer to competitive products and best of all, it’s free. I’m happy to give them some info so that they can put some ads on my screen. And if they find out what brand of products I like, I don’t really care. There’s five billion of us. Believing that individual people at google or any other company really care about the goings on of my everyday life is a bit self-flattering. I’ve watched big brother and it was boring.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/social-profiling/

It seems like online identities are starting to mature and polarize. As OpenAuth, OpenID and FacebookConnect fight it out for open identity standards (I’m more in favour of google and plaxo), there’s a new player on the horizon who’s doing something I’ve had in my mind for ages – online identity validation and authorization. Allowing me to control who I am online and who has access to what level of detail. Surely this is the future of the digital world and the basis not only of social, but business transactions? Imagine a world where your bank, blog, ISP and government can all have access to your information in one place… where I only have to update my email address and mobile number in one place ever again. I’m seriously keen to see if and how this is going to work. Go check out their site here…

http://www.validize.com/

Just a reminder, your free trial of Last.fm Radio will end after you’ve played 30 tracks. Enjoying it? Subscribe for only $3.00/month

So I went over to the blog, where there were a lot of angry people – it appears that lastfm radio is now only free to the US, UK and Germany. This smells like Pandora. So I added some of my own thoughts…

The media industry really needs to rethink its costing structure into the future. With China, India and developing nations becoming a larger revenue source, you’ve gotta be smart about how you entice consumers who don’t care about intellectual property rights and have bandwidth aplenty for p2p torrents.

Basically, mankind is motivated by 3 basic factors: fear, greed and laziness. So that’s the leveling factor which you need to use to your advantage. Unfortunately the anti-p2p stick isn’t going to work, and the carrot isn’t currently big enough.

The reason that youtube, google, wikipedia, flickr and facebook rule the world is that they offer their core product for free. In my opinion, free uninterrupted worldwide streaming radio is lastfm’s core product. I wonder how many users lastfm picked up when pandora closed its doors to non-US countries? Without free lastfm access, users won’t rush to myspace or yahoo music, they’ll look at illegal alternatives like grooveshark and p2p. So for me, IT IS about the money before the discrimination issues.

Companies which survive the upcoming developing nation media atrophy will be the ones that reward users who want to do a bit of hard work with a core free service and charge consumers who want to be lazy / are image conscious above all else / can defer the costs to a client. I think lastfm should be offering streaming music for free and users should pay for recommendations (their greatest differentiator). Make it a no-brainer for the consumer: if the effort to search and download via p2p is more difficult than to click twice in lastfm, I’ll opt for lastfm. If users want to manually construct a playlist they can. If they want lastfm to do it for them, it will cost a small amount.

The issue is really the outdated mentality of the media (music and film) industry. Other industries have moved on. Take the way yahoo has structured the flickr pro service. Users pay for added benefits, but the normal joe can still do his basic free photo upload and hosting. Pro users get a nice little badge to stroke their egos and are offered further incentives to spend even more money.

For now, I’ll start looking around at options that give me streaming music for free. If the demand exists, supply will arise. I’m sure lastfm will continue to flourish in a few countries, but it’s going to be diminishing returns.

Good luck, lastfm.

It’s long, but I really like what he says about the next generation not having the patience for passive media and expecting to be able to engage and contribute to the entertainment experience (from 14 min).

http://blip.tv/file/855937

Is it only me that feels that way?

Basically, because php is an interpreted language, any variables that need to be calculated at runtime takes time. Using single quotes implies that the statement doesn’t need further processing. Using double quotes infers that there’s a variable that needs to be parsed within the quotes. For example:

$var1 = 'hello'; // string requires no processing
$var2 = "$var1 world"; // string requires processing, evaluates variable
$var3 = "String within double quotes"; // needlessly processed - no variable in string


To find out where the site is hosted:

1. Query the TLD whois. For co.za sites it’s http://whois.co.za. For .com it’s http://www.internic.net/whois.html. This will get you the nameserver and person who registered the site, not necessarily the host.
2. To get the host, go to a command prompt / shell and type ping www.domainname.com. You will get an IP address. You can use the nslookup command to get the name of the server, which will invariably give you the host name: nslookup <ipaddress>.

Checking whether DNS records have been updated:

I’ve also been in the situation where client has requested a domain be moved to a different server or has signed up for a new hosting account and the domain hasn’t propagated. Hosts generally say that domain transfer and propagation can take a couple of days for the cache to clear. The problem is that if they have messed up the DNS or haven’t bothered to update zone files, you can site there for a week and hope that the propagation is still happening without knowing. Enter dig. There’s a online version at mice and men which helps you look at the DNS records directly to see if they have been updated yet.

1. Go to the online dig tool at: http://dig.menandmice.com/knowledgehub/tools/dig. You can use the bash dig command in linux – I just find this easier.
2. Type in the nameserver from the whois records above and the name of the domain.
3. The answer section in the returned dig results will give you the ip address from the authoritative name server which the rest of the world is talking to.
4. This is more reliable than ping as it queries the nameserver directly, whereas ping will return an IP address which could come from a DNS cache.
5. It is more than likely that the domain should be transferred within two days of the changes to the DNS records.
6. The dig tool also allows you to view other records e.g. mail server and subdomains.

Checking server software and platform

1. You’ll need to view response headers from a http request – the server will return “Server” response header. Some servers will give you more information, some will give you less.
2. You can use the Firefox developer tools plugin to view the headers: webdeveloper toolbar > Information > View response headers (at the bottom)
3. The response will tell you what operating system, server software, software version and software plugins the server is running.
4. There are online tools which can do this (notably http://www.dotcomunderground.com/web-tools/ ), but I have had some issues with headers returned as arrays.

You’ve gotta drive there; make a list of the music you want (in case they don’t have the album you want); search through non-intiutuve genres and alphabetical listings (is Daft Punk rock, pop, alternative or dance?); finally go to a store attendant who can’t spell Phoenix; read out your list of CD’s until he finds one (that’s actually available in this store); realise that it’s been “specially imported” (aka super-expensive); try another album that you only ever heard one track off; buy it anyway ’cause you’re running out of time (as you glance at the listening booth your mind mulls over what sharing earwax with two year’s worth of customers feels like); get in your car; realise that the track you heard off this CD wasn’t as great as you remembered it and the rest of the album is a bit of a letdown.

So I didn’t buy another Thievery Corporation album. Sorry if they are your scene… but you get my point.

So buying music online sounds like Nirvana. Or heaven, rather. And the thought of an online music store coming to these shores may just stop me from emigrating to a large country where consumers get what they want. So there’s a lot of hope for this enterprise to flourish. Except for the small issue of DRM.

I was wondering how much of an issue it would be before I invest money in buying music online. How has it worked for other people? I found a blog on the subject, one of the comments read something like this: “DRM is just an impediment to ethical buyers“.

After reading throught the user comments, I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t want to tie myself to a particular device or media format to listen to my music. So at this point, I’m even going so far as thinking of buying the licenses, then downloading the tracks via torrent (it would save me burning and ripping to get rid of DRM). What is wrong with this picture? I tried thinking of the benefits DRM offers consumers. I tried coming up with anything positive about DRM. I figured record companies must have supported it for some reason..?

Wow, DRM, what a clever strategy:

1. Now I can’t put my entire music library online for others to download (oh wait, It’s already on p2p networks).
2. Now I can’t give it to my friends to listen to (oh wait, they are going to just download it via p2p anyway).
3. Now I can’t burn it to a disc for my friends to listen to (oh wait, yes I can).
4. Now I can play my tracks on my different devices in different places because I own the licenses (oh wait, no I can’t).
5. Now I’m going to save money because music online doesn’t involve sitting with physical stock in a music store that you can’t sell (oh wait, now record labels can make even more money from less work – why drop the price?).
6. Now music will be cheaper because more people are buying legally and less money is being lost to piracy (oh wait, could the increase in music costs be due to a failed DRM strategy which has driven further piracy?).
7. That said, I might just buy CD’s from time to time because of the nice artwork (oh wait, I have a computer with and internet connection – why would I want to do that when I can just get the stuff via p2p without another drudge purchase from a retail store?).

I don’t have to spit fire at DRM stores – record companies can only believe that they are more important than their market for so long.

http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/the-ribbon-ui/#comment-13154