Category Archives: Internet

This is really interesting. Accoding to Adblock Plus and (a little) more: Attention NoScript users, one ostensibly pro-privacy firefox plugin, NoScript, was quietly interfering with the actions of another, Adblock, in order to force the first extensions ads on the user. When called on it, however, they (seem to have) stopped.

Are we in for a new round of extension wars?

What makes the charges particularly serious in this case is the allegation of not just lack of transparency, but active obfuscation, in updates of NoScript.

I've long used both Adblock and NoScript, but I'm seriously thinking of taking NoScript off my computer now.

Meanwhile, I've changed a setting in firefox's about:config to stop the NoScript changelog from coming up every time there's a minor version change (set noscript.firstRunRedirection to false). And I manually removed googlesyndication.com from NoScript's white list. If I find it reappeared after an update, NoScript is toast. And maybe even if it doesn't.

Then again, it seems as if the warring developers may be making peace.

One of the principal things nearly anyone does on Google.com is a vanity search: We ask the question: What do people see when they put my name into Google?

Today, Google is announcing, for the first time, that anyone can change what is seen. (The initial launch is US only).

I agree with John Battelle's comments in News: Google Lets You Put Yourself Into Results For..Yourself: this is, as he puts it, “a Very Big Deal.”

Why? Well, Google has always been predicated on being a neutral black box. You, as a solitary entity, could not influence the results that Google provided (though of course a very large industry has emerged that attempts to do just that). But this launch changes the game, in a few very, very interesting ways.

First, and most obvious, this is Google leveraging its might in search to get more people to sign up for Google profiles. I shouldn't have to explain why this is important, given the competition from Facebook and Twitter, but trust me, it's really important that Google 1. know who you are and 2. compel you to have ongoing relationship with the company.

Second, this move creates, for the first time ever, a new signal that is directly controlled by an individual but changes what everyone else will see in results. True, for now, the results are at the bottom of the first page of results, but that doesn't mean it won't move up once Google learns enough to make it truly useful.

There's more at at the Searchblog

I'd add one other reason why this may turn out to be important: it becomes a first major step towards a privately managed amelioration of the “bad people post lies about you and Google links to them” problem that motivated Danielle Citron and others to advocate throwing the right to anonymity overboard. Maybe even better than the one I was talking about at the CCR symposium the other day (see What is To Be Done?”).

I was invited to an interesting seminar in London, sonsored by the Oxford Internet Institute, The New Economic Context of Internet Governance. It was being held only a few steps away from where I used to work when I lived in London. And all they wanted was a two-page position paper.

Unfortunately, the travel budget doesn't really stretch to a day trip to London, and they didn't include a ticket with the invitation.

But what the heck, I wrote a position paper anyway, and I've appended it here. I'd appreciate comments. Virtual seminar, anyone?

Continue reading →

ICANN has released a short list of candidates to replace Paul Twomey, who recently resigned as its President and CEO.

I'm amazed to report that I made the list. Not that there's any chance I'll get the job, of course.

Update: It's an April Fools joke, of course. ICANN's rate of change is measured on a nano scale….

In This Blog Sits at the: Grant McCracken is on to something at Data Glutton, Data Pauper:

I suddenly realized my problem with aggregators. When I configure my feeds, I want just about everything. … Wrap them up, I'll take them all. And then there are all the blogs. …

This informational excess is not inflicted on me by the market place, … No, this profusion of possibilility is created and sustained by me alone. Hi, my name is Grant McCracken and I'm a data glutton.

Data gluttony is a terrible condition. Everytime I turn on my aggregator, I feel like I am at an all-you-eat event at Denny's. Really, it can't end well. …

… All this “free” information is actually quite costly.

…

The upshot of this conversation for me was that a market in the information space is emerging. I won't pay anything for access to the New York Times. This is an interesting aggregator, but it's way too chunky for me to be exquisitely useful. I want a combination of machine and human editing that gives me all but only the things I need, and for this I am prepared to pay handsomely.

It's not that we won't pay for editing. It's becoming clear, I think, that we are now eager to pay for editing, even to pay a premium for editing. (After all, our careers now depend upon early warning, good information, timely intelligence. Not to know what we need to know in a dynamic economy, what could this cost us?)

We just don't want to pay for the editing now made available to us by the market place. …

This much is clear, there is a market emerging. It doesn't appear to have any entries. I wish they'd hurry up. Because otherwise I'm hopeless.

McCracken says he deals with his problem by turning it off, thus becoming a data pauper. I guess he's made of sterner stuff than me.

I don't think I'm ready for that.

I suppose this isn't the very strangest or very funniest thing I've seen online, but it's up there.

YouTube – Extreme Sheep LED Art