An interesting article about web privacy

From timesonline.co.uk:

“If asked, most people will say that they’re concerned about protecting their privacy and their personal information, but their behaviour generally suggests otherwise. For starters, many people post all kinds of information about themselves on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, apparently oblivious to the fact that those goofy drunken party pics are not going to be so amusing to a potential employer who comes across them in a Google search.”

Read the article here.

Indeed, it seems like what makes a site popular these days, is exactly what brings it down. I’ve said it before… copyright laws have to be updated for the new web.

Google Launches Hot Trends

From Computerworld:

“Google yesterday launched Hot Trends, a new feature on the Google Trends report that lets users see a list of the current top 100 fastest-rising Google search queries in the U.S. Users can also select to see what the top searches were on a specific day.”

Read the full article here.

This is neat if anything. Yes, you can see what people are searching on a daily basis, but it is only for US users, and there is no mention of being able to analyze the data over a few days, weeks or months. But it’s a start, and perhaps the service can branch out. It’s no replacement for monitoring your own site’s statistics, but it definitely is entertaining.

Useit.com breaks its own suggestions

Today I was shocked to see that on Jakob Nielsen’s site, Useit.com, a resource for many designers who are concerned about web usability, has placed a streaming flash movie on the home page.

Check out the screenshot here. (Note what happens if Flash is not installed.)

I do believe this goes against what he has been preaching to designers. My main problems with what he has done are:

1. If you don’t have the flash plug-in, the item has no content - at least a summary could be provided
2. The news item does not explicitly say that a flash player is required
3. The flash player is not coded in a standards compliant fashion
4. This adds to the loading time of the home page

Interesting, that when Nielsen’s on TV, his own guidelines can be thrown out the window. Should we expect a splash screen next?

My 2 cents: Web 2.1

For the longest time, the next best thing was social networking tools. Web 2.0 it was branded. Users could participate and contribute to the new web. Wikis, YouTubes, Facebooks, and MySpaces sprung up. Companies started building competing applications all based on this concept.

But have we already entered the Web 2.1 age? It seems the Achilles heel to the new web is, of all things, copyright. Users were encouraged to share whatever they had with the world. Videos got posted. Things were grand. But then (not surprisingly) copyrighted material started getting posted - which angered copyright owners.

YouTube ran into some trouble for hosting TV shows, and now Digg is in trouble for hosting DVD encryption codes. What will all this lead to? I only see two possible outcomes - the death of true copyright protection as we know it, or the death of Web 2.0.

If DRM is any indication, I would say that there is a better chance of copyright laws being changed to reflect the new reality - you can’t sue everyone. This is economy shifting stuff here people. Just recently, I saw on the news that Trekkies are creating their own episodes for download on the web. What if another site copies their episodes - who sues who? Who owns the rights? Doesn’t Paramount have to defend its copyright to be protected by it? Obviously, copyright laws have not kept up technology, and neither have the major media companies.

We’re going to be exploring new territory very soon. Now if only I could create a business model based on sharing copyright…