Jan 24 2004
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Should sites like Orkut own your profile

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

orkut – terms of service: “By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.” OK- this is not unusual, even if aggressively worded, but considering that Orkut has a great deal more personal profiling than most social network tools, isn’t it about time that people started an identity system where people actually owned their own identity. Think how useful it is for Google to have your personal profile in order to target ads at you, particularly as they go after the $25billion yellow pages advertising market. People are giving valuable information away for free as part of a game.

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Jan 22 2004
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The US drive on the right because Napoleon was left handed

Posted by | trivia | No Comments

“In olden days the nobility would ride on the left so their sword hand–usually the right hand, of course–would be on the same side as an oncoming horseman…Napoleon switched the convention in Europe from driving on the left to driving on the right for a simple reason–he was left-handed. This meant he mounted and dismounted his horse on the right-hand side, which he naturally preferred to be at the road edge.” New Scientist: The Last Word Science Questions and Answers

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Jan 22 2004
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Megatrends – then and now

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

GSReport:Megatrends Looking back at someone looking back at someone looking forward. “The 1957 launch of Sputnik and the first space shuttle launch in 1981 were ‘far more important to the information society than to any future age of space exploration.’”

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Jan 14 2004
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What America and France have in common

Posted by | politics | No Comments

I like America and I like France, and I am always amazed at how much the stereotypical view of one country persists in people from the other. Is France a totalitarian state barring individuality and commerce and is America a cultural desert of fast food and strip malls? No, France doesn’t look like Eastern Europe during the cold war, it functions much like America. Contrary to popular perception, the Socialists lost power in France years ago and the current government is to the right. Sure, France needs to take major steps to encourage more enterprise, but the popularity of French libertarian, Sabine Herold shouldn’t be a surprise (according to Jeff Jarvis, P.J. O’Rourke has some good insight here!). French stores are full of things to buy, with neon signs and billboard advertising and the world’s biggest retail chain after Walmart is French. Likewise, America is the cultural center of the…

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Jan 13 2004
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BBC goes off the air

Posted by | uk | No Comments

BBC Radio is to air John Cage’s 4’33”. It could also air Mike Batt’s identical piece a result of which, Cage’s estate successfully sued for copyright infringement, the reason being that both pieces consist entirely of silence. For those that miss it, the same piece will be shown on BBC TV later.

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Jan 09 2004
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Digital prohibition: libraries deemed illegal, librarians arrested

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Aaron Swartz: “Libraries and video stores (neither of which pay per rental) hurt sales too. Is it unethical to use them?” The library angle is interesting. If one applies the current logic of the RIAA stance to libraries then if libraries were to lend digital information, this would be indistinguishable from filesharing and therefore illegal. Most rational people think that libraries are a good thing, yet they cannot logically exist in a world of digital content governed by traditional attitudes to content distribution. As more information becomes available in digital form then a library can clearly offer better services such as online delivery. A library becomes a more exciting and valuable community resource. So is it really conceivable that as media like CDs go the way of 8 tracks that libraries will be forced with a choice to become repositories of information stored on obsolete media, or exist underground as…

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Dec 31 2003
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Predictions for 2004

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

1. Enterprise software backlash. After being a temporarily fashionable haven from the dotcom collapse, enterprise software takes a beating 2. Hybrid social networking and blogging services emerge 3. VOIP makes the music industry

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