mediajunk

Refusing to use Gmail due to privacy concerns? It may not make a difference; no matter who provides your email, they have the right to read it -- at least if that provider is based in the US. In another worrying development in the troubled domain of email privacy, a US court has ruled that a provider of an email service "did not violate criminal wiretap laws when he surreptitiously copied and read the mail of his customers in order to monitor their transactions" (Wired News). "Councilman, owner of a website selling rare and out-of-print books, offered book-dealer customers e-mail accounts through his site. But unknown to those customers, Councilman installed code that intercepted and copied any e-mail that came to them from his competitor, Amazon.com. "Although Councilman did not prevent the mail from reaching recipients, he read thousands of copied messages in order to know what books customers were seeking and gain a commercial advantage over Amazon. " The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts reached its decision through the Wiretap Act which, it acknowledged, "is perhaps inadequate to address modern communication methods". So, if don't have a US-based email provider, is your privacy protected? Sure, so long as you don't send or receive an email from anyone with a US-based provider ... like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.!

... Well, sort of. Google is promising to release at least some of its code and, perhaps, other elements of its intellectual property to the general public, so that others can benefit from its R&D. "We need to have the tools out in the universities so the next generation can build on our work, too," explained Wayne Rosing, the company's vice-president of engineering. Australia's The Age, which cited Rosing (who was on a recruiting drive for the company's new regional research and development centre, which it is expected to establish in Melbourne) also reported that Google intends to triple its global workforce -- from 700 to 2100 -- during the next 12 months.

Google launched two initiatives this week, both of which aim to introduce its search bar to other web sites. The first, a site search offering to its network of advertisers, received a full launch earlier in the week. Website owners who already display Google "Adsense" Ads on their sites can now also have a Google search bar appear on the site. The owners will get revenue from any paid-for clicks that the search generates. Wired magazine reports: "The move to add its search feature on other publishers' sites is a logical move for Google, since many Internet users prefer to conduct queries on the websites they visit, rather than going to a dedicated search-engine site, said Joshua Stylman, managing partner of Reprise Media, a search marketing company." Yesterday, Google made a beta version of a separate but similar tool, which it calls Site Flavoured Search, available to any web owners who want to try it (i.e. not just those in its AdSense network). From its FAQ page: "Site-Flavored Google Search uses a Google search box to deliver custom web search results, based on a profile filled out by a site's webmaster. The profile reflects the content of the website, and when the site-flavored search box is placed within the pages of that site, users are able to view search results that are "flavored" to be more relevant to them."

Microsoft claims that, in its analysis of one billion web pages, eight per cent were spam (a.k.a. "index spam" or "search engine spam" -- as opposed to email spam. See my article in the Sunday Business Post for a more detailed explanation). I believe that Microsoft's estimate is quite conservative. I do not believe the researchers that form part of its much-anticipated entry into the search market are up to speed on what constitutes spam. At least, that's my impression after reading about how they identified spam pages: "Microsoft is incorporating a new filtering technology into its forthcoming MSN Search technology, aiming to offer results clear of web spam. "The company unveiled a research project at its Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View which uses statistical analysis to locate spam web pages." Clear of web spam? Yeah, right. Clearly, they have no clue. As long as there is email, there will be email spam. And as long as there is a web...

I have just launched a site called ChooseIreland.com.

The idea is to fill it with lots of information about holidays in Ireland, on a county by county basis.

The first task was to name all the counties of Ireland! Believe it or not, it took me a long time before I eventually looked them up on the web.

For Irish visitors, see if you can name all 32 counties on the island, before looking at the answers below...

Antrim
Armagh
Carlow
Cavan
Clare
Cork
Derry
Donegal
Down
Dublin
Fermanagh
Galway
Kerry
Kildare
Kilkenny
Laois
Leitrim
Limerick
Longford
Louth
Mayo
Meath
Monaghan
Offaly
Roscommon
Sligo
Tipperary
Tyrone
Waterford
Westmeath
Wexford
Wicklow

Verisign's latest report on domain registration claims that 63 million different domain names are currently registered. That's roughly one for every 100 people in the world. This doesn't mean that one in every hundred actually owns a domain name -- even though certain reporters, such as Joe Best, writing for CNET, have erroneously interpreted the figures this way. Rather, a small number of people and businesses (domain squatters, spammers, affiliate-builders, etc.) have registered a bulk of the these domains. Verisign claims, nevertheless, that 64% of the registered domains are associated with active websites. I suspect that the definition of "active" is a very broad one, however, and that many of these sites may be "parked", or may contain the standard "purchase this domain" garb. Still, 63 million domains. Sheesh. I gotta get me some of that.

Bill Condie of the Evening Standard reports on the findings of a recent search engine survey: "A survey in the US commissioned by Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services found that 48% of search engine users say they use Google most overall, compared with 20% for Yahoo, 14% for Microsoft's MSN and 7% for AOL. But 60% of Google users said they would switch search engines if a better service were introduced." Interpreting these figures, it might seem that Google users are fickle. I would argue the opposite. The reason Google "stole" users from other search engines was by offering a faster, higher quality service, with more relevant results, and no ads mixed with listings. As Google often points out, its success lay in the fact that it concentrated on doing one thing -- search -- as well as it could, and by putting users first. Google is free. If another search engine were to offer users, for free, similar services of an even higher quality, then of course you would expect users to migrate, just as they migrated to Google in the first place. The intriguing thing about this survey is that 40% of users would not migrate, even if a better search service were offered to them. Now that's what I call brand loyalty.

I had an article published in The Sunday Business Post (an Irish newspaper) last weekend, entitled How to Get Properly Googled.

From gmail-is-too-creepy.com (no prizes for guessing what side of the fence these guys are on): Problem 1: Gmail is nearly immortal Google admits that even deleted messages will remain on their system, and may also be accessible internally at Google, for an indefinite period of time. Problem 2: Google's privacy policies do not apply to Gmail They've said that their advertisers won't get personally identifiable information from email, but that doesn't mean that Google won't keep this information for possible future use. Problem 3: A massive potential for abuse If Google builds a database of keywords associated with email addresses, the potential for abuse is staggering. Google could grow a database that spits out the email addresses of those who used those keywords. Problem 4: Inappropriate ad matching A lawyer who is experimenting with Gmail ... sent himself a message, and discovered that the law practice footer he uses at the bottom of all of his email triggered an ad for a competing law firm. As it happens, Problem 1 is already being tackled in Google's home state. DMNews.com reports that the California Senate has approved a bill restricting Google's new e-mail system's data retention practices, although it has left "untouched" Google's "method of scanning messages to display paid listings."

According to the BBC News website, China has set up a "censorship committee to monitor games," and has already banned a Swedish game called Hearts of Iron, which portrayed Manchuria, Tibet and Xinjiang as independent nations. "The committee is charged with banning content that 'could threaten national unity', said the state press. "'Online games with content threatening state security, damaging the nation's glory, disturbing social order and infringing on other's legitimate rights will also be prohibited,' said a Chinese Ministry of Culture statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency." While this seems like a typically extremist move by the Chinese, they do have a point when they say that the contents of computer games "are often related to sex and violence", and may even have a point when they say that such content could "adversely affect young people's mental health". Of course, social science has found it notoriously difficult to establish clear links between the consumption of certain types of media content and social behaviour (for example, a common counter-argument is that watching violent programmes reduces our desire to behave violently in real life). The governor of Washington state doesn't buy that argument, however. He recently signed a bill "that bans the sale of certain violent video games to minors". That is, video games that contain a specific type of violence: Tacoma's News Tribune reports that "House Bill 1009, which goes into effect in late July, will make it a civil violation to sell or rent to youths under age 17 video games that graphically depict violence against law enforcement officers. Violators can be fined up to $500."