Here’s an interesting tool for those of us who are concerned about privacy (and/or those of us who want to check up on our kids’ online activities …)
Keeping track of all your history items can be quite the feat if you are using more than one browser. Privacy conscious users usually delete the information regularly, while the majority of users is likely unaware what their web browser and operating system can reveal about them.
This really isn’t anything new; Google is just following the same rules that newspaper publishers have followed for over a hundred years …
Advertisements are what keeps many of the sites going on the Internet, including the site you are currently reading. As a user, I do understand that too many ads, or ads in the wrong position, or ads that are highly distracting, reduce the user experience. While I rarely stumble upon sites anymore that have their pages plastered with ads so that it becomes difficulty to find the regular content, I have to say that I welcome the change that Google just announced.
Sounds like a great idea for those who are used to unconventional keyboards and those who want to be forced to learn how to type all over again … but a bad idea for just about everyone else.
The QWERTY keyboard layout has been used in most western countries now since the late 1800′s. Though there are differences in some countries, such as AZERTY in France, this keyboard layout remains with modern computers even though it’s not always the quickest way for people to type.
This sounds like a potential source of problems; Norton is sometimes incompatible with other anti-virus products.
Bundling third party applications with your own software is not a new thing on the Internet. It is for instance quite common that you see the Ask Toolbar, Babylon Toolbar, or any other toolbar added to software installations. Users who do not pay attention to the installation are then not only installing the software they want on their system, but also software they do not want. To make matters worse, it usually is not that easy to get rid of the latter.
These days, the main purpose of most internet services seems to be marketing research and ad delivery … so much for privacy, I guess.
An announcement was posted yesterday on the official Google blog that indicates that changes are being made to Google’s privacy policies and terms of service. What first looks like a reasonable thing to do is in fact something that will keep privacy advocates up at night. Google will merge their privacy policies, of which about 60 are now available, into one main privacy policy. This on first glance is good from a user perspective, as it improves the privacy policy’s accessibility.
If this actually works the way that it’s supposed to work, it could be an incredibly helpful tool for those of us who are concerned about online privacy …
One of the new features that Microsoft introduced in their Internet Explorer 9 browser was support for so called Tracking Protection Lists. These lists can be installed in the browser to add protection against tracking, and as a side effect many forms of advertisement. A list of common TPLs is available at the Internet Explorer Test Drive website where they can be installed with just two clicks of the mouse.
It will be interesting to see how many folks start using this, and if it changes the way that people optimize their sites for search engines …
Google has a distinct advantage that other companies on the web do not have. Google Search at the time of writing controls more than 50% of all search on the web, which can go up in some countries to more than 90%. Google uses this to their advantage by promoting their own services in search. And while nearly every other company would certainly do the same if they were in Google’s position, it is quickly turning the company’s image of being an impartial search provider upside down.
Here’s an interesting search alternative for those who are frustrated with ad-heavy search results …
Ever since Google starting pumping up the results of their search engine with all kind of nonsense – read first and third party advertisement mainly but also other stuff like the unfair favoring of big brands – I have been looking for an alternative. And while I have found it in Bing, I have to admit that Bing is still not on pair with Google Search once the queries get complicated.
Here’s a cool trick that can come in very handy when dealing with problems with Windows …
When something goes wrong with Windows it can be very difficult to diagnose or repair, and there are times when booting your computer into Safe Mode just isn’t good enough. Safe Mode, a special diagnostic mode built into Windows strips the OS of all drivers and start-up software and presents you with a very limited version of Windows in which to diagnose what might be causing a problem, and repair it. Many Windows features simply won’t operate in Safe Mode so there’s not very much you can do.
