This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO. I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.
Here’s my list for the week of Feb.20-Feb. 24, 2012:
Online Privacy Battles Heat up
Google recently announced a consolidation of privacy policies for its many different products into one comprehensive privacy policy for all Google products, that is scheduled to go into effect March 1st. Google’s stated intention for the move was to simplify all of those privacy policies into one privacy policy. The more cynical observers of the move saw it as a means for Google to be able to seamlessly share all data collected by all of their properties amongst themselves. This allows Google to build a more detailed user profile and thus more effectively target you for advertising. This has unleashed firestorm of activity and blogging on Privacy. This week, this article in ZDNet reported that the Center for Digital Democracy said that Google has misled and sugarcoated the new privacy policy, asked for FTC action. On Thursday of this week, the Obama administration announced the creation of a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”, which is said to be “voluntarily” supported by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. Read more about the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights at SearchEngineWatch.com or Marketingland.com. Will this “Bill of Rights” give any real privacy protection, or has the Obama administration been taken for a ride by these companies who have offered “voluntary cooperation” to a list of objectives that they will be in no way legally bound to actually comply with? The plan is to move forward with the Bill of Rights to establish codes of conduct that the FTC will be able to enforce, but by then the stakeholders working with government should sufficiently water down the code so that it no longer has any real teeth. The truth is that Google and Facebook provide amazing services to millions of users for free. The price paid by the users for using that service is paid in units of privacy. If you’re not comfortable with that, don’t use them. As this ZDNet article points out, you never had any privacy, so get over it already.
Foxconn and Apple
On Monday Dateline aired a special report on working conditions at the Foxconn manufacturing facility in China, where some of the biggest names in high tech devices, including Apple, assemble their devices. You can watch the video of their report here.
Apple and Foxconn responded to the CBS News story and the working conditions at the plant with statements attacking 2 details in the report. You can read about their response in this BusinessInsider.com story as well as this Mashable.com article.
This ZDNet article gives an interesting take on working conditions in China. What do you do when a country has such a low level of humans rights that what we would consider barbaric is welcomed openly by millions of workers? 3000 workers apply for jobs at Foxconn every week. As this BusinessInsider.com article points out, what we may view has horrible working conditions have been welcomed by some Chinese as their only alternative to rice farming or prostitution.
Google Heads up Display Glasses by the end of 2012?
Augmented Reality could be a step closer to amazing reality if reports of Google working on heads up display glasses are true.
Google heads up display glasses are said to be similar to these Oakley Thump MP3 player glasses shown below.
This article in Mashable.com says that Google is working on glasses with a built in camera that could make augmented reality an actual reality by the end of 2012. The heads up display would allow you to navigate on screen commands projected onto the inside on the sunglass looking devices. Small head motions control the user interface. They would be Android based and have augmented Reality functionality overlaid over the real world. The price point would be in the $150-$600 range, about the same as a smart phone. Read more at PCWorld.com or Extremetech.com.
