The EFF has released a legal guide for bloggers - a great idea and a great new resource:

EFF: Legal ...   more »

Hopes for legal music podcasts rise | CNET News.com

Dear Record Industry: Here's a chance to positively react to yet another change that might affect your business model. Are you ready this time?

Wait till I come! ?  Towel Day

Oh no, I forgot :(

As always I am running a little behind (this was published 6 days ago):
Americans are pants at password security | The Register

I wonder how many people couldn't actually tell them the password because they have it saved on their computer - not a very secure alternative.

Google launches "My Search History" today, at tool that tracks all your searches. While some people cite privacy concerns, there could be advantages other than displaying customized advertising:

While you can also maintain a local history of searches, the centralized version gives the search the possibility to customize the results according to your anticipated needs.

Let's take an example - let's say a search for "xxx'". Joe searches for this term, and so does Martin, but both of them actually have different goals. Joe is really looking for information on porn, while Martin is interested in XXX, the movie (ed. I know this isn't that great of an example, I will update once I come up with a better one).

So if the search engine actually knows that Joe is searching for porn a lot, while Martin is very interested in movies, the search engine also knows how to customize the results. And yes, it also knows how to best customize the advertising ;-)

So as you see this would probably work the best for people who do more generic searches. And I would imagine that a lot of people use those; however I am not sure that those people would be aware of this new feature.

While I normally trim down my search results by making them more specific, I think that a lot of users rely on relatively generic terms and then actually don't mind browsing through a couple of pages in order to find the desired result. I would actually like some statistics on this, anyone?

Don't get me wrong, I do share the privacy concerns and what actually is done with the data, but I doubt that better matching of ads is the sole motivation here.

Chris just wondered what it would be like if there were a car that behaved like Internet Explorer.
Wait till I come! : If Internet Explorer were a car

Paying by Fingerprint at the Supermarket | Reuters.com


Convenience or loss of privacy? To me somehow this idea is not appealing at all.

Michael Gartenberg: First Bloggers joining us
A very interesting move by Jupiter Research - they have selected three bloggers to review and comment their reports. The bloggers will do this on their own blogs, while the analysts at Juper Research will be commenting etc.

Open Source market research as a basis for higher value information?

[update]
I got a reply (not via a trackback, but actually I found it via Google Alerts):

http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/007044.html

Frank Michlick asks if what we're doing is "Open Source market research as a basis for higher value information?" We view it as another way of extending our conversation with the marketplace.

Which I guess, could be seen as a type of 'open' approach. Maybe the term "open source market research" is going a bit too far, but I think it a great idea. :)

Press-Release: Did-it, Enquiro, and Eyetools Uncover Google’s Golden Triangle

An eyetracking study reveals which areas on the Google website receive the most exposure. Only the featured ads above the search results are in the 'hot' area.

Ourmedia.org opens: Come on in, the media's fine! | Ourmedia

Share your videos, audio files, photos, text or software - for free - with a global community of creative individuals.

So I guess the idea is basically to have a central place for Open Content. I guess that the cost of operating a site like that will probably easily outdo the cost of running Wikipedia, so who is going to foot the bill?

[update]
As johnny points out in an email to me, the question with regards to footing the bill is answered in their FAQ:

Drupal, an open-source content management platform, has agreed to host the site for free through its Bryght hosted service. Other sites will also participate in this open registry, storing material on their servers. Most importantly, the Internet Archive has agreed to provide free storage space and free bandwidth for the media files published by our members — forever.

Which is quite a commitment. But I am sure that if need be, people probably also would be willing to donate for this service in a similar fashion as they did for Wikipedia. Amazing things are happening.