So the EFF says “this”:1…

bq.. Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation

Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop

San Francisco - Google today announced a new “feature” of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new “Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.

…blah, blah, blah.

p. Jeez… you have to opt-in to this feature otherwise the index is stored on your desktop.

Man, these folks are really baked or something, because they’re super paranoid. I’d “trust my info”:2 with Google thank you. Last time I “checked”:3, at 359 bucks, that trust is worth $106,030,000,000.

[3(Yahoo! Finance quote for GOOG)]http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog

[2(Google vs. the DOJ)]http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1138874712764

[1(EFF Says Just Say No)]http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_02.php#004400

In a recent “post”:1 on Jon Udell’s blog, Jon introduced a new browser-based navigation application that he calls the Infoworld Metadata Explorer.

Jon has been thinking and writing a lot on information discovery via navigation with posts/projects like his “Flickr advanced tag search”:4 Greasemonkey script, so if this kind of stuff interests you keep an eye on his “blog”:5.

Navigational discovery has some important advantages over the more common search paradigm. Navigation can easily revel relationships between data, enables quick filtering of datasets and is, well, visual. Since humans are very visual creatures (hence our color vision and relatively lousy sense of smell) navigational discovery can highlight information patterns that could never be discovered using search. The Metadata Explorer is proof of that. The kewl “Flickr Related Tag Browser”:2 is another.

I’ve been using del.icio.us to categorize my posts on Zoinger under the “ZoingerPosts”:3 user name, but I have been tardy in updating it recently, since I don’t get a lot of value from it. However, if I could easily create an application like Metadata Explorer for Zoinger, I’d be way more prone to keep ZoingerPosts up to date since it would make tags much more useful.

Search is great but it sure feels like navigational discovery is where search was in the mid ’90s.

Zoinger says, opportunity knocks.

[5(Jon's blog home)]http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/

[4(Jon's advanced tag search in Flickr post)]http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/01/18.html#a1373

[3(ZoingerPosts on del.icio.us)]http://del.icio.us/zoingerposts

[2(Flickr Related Tag Browser homepage)]http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

[1(Jon's post introducing the Explorer)]http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/01/23.html#a1375

The WSJ reported on 2006/01/05 that the Nokia 770 is a “hit” in an article entitled _Nokia to Churn Out 770 WiFi Device, A Clear Hit_. The article does not get quantitative, but says there is a two-week wait for the $359 dollar device. It’s got WiFi, a 4.1″, 800×480 screen, Bluetooth, some sort of tablet OS and no phone.

I’d like to try one, especially to see how the browser handles different sites. The browser on my Dell Axim (Windows Mobile 2003 OS) pretty much sucks. Great for text sites or sites like Bloglines that have a special mobile version, but no Flash support, DHTML is a no go, lots of sites crash the browser, etc. etc.

Anyway, I think there is a big market for all sorts of internet devices… not just laptops, desktops and phones. Some are going to be general browsing devices, like the 770, or application specific, like some of the stuff I’ve been reading about “internet-aware universal remotes”:2.

Zoinger says, bring ‘em on!

P.S. I wrote this a while ago, but forgot to publish it. Doh!

Anyway, here’s a good “article”:3 over at InfoWorld on the 770. The article makes the point that although the 770 is not really a great consumer product, it’s a great way for Nokia to use open-source software to obtain a first-mover advantage and free product marketing (eg, having the open-source community guide product development through the projects they are working on).

P.S.S. Just the other day I discovered that my PDA’s browser has the option to display in “one column”. This improves the rendering of most sites and gets seems to get rid of the horizontal scrolling to view content on wide sites. Horizontal scrolling is painful if you have to do it on _every_ sentence.

[3(Inforworld article on the 770)]http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/02/73477_01OPopenent_1.html

[2(Gigaom on future remotes)]http://gigaom.com/2005/12/26/one-remote-fits-all/

[1($$Subscription-only WSJ Link$$)]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113641683365137964-search.html?KEYWORDS=nokia&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

I have the Yahoo! Toolbar installed in my IE browser. It’s pretty handy for quick navigation through the Yahoo! network, storing your bookmarks online and accessing Yahoo! search. Since I use IE for Yahoo! stuff and lot, I guess it’s become my Yahoo! client. But whatever… the real dealio is these Yahoo! Toolbar email notification icons.

I understand that the “1″ below next to the envelope icon on the toolbar probably means that I have *one* new message in my Yahoo! Mail account.

A “2″ is probably indicative of *two* new emails.

I’d hazard to say that in this case I have *no* new messages.

But what is this???

I really like using Yahoo! stuff. Not that it works all that well at times (case in point above)… but, it is pretty integrated. And with new stuff like the Yahoo! Podcasting, Yahoo! Mail beta, Yahoo! Go, etc., etc. it’s getting even better. But pleeeeasssse make the stuff work better.

Zoinger says, do product managers actually use the products they build?

OMG, what is the dealio with Yahoo! sometimes? For example, they launch a new, cool service like “Yahoo! Go”:2, and you can’t even find it by “searching on Yahoo!”:1. Jeeeezzzz.

[2(Yahoo! Go homepage)]http://go.connect.yahoo.com/go

[1(Searching on Yahoo! Go on Yahoo!)]http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv1-msgr&p=yahoo%20go