The Wall Street Journal reports that more changes are planned for Buzz in response to user feedback, including the option to block conversations and other filtering features.

Even as Buzz impressed some social media enthusiasts, it also angered some folks for various reasons the most significant being that it's a bit noisy and difficult to sort through, and that it isn't quite as privacy-friendly as everyone would have preferred.

The WSJ says Google assembled important company figures into a war room where they discussed ways to respond to user criticism. The first results were the big privacy tweaks that went live over the weekend an end to Reader and Picasa connectivity and Gmail contact auto-following. They also made it possible for users who aren't interested at all to remove the Buzz from Gmail completely.

Details about the coming improvements to filtering haven't been revealed beyond the option to block certain conversations, but we're guessing or at least hoping that the ability to collapse comment threads will be among the coming changes. That was by far the most requested feature when we pinged the Buzz crowd asking what features everyone would like to see.

There are a lot of improvements yet to be made. For example, unless you abandon the option of a vanity URL in favor of a numeric homepage, it's pretty easy for someone to guess your e-mail address. If you want it to stay private, that could be a problem.

We'll see what Google does in the coming weeks; we were expecting a large number of new tweaks and this update confirms that they're coming.

Tags: buzz, Google, google buzz, News, social media

To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The Gmail status update could come as soon as tomorrow, whereas the the speech-to-text-to-speech translation system is still a ways out. You can definitely see just how much work Google needs to do by trying to read your Google Voice voicemail transcriptions. (Voice search works better on Android 2.1 because you're talking slower and enunciating.) But both these features point in the same direction many of the company's other products have been hinting at. Here's a list of Google's major products, in case you forgot, and which sector of communication they want to dominate.

Google Voice: This is a big one, and it'll be the most natural interface for Google to slot in the voice-translation into. If you're using it the way Google wants you to use it, you're already piping all your voice calls and SMS through Google's tubes. And refining speech to text gives them a good idea of your interests and what you're talking about, allowing them to better serve up the relevant ads to you during calls.

Gmail: Having access to at least one end of everyone's email conversations, outside of business emails, gives Google the ability to be a gateway for most of your written communications. But that's not enough for Google, which is why they developed...

Google Wave: It's email, message boards, chat rooms and collaboration software all in one, except every participant needs a Google account. This closes that "openness" loophole that email has, and forces everyone into Google's biosphere. So this, and Gmail, should make sure that every medium-length communique passes through Google's maw for analysis. But what about shorter and longer forms? Update: Thanks commenters, for reminding me that Google made Wave open, so people can create their own Wave servers to talk to each other with the Wave protocol. The point still remains, that if you were going to use a service, wouldn't you rather use the service from the company that created the protocol, for performance and feature reasons?

Google Docs: For longer documents.

Google Talk: For short blasts of instant messaging, video chats and some audio chatting.

Picasa and YouTube: Communication doesn't have to be all text-based, you putting your photos and videos online count too.

Android and Chrome OS: By getting you down at the operating system level, Google can theoretically know every kind of communication you perform. It knows who you talk to, how you do it and when you do it. It can even shape the how by delivering the experience themselves.

Everything else. There's Checkout, Finance, Maps, Reader, News and other apps, which fill in the other forms of communication or expression that aren't quite covered by the major products above. One major missing piece is social networking, where Google basically failed before with its Orkut service (except for Brazil), so this new Twitter/Gmail hybrid might be their next entrance into the space.

But why do they want these things? Why would Google want to be the middleman between you and the world? To sell you ads, of course. And don't think Google is going to stop at just helping you talk over the internet or over the phone, they're going to reach into meatspace as well. How? One step is making that speech-to-speech translation portable, so you can do a sort of near-field communication with someone else with the same device while at the same time being able to look them in the face. Then, blast you two with the appropriate ads on the billboard next to you.

The move would further turn Gmail, which revolutionized online e-mail, into a comprehensive communications hub. The intent is to keep people's attention centered on Google, by making Gmail, not Facebook, people's first stop online and their default place to send and receive messages. Gmail users can already chat via Jabber or AIM, make video calls, and send SMS messages from Gmail's web interface.

As the Post reports:

Google has been trying to fashion Gmail into more than an e-mail service for years. The service currently lets users set an away message, which can be a link to a Web page, that their friends see when they instant-message them. Now, it plans to launch a new interface that will aggregate updates from more friends in a stream.

The new stream will also eventually include content that a user's connections share through its YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will also be announced in the coming days remains unclear.

The full extent of the new features remain unclear, but Google is inviting reporters to a launch event Tuesday on its Mountain View, California, campus promising some innovations in two of our most popular products, according to an e-mail sent to reporters.

Yahoo has included similar features in its e-mail service, letting users see what photos their contacts have uploaded to Flickr, for example.

Google could integrate updates from a user's Twitter account, since most of that is public. And it could likely make it easy for Gmail users to post to Twitter as well, due to Twitter's liberal API policy.

Facebook, however, will not likely let its rival re-publish status updates, or allow users to publish to their Facebook pages through Gmail. Facebook, much like AOL and Compuserve back in the early '90s, is a controlled and sanitized version of the larger internet, but it relies on closed protocols.

via Google to Add Social Feature to Gmail - WSJ.com.

See Also:

• April 1, 2004: Gmail Hits Webmail G-Spot
• Google Turns on Gmail Encryption to Protect Wi-Fi Users
• Gmail's New 'Undo Send' Feature Saves You From Outbox Regret
• AOL Announces Lifestream App for Twitter, Facebook, SMS
• Walled Garden No More, AOL Adds Social Networks to Homepage

• Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
• Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
• APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
• AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
• Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
• Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
• Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
• DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
• Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
• Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
• Finance: Google Finance app
• Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
• Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
• Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
• Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
• Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
• Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
• Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
• Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
• Metal detector: actually works.
• Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
• My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
• OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
• Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
• Pandora: streaming music channels.
• PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
• Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
• Robo Defense: addicitve game.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
• Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
• Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
• TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
• TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
• Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
• Yelp: Local reviews.

The question really is what happens when there are no longer applications that allow us to take web content with us on the go?

The promise of RSS was in the ability host applications to store web content for offline or time-shifted consumption. This played out well in the early days as developers that embraced the specifications of RSS wrote programs that allowed subscription to feeds, stored content locally on a device, allowed the creation of folders and keyword driven categories for grouping.

What hasn't played out very well is the success of these RSS programs called readers. For some time now they have languished as one competitor slowly took their users away. Many times because they stopped innovating on top of the RSS spec and treated solely as an update mechanism. Which it is but then relegated it to interfaces reminiscent of web mail applications. Who needs more web mail apps?

That isn't to say that the competitor of which I speak and reference in the title has an application is that much better. It operates likes its sister service, Gmail. Now with the lions share of RSS consumers using it to consume feeds it is putting the competitors out of business or forcing them into niches to seek out revenue.

NewsGator is the perfect example of this with over five rounds of funding under its belt, two client-side programs for reading feeds and a defunct online reader. Their new products boast integration with Google Reader.

If no one can beat Google in this area and the biggest players in the space are moving on to other feed related products, what is to become of time-shifted consumption?

It is not hard for me to envision an internet with only Google Reader as the sole RSS aggregator for consumers. But what comes as an easier vision is Google rolling it into a Wave like application to focus on the real-time aspects of pinging and conversations.

The next great opportunity for RSS and time-shifted culture will begin again when Google does this type of integration and gives up on the feed reader. RSS is the plumbing that keeps content moving around the internet but as soon as Google puts it away as machine language, the humans can pick it up again build applications with a better experience.

Marc Andreessen has said that Web 2.0 was just the web looking like itself. The next versions of feed readers will be feeds looking like themselves.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

What Happens When There Is Only One Feed Reader? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Update: Threadsy is offering Tech Startups readers access to the private beta get your access on! Thanks @dskendall.

The story here really is theory vs. utility. Wave is a tool that comes from a part of Google dedicated to R&D and future earnings, Google Labs.

Threadsy comes from a startup with an agenda like making money in the short term with its software.

Both applications are ambitious in trying to solve a couple of problems at once.

Centralize tools that we use to communicate

Online communication tools are decentralized because most of them are products of individual need. They are solutions to problems that certain users were having with other ways of communicating. It wasn't a lack of vision that caused this. It was market demand. The same demand that is making it necessary to begin to centralize these tools.

Twitter, Facebook and email are the dominant players right now. Sure I know email isn't really a player but it is a mode of communication that is decentralized. It is really a collective of the GMail, HotMail and Yahoo!

This new aggregation of the communication modes makes it easier for end users to locate conversations and friends across networks. Think of it as that nebulous space between AT&T and Verizon where there networks connect. The difference in this case is that Wave and Threadsy are destinations where these connections are made.

Organizing the diaspora of personal brand

Users of the social media tools that are integrated into Wave and Threadsy have worked countless hours building a brands on varying sites. By combining the communication mechanisms they essentially combine a users online brand by centralizing a the users identity.

A users communication styles do vary based on the tool they are using but when centralized into one application it forces users to organize their collective into a single brand. It is a necessity of using the tool, Wave or Threadsy.

At this stage of Google Wave vs. Threadsy, I'm placing my bet on Threadsy to produce a tool that quicker than Google that will meet market need simply based on utility.

Google has a long way to go with the theory of Wave, especially on the front-end if they choose to compete in this space. I would assume that they will continue down a path to make Wave the platform that powers other real-time applications like Pulse from Novell.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Google Wave vs. Threadsy is a post from: TechStartups.com

His dad's quips have resulted in more than 231,000 followers under the account name @smydadsays. But after it attracted wide attention in recent weeks as followers retweeted postings, and blogs and mainstream media covered it, Mr. Halpern finally broke the news.

But his dad didn't really get it. He asked if I had to start up the Internet to get on Twitter, and then I felt better because I knew he wouldn't understand the grand scope of what was going on, said Mr. Halpern in an interview.

Shortly after the revelation, his dad, who doesn't have Internet on his personal computer by choice, changed the subject. Mr. Halpern asked his father if he wanted to see the site. He responded with an adamant no, so Mr. Halpern read him some posts to check for accuracy, to which his dad responded, Yeah, I said that.

Mr. Halpern said that if his dad had been upset by the account, he would have discontinued it. He's my dad, and I live in his house rent-free. That's not a very nice thank you, he said.

He has long been documenting the quips of his father, who grew up working on a farm in Kentucky and was a doctor for more than 40 years. As a child, he recorded them in his diaries, and when he got older, he would post them as his status on Gmail Chat to give his friends a chuckle. In August, he found a new medium for disseminating his father's expletive-loaded one-liners: Twitter.

Mr. Halpern started the account after he left a job in Los Angeles and was unable to retrieve all of his personal documents on his work computer. He had just moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and a friend suggested he use Twitter as a way to document his life, because he had stopped keeping journals. He was reluctant because of the 140-character cap on tweets, but then thought it could be a good way to keep a record of his dad's quotes. I didn't expect it to have more than 10 people following it, he said.

A month later, he has become an Internet sensation. On Aug. 3, he began posting such gems as Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn't stand for s. Just sat there. Big let down. Watching the Little League World Series, he said, These kids are all fat. I remember when you were in little leagueyou were fat. Other posts are best read on his page.

Mr. Halpern works from home as a writer for Maxim.com, and his father is retired, so throughout the day he collects the funny, and sometimes outrageous, things he says and chooses one to post each day. Early on, one of his friends brought up the possibility of his dad not saying anything quote-worthy, but he knew that wouldn't be a problem.

During the course of a day, he says tons of funny things because there's no filter. He admits some of his dad's best quotes are over 140 characters and are disqualified because of the limit.

Since his account has blown up in the media he's been approached by book agents, publishers and producers. In Los Angeles he tried to make it as a screenwriter but didn't find much success. It's ironic to think that I busted my ass trying to get my own writing out there, and what has been successful for me is something I didn't even write, he said.

Shared by Schlomo
Word. Chesspark/Collecta has known this for a long time.

Web surfers nowadays use many browsers on different machines, even on small devices like smartphones. They obviously need a way to gather together all these sparse data (like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc.) and make them available from any browser at any time.

Two of the largest internet players today provide two different approaches, both at the same experimental state:

• Mozilla with Weave, a product from its labs, providing a Firefox extension, a opensource server implementation, and a documented protocol
• Google will offer a Chrome feature, Google Talk server, Google account, and maybe a documented protocol, since the code is opensource

It is possible to provide browser data sync client as a cross-browser extension or plugin, a server component which would rely on an existing XMPP server and account of your choice, and a protocol which could well be Bookmarks, Message Archiving, or Persistent Storage of Public and Private Data via PubSub.

This shows the ongoing effort of Google to use XMPP: Talk and Jingle, GMail notifications, Wave, and now data sync.

With Google and Apple using XMPP for its notifications service, XMPP shows itself as a strong infrastructure for a wide array of applications beyond the simple chat.

The update promises several improvements beyond what we saw when Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 Beta 2, both for developers and users. Specifically:

• Tabbed Email Messages

  Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a New Tab window. Middle-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a Tab in the background. When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a new Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between Tabs.

• New Message Summary View

  Selecting multiple messages will give you a summary view of the emails you have selected.

• Column Headings

  The column headings that are displayed and the order in which they are displayed can now be set on a per-folder basis.

• Smart Folders

  The folder pane offers a Smart Folders mode which combines special mailboxes (e.g. Inbox) from multiple accounts together.

• Improved Gmail Integration

  Better recognition and integration of Gmail's special folders such as Sent and Trash including non-English versions of Gmail. Thunderbird also uses All Mail as the Archives folder.

For more, check out the release notes. Before you upgrade, you may also want to take a look at the known issues to make sure that a little beta bugginess doesn't disrupt your email flow.

Thunderbird is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. If you're a Thunderbird die-hard and you've tried out the Thunderbird 3 betas, let's hear how it's been working for you in the comments.

Apart from those, I consider an RSS reader to be such a vital tool for me as well, both on a private as a professional level. As I wrote before, I quickly fell in love with Streamy for that particular aspect of sifting through mountains of information on a daily basis, partly because it allows me to both track blogs and news sites I subscribe to and keep track of what Twitter and the people I follow on there as well as on Facebook and FriendFeed are buzzing about.

Add to that Techmeme, which has an algorithm in place designed to weed out the best and/or most talked about news stories related to the tech industry out there, and you can tell I have a pretty solid set of tools readily available that enable me to keep tabs on what I want and need to be tracking closely. Techfuga was another one, but it recently ground to a halt.

New to the arsenal of tools at my disposal free of charge is Tech Investor News, which despite its not-so-sexy name is exactly what it sounds like: a news site that investors in tech companies - plus industry pundits and reporters - should be made aware of. Glad to be of service.

TIN complements the websites and services described above perfectly, and competes with neither one of them. If anything, it saves me a lot of time and rids me of the pain of going to Google News / Blogsearch all the time to learn what the most recent stories in tech or centered around a company in particular are.

What I like about it? The big fat stock quote in the upper corner, the fact that you can filter down to 20 of the most discussed tech companies (note the Google Investor News screenshot below), the decent search function and the speed with which it updates news feeds (every 5 minutes or so, with some human editing involved). But what I also like is the fact that you can narrow your news consumption down to a specific set of categories which makes it very easy to find specific information (for instance, you can opt to display only stories about Steve Jobs' or Rumors' when browsing for news on Apple).

TIN is a project bootstrapped by a self-described media nut' / investor called Frank Cioffi, who spent decades working in such media as radio and television and turned to the internet after many years of consulting and trading stocks. Cioffi got the idea for Tech Investor News to scratch his own itch, and that's always a good way to start something that other people - like me - could also find interesting.

Bookmarked!

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

One other piece of news that will be very interesting to non-developers eagerly waiting to try out the service: Google is planning to release Wave to 100,000 users beginning on September 30th, using the service's main wave.google.com hub rather than the developer site (we can likely expect a Gmail-like limited invitation system). By this time we can likely expect there to be a rich variety of Wave widgets the site already boasts plenty of them, including a RickRoll widget and more practical things like a weather forecast but you can't try them out without a Developer Sandbox account.

Thanks to Noah Hendrix for the tip.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Note: Google Apps is a suite of free (and paid) business productivity tools that you can access from any web browser. You are probably familiar with most of the apps: Gmail, Google Talk (Google's version of IM), Google Calendar, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) and Google Sites for websites and wikis. You don't download and install them, you use the tools when you're online. You also have the option to store your data in the cloud so that other team-members and colleagues can access them from remote locations.

This security breach has captured the imaginations of many cyber-pundits and self-styled security experts. It has also inspired some very lively conversations between proponents of cloud computing solutions and more traditional geeks. But there are two things to keep in mind.

1) Twitter is a very big, high-profile target that comes with associated bragging rights. In other words, Twitter is more likely to get on a hacker's radar than your company, and 2) The reason that this account was so easy to hack had very little to do with the fact that the Google Apps are a cloud computing solution. It could have been accomplished with any account that could be accessed from the web. This account was hacked because the user did not have a robust or strong password and security question.

With that in mind, I thought we might use Twitter's most unfortunate security breach as a teaching moment.

Passwords can only protect you if you use them correctly. Here are some guidelines.

Characters

Use letters (caps and lowercase), numbers and symbols. The more cryptic your password is, the better it will protect you.

Leet

Use computer geekspeak to make weak passwords stronger. Leet replaces English letters with numbers and symbols. For example: a=@, E=3, i=1, S=5, etc. Check out Wikipedia for a complete Leet table.

Leet can help you turn proper nouns, which are very, very easy for machines to crack, into stronger passwords. For example: macintoshczar becomes m@c1nto5hcz@r. You can still easily remember it, but it is much harder to crack.

Mnemonics

Make up a sentence and use the first letters of each word to create your password. For example: Mozart is one of my favorite cats in the car. would yield the password: Mioomfcitc. Then write it in Leet to make it even stronger, M100mfc1tc. The sentence is a mnemonic device that will help you remember your password, and Leet makes it much stronger.

Lastly, keep in mind that the longer a password is, the better it is. Change your passwords on a regular basis. No birthdays, names, proper nouns, ages or anything else that looks or sounds like English or says anything about you! And, don't reuse them.

As for security questions: never use your mother's maiden name, the last four digits of your social security number or anything else I can find out about you with Google or on your Facebook or LinkedIn profile. Don't even use your drag queen name (your first pet's name and your mother's maiden name, mine is Muffin Whitehead) it may be great fun at a party, but it is not secure!

If you keep these very simple principles in mind, you will be much more hacker proof than you are right now. Use your username and passwords on your personal computers all the time. Security begins right at your desk. And, don't write them down, of course!

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit
www.shellypalmer.com

This morning I received an invitation to Lazyfeed, which debuted at the TechCrunch event last week. Louis Gray has been playing with it and likes what he sees. Here are my initial impressions. Screen grabs follow.

Pros:

• Zemanta plus Google Alerts plus Posterous equals I don't know. (newcommbiz.com)
• LazyFeed: Get the News, Vids, and Pics You Want Without Even Trying (readwriteweb.com)
• The One Huge Issue That Is Going To Kill Tag-based Reading Systems (cloudave.com)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Chris Soghoian observed in CNET that

Google's terms of service, thick with legalese, state that:

You may not use Google's products, software, services and web sites and may not accept the Terms if you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.

Of course if you're in the US that means that anyone under 18 is accessing Google's computer system in violation of its terms of service. And this applies to all Google services, YouTube, Gmail, and Image Search.

Ignoring Legal Risks Leads to Selective Prosecution
Federal prosecutors recently used the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to selectively prosecute Lori Drew as a hacker for violating MySpace's terms of service. She lied about her identity, and harassed a troubled minor who was also using the system under a false identity. After the child committed suicide, a media and political frenzy resulted in federal prosecutors turning a breach of the site's terms, which might not have even been civilly enforcable, in to a federal criminal case.

Ignoring the Disconnect Between Terms and Practice May Partly Void the Agreement
Obviously, online services retain the right to modify their own terms of use. You may begin a user experience with a minimal grant of rights and a maximum of restrictions when reflexively accepting terms. However, when site staff clearly operate to the contrary to those terms, and in some instances assure users that terms in the TOS won't be enforced, isn't the contract being modified within the user experience?

Smoking Gun: Google for Kids
Google in fact provides safe-search resources just for kids. There's no easily accessible link to terms of service, so arriving new users aren't even exposed to them.

Question 1: By creating this site and its other practices, doesn't Google by their own practice modify their terms?

Question 2: Could any reasonable person believe that a new visitor to the Google Directory for Kids and Teens should be bound by these unseen terms, which even Google seems to disregard?

Question 3: What risk is created by the gap between the lawyers who wrote the TOU, site management who follows their own drummer, and visitors who ignore the terms are entirely disconnected.

Are such TOU's unenforcable sharades posing as contracts?

But recently, we've begun to question AIR's longevity. Now don't get us wrong - many of our favorite apps (TweetDeck, Tumbleweed, Yammer, etc.) are built using Adobe AIR. However, there's no reason why these apps couldn't just run in a browser instead...and that might even be a better place for them.

Sponsor

Twitter on AIR

When we think about AIR apps today, one of the top apps that comes to mind is TweetDeck, the multi-columned Twitter application which includes much sought-after features not built into Twitter.com's own web site such as groups, photo-sharing, and saved searches. Yet despite everything we love about TweetDeck, we wonder why it can't exist simply as an online application. What purpose does running TweetDeck in Adobe AIR serve? It's not AIR's cross-platform abilities - after all, web browsers are the original cross-platform apps -and it's not that AIR is notably faster than than an online version either. Probably the only reason for TweetDeck on AIR is that when the app was first built, AIR was the hot new thing. Now that the company has settled on the platform, they're just sticking with it.

Yet on the flip side, another popular Twitter client and originally an AIR-only app has gone the other direction. TweetDeck competitor Seesmic, once solely an Adobe AIR desktop application, is now offering a web-based version. Not only is the online app more than functional, it's also being lauded as "the best Twitter browser interface yet." More importantly, it goes to show that you don't need a desktop application to have a speedy, pretty, and useful app.

Streaming Video: Yeah, We Can Do that Online

Outside of the Twittersphere, other AIR apps on our radar in the past have included video-streaming programs like Adobe Media Player, AOL Top 100 Videos, and the YouTube-streaming DeskTube. Incidentally, today DeskTube is launching a new beta of their application, claiming "performance improvements" that now make their player "netbook-ready."

This immediately got us thinking: why do we need netbook-ready AIR applications? Maybe I don't speak for everyone, but my netbook is currently running XP and the only "app" I've installed is Google Chrome. With this fast, lightweight web browser and its pop-out tabs, desktop apps all of sudden seem so pass.

Besides what does DeskTube do (or any of these video-streaming AIR apps for that matter) that the web cannot? In DeskTube's case, in addition to playing YouTube videos, it includes a search feature, top video lists, a built-in uploader, and it lets you share videos via Twitter and Facebook. All those things can be done via YouTube.com right now, so what's the benefit of AIR?

Is the Future RIAs or Just Better Browsers?

Adobe AIR launched back in February of 2008, a time when browsers seemed either hopelessly out-of-date (IE7) or bloated with a plethora of add-ons (Firefox). We saw these little internet apps that could sit on our desktop connecting us to web services as truly amazing creations. But then in September, Google launched their Chrome browser and nothing has been the same since.

At first, we railed against Chrome's lack of extensions and lack of support for RSS among other things, but after a while (and once we filled up our bookmark bar with add-on like bookmarklets), we got over it. Surprisingly, you can live quite well without loading down your browser with extensions. In fact, the only thing that Chrome desperately needs is a Mac version so our non-PC friends can dump the open-source Chromium and use the real thing.

You see, once you "go Chrome" it's hard to switch back. As much as we fear handing yet another bit of our online life to Google, Chrome is where it's at now. Firefox now seems heavy and so much slower than before. Instead, we're popping out tabs to watch sites like FriendFeed and Twitscoop update in real-time. We're switching from online mode to offline courtesy of Google Gears in our Gmail and Calendar. And we're wondering why on earth we need another AIR app.

Today, AIR almost seems like a stop-gap between the heavy web browsers of the past and the speedy WebKit-powered browsers of the future...browsers like Chrome and whatever else comes next.

Yesterday's announcement of Google's Chrome OS plans were met with plenty of discussion about what it might mean for the future of computing. The OS is essentially a lightweight version of Linux designed to run the company's Chrome browser to access Google's (or other third-party) cloud computing services, such as Gtalk, Gmail, Google Docs, and more. While there are numerous benefits of using such cloud serviceslike data persistence across multiple machineswhat happens when the servers that run those services run into trouble, burn down, or lose power?

Unfortunately, it seems, there aren't any new answers since we examined this issue almost one year ago. In the last week alone, there have been several high profile outages at data centers that host sites, such as video site DailyMotion, credit card authorization service Authorize.net, and Microsoft's Bing Travel. Even the Google App Enginea platform for third-parties to run their own cloud servicesexperienced performance issues that resulted in high latency and even data loss.

Time is usually - nearly always - displayed by a circular indication: one dial and two (or three) with the time displayed around a perpetual circle. However, this 360 representation of time goes against everything we learnt as we grew up drawing a straight line on a blank page and marking it Past, Present and Future. Why do we think of time as travelling in a straight line yet display it rotating around a circle? The answer is straightforward: mechanisms that continually rotate are much simpler to produce than those that trace a straight line then return to zero. In fact, the latter is so difficult that, until now, nobody has ever managed to develop a production wristwatch with true retrograde linear displays.

The triple-cam is crafted from bronze beryllium, a metal selected for its inherently self-lubricating properties and low co-efficient of friction, and takes the form of three small inclines. The precise shape of the curve of the incline is relayed to the pivoting rack, while the teeth on the end of the rack mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder. The triple-cam makes a complete rotation in three hours so that each of the three inclines takes 60 minutes, and 180 points of reference have been calculated on each of the three cams to ensure the precise and isochronic rotation of the minute cylinder.

Model: UR-CC1

Case: available in either grey gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces) or black gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces); brushed-satin finish

Movement: calibre UR-CC1; automatic winding regulated by fly brake turbine pneumatic shock absorber

Indications: linear display for hours and minutes with jumping hours and retrograde minutes ; second display both digital and linear

Dimensions: 45.7mm x 43.5mm x 15mm

Dial and Bridges: ARCAP P40. SuperLumiNova treatment on hours, minutes displays

Genesis of a creation

1958. Messrs Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier combine their talents to create a watch destined to revolutionize the horological world. Their idea is completely outrageous: it is the world's first watch to feature a linear display. It is an extraordinary, avant-garde piece that fulfils none of the aesthetic criteria of the time. As for its linear indication, the idea may seem simple but the execution is a technical headache of monumental proportions. However Messrs Albert and Cottier believe in it and they stick with it, creating a prototype for Patek Philippe.

1959. A patent is deposited by Louis Cottier, detailing the technical scale of the achievement. Then nothing. The prototype is put on to one side. Does the watch even work? Today nobody knows for sure. It took its place in the corner of the Patek Philippe museum and proceeded to arouse curiosity from time to time.

1998. With pencil and paper Martin Frei, co-founder of the URWERK brand and an aesthete at heart, sketches the first outline of his future creation: a watch in which the hours and minutes are indicated by two straight, parallel lines. But he hesitates. With Felix Baumgartner, master watch-maker and co-founder of URWERK, another idea springs to mind the concept of the hour satellite, presented for the first time at Basel. The earlier project is postponed, sine die.

2006. URWERK is henceforth known and recognized for its mechanical hour satellite watches in which orbiting hour satellites indicate the minutes. But the idea of developing a different way of telling the time continues to fascinate Felix Baumgartner. In the end it is the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds that gives him the decisive nudge in the right direction. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the heroine seeks refuge in an old Dodge. The image lasts only a few seconds but it is crucial a close-up of the dashboard and its linear speedometer. Yes. That's it! A continuous line with which to mark time. Felix and Martin work non-stop on this new project. Their research leads them to the discovery of Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier's watch. It will be their muse.

Original Prototype Movement

Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner

I am not big on nostalgia, but I have always loved the linear speedometers found on old cars. My older brother had a 1960's Volvo and it was that which gave us the first idea for a horological linear indication. I recently watched the film The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock, and in it the heroine took refuge in an old Dodge with a linear speedometer- it is one of my favourite scenes. There are very few wristwatches with linear indications. One of them, if not the first, was The Cobra', which was developed in the late 1950s by Mr. Louis Cottier. It is sensational! Although it was created over half a century ago, it is still very contemporary. Unfortunately, it only exists as a single prototype and was never put into production. Now, 50 years after he filed his patent (1959), URWERK pays homage to the work of Louis Cottier by creating its own interpretation of the Cobra. -Felix Baumgartner

Designer Martin Frei

I am interested in the perception of time. Physicists tell us that time can be warped or stretched, and our daily experiences are with the circular cycles of the days, seasons and years. But I am also intrigued that time can be ordered, even straitjacketed, to flow in a linear direction - a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. And, because this can represent an individual's lifeline, I feel that this linear format can be a very human way to look at time. That plus the fact that I think it looks really cool! -Martin Frei

Time is usually - nearly always - displayed by a circular indication: one dial and two (or three) with the time displayed around a perpetual circle. However, this 360 representation of time goes against everything we learnt as we grew up drawing a straight line on a blank page and marking it Past, Present and Future. Why do we think of time as travelling in a straight line yet display it rotating around a circle? The answer is straightforward: mechanisms that continually rotate are much simpler to produce than those that trace a straight line then return to zero. In fact, the latter is so difficult that, until now, nobody has ever managed to develop a production wristwatch with true retrograde linear displays.

The triple-cam is crafted from bronze beryllium, a metal selected for its inherently self-lubricating properties and low co-efficient of friction, and takes the form of three small inclines. The precise shape of the curve of the incline is relayed to the pivoting rack, while the teeth on the end of the rack mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder. The triple-cam makes a complete rotation in three hours so that each of the three inclines takes 60 minutes, and 180 points of reference have been calculated on each of the three cams to ensure the precise and isochronic rotation of the minute cylinder.

Model: UR-CC1

Case: available in either grey gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces) or black gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces); brushed-satin finish

Movement: calibre UR-CC1; automatic winding regulated by fly brake turbine pneumatic shock absorber

Indications: linear display for hours and minutes with jumping hours and retrograde minutes ; second display both digital and linear

Dimensions: 45.7mm x 43.5mm x 15mm

Dial and Bridges: ARCAP P40. SuperLumiNova treatment on hours, minutes displays

Genesis of a creation

1958. Messrs Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier combine their talents to create a watch destined to revolutionize the horological world. Their idea is completely outrageous: it is the world's first watch to feature a linear display. It is an extraordinary, avant-garde piece that fulfils none of the aesthetic criteria of the time. As for its linear indication, the idea may seem simple but the execution is a technical headache of monumental proportions. However Messrs Albert and Cottier believe in it and they stick with it, creating a prototype for Patek Philippe.

1959. A patent is deposited by Louis Cottier, detailing the technical scale of the achievement. Then nothing. The prototype is put on to one side. Does the watch even work? Today nobody knows for sure. It took its place in the corner of the Patek Philippe museum and proceeded to arouse curiosity from time to time.

1998. With pencil and paper Martin Frei, co-founder of the URWERK brand and an aesthete at heart, sketches the first outline of his future creation: a watch in which the hours and minutes are indicated by two straight, parallel lines. But he hesitates. With Felix Baumgartner, master watch-maker and co-founder of URWERK, another idea springs to mind the concept of the hour satellite, presented for the first time at Basel. The earlier project is postponed, sine die.

2006. URWERK is henceforth known and recognized for its mechanical hour satellite watches in which orbiting hour satellites indicate the minutes. But the idea of developing a different way of telling the time continues to fascinate Felix Baumgartner. In the end it is the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds that gives him the decisive nudge in the right direction. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the heroine seeks refuge in an old Dodge. The image lasts only a few seconds but it is crucial a close-up of the dashboard and its linear speedometer. Yes. That's it! A continuous line with which to mark time. Felix and Martin work non-stop on this new project. Their research leads them to the discovery of Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier's watch. It will be their muse.

Original Prototype Movement

Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner

I am not big on nostalgia, but I have always loved the linear speedometers found on old cars. My older brother had a 1960's Volvo and it was that which gave us the first idea for a horological linear indication. I recently watched the film The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock, and in it the heroine took refuge in an old Dodge with a linear speedometer- it is one of my favourite scenes. There are very few wristwatches with linear indications. One of them, if not the first, was The Cobra', which was developed in the late 1950s by Mr. Louis Cottier. It is sensational! Although it was created over half a century ago, it is still very contemporary. Unfortunately, it only exists as a single prototype and was never put into production. Now, 50 years after he filed his patent (1959), URWERK pays homage to the work of Louis Cottier by creating its own interpretation of the Cobra. -Felix Baumgartner

Designer Martin Frei

I am interested in the perception of time. Physicists tell us that time can be warped or stretched, and our daily experiences are with the circular cycles of the days, seasons and years. But I am also intrigued that time can be ordered, even straitjacketed, to flow in a linear direction - a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. And, because this can represent an individual's lifeline, I feel that this linear format can be a very human way to look at time. That plus the fact that I think it looks really cool! -Martin Frei

I've been reading coverage of Palm's new device, Pre, which is being presented at CES this morning, trying to figure out whether this thing can be a real iPhone competitor (or killer).

Because, you know, it's not about the hardware anymore; or perhaps even the feature set. Every decent smartphone nowadays has WiFi and 3G connectivity, a GPS chip and a lot of memory. You can't beat the iPhone in this area, at least not by a lot. Furthermore, when it comes to features, you can have a great notes and calendar application or a fantastic browser, but it's hard to top the iPhone's applications because they already work so well (better, in many cases, than those of its competitors).

But the way you can switch between applications on the Pre caught my eye. It might be a tad too early to tell, because no one has a real, in-depth review yet, but switching between apps seems fast and seamless; all the applications can work in the background and even notify you of important events while you're working in another app. Palm's buzzword for this is Synergy; but marketingese talk aside, it really is a step forward towards having a real mobile computer that can handle many tasks at the same time.

The iPhone can do all that; theoretically. But right now, it doesn't. The Pre seems to be way better with this regard.

Add to this the fact that Pre's interface seems to be even faster, fluid and responsive than the iPhone's, and you have a very interesting device and platform.

However, whether Palm will be able to motivate developers to start creating applications for Pre's platform, dubbed WebOS, (and under what terms; we all remember Apple's restrictive policies towards developers) remains to be seen. If they do, Pre will be one of the most interesting mobile devices of 2009.

Image courtesy of NYtimes.com

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Palm Closing Java Support: Another Epic Fail?
Palm Announces Increased GMail Compatibility
Palm Users Get Their Own Optimized Facebook App
Palm Foleo Dies After 3 Months
Palm Launches the Foleo Companion for Smartphones
Palm Software Store: Why'd it Take So Long for Everyone to Figure This Out?
Imeem Partners with Palm Pictures for Interactive Indie Film Access

Embed RSS Feeds in Web Pages

Go to this page, replace the feed URL with your own feed, use the default color scheme or change it to something else and then click Get Code. You'll get a JavaScript snippet that can be easily placed in the sidebar of your blog.

If you like to embed feeds from multiple sources, merge all of them into one using Yahoo Pipes and then pass the combined feed to the Google Gadget. You can also use RSS widgets like WidgetBox or YourMinis that are done in Flash and not JavaScript.

Embed MP3 music and other Audio

If you like to embed audio files like songs, podcasts or interviews in your web pages, use Yahoo! Media Player - its a free Flash music player that automatically detects all links to MP3 files in the current web page and turns them into a music player. Another alternative is the Google MP3 Player.

To embed other audio formats like 3GP, Midi, Real or Windows Media, it may be a good idea to convert these files into MP3 using Zamzar so that they play on almost any web browser.

Embed Flickr Photos and Slideshows

To embed an individual Flickr photograph in your blog, click the "Share This" link (available next to the photo title) and choose embed it. Flickr requires that the embedded image should link back to Flickr and this built-in embed option automatically takes care of that requirement. (see example)

To embed a Flickr photo slideshow in your web page, open any Slideshow in a new page (see example) and choose "Customize HTML" from the embed option (see example). Here you can specify a custom size for your Flash slideshow so that it fits just right into your web page.

Embed High Quality or HD YouTube Videos

To embed a high resolution version of YouTube clip in your web pages, first make sure that Watch in High Quality or Watch in HD link exists next to the YouTube player as most videos are only available in standard format.

Next copy the YouTube embed code and append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 (for high quality) or &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 (for 720p High Definition) to the URL value of the movie parameter (both instances).

Embed Picasa Web Albums

When you open a photo album inside Picasa, click the link in the right sidebar that says "Link to this album" and choose "Embed Slideshow". You can use the same approach to embed individual photographs that are available inside Picasa.

Embed Events from Google Calendar

Click the drop-down arrow next to any Google Calendar and select Calendar settings. Open the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper program by clicking the customize button and choose elements that you want to display or hide in the calendar.

Embed Very Large Photographs

To embed really large images in your blog, you may either use Deep Zoom or the Google Maps viewer. These programs break your photographs in small tiles and you can even pan / zoom across these images very similar to the default interface of Google Maps.

Embed Charts and Graphs in Web Pages

My personal favorite is Zoho Sheet any chart created inside Zoho Sheet can be published as an external image without exposing the full spreadsheet. If you are interested in creating charts with low volume of data, use Google Charts.

Embed GIF Animations and Screencasts

GIF animations (see example) are a perfect way to embed short screencasts in web pages as they require no plugins and auto-play inside feed readers. You should upload GIF files to your Flickr account as it preserve all the frames while lot of other image hosting website will drop anything after the first frame.

Embed Word Documents

Upload your document to Scribd and they'll give you the embed code in Flash. Scribd supports both doc and the new Office 2007 docx format in addition to Open Office documents. Even Barack Obama is using Scribd to upload his public documents and upcoming plan.

Embed PowerPoint Presentations

While the popular choice is Slideshare, you should also consider using Issuu (best web application) for presentations that are either large or formatted in the form of magazines or catalogues (see example). The only downside is that Issuu accepts PDFs so you need to convert the presentation before uploading onto Issuu.

Embed Spreadsheet Data

Both Zoho Sheet and Google Docs allow you to publish a range of cells from a spreadsheet into a web page but the embedding process in Zoho is less complicated - select a range and choose "Publish" from the contextual menu to embed that range into your web page.

Embed Adobe PDF Files

To embed PDFs in a web page, you can either use Issuu (for magazine style PDFs) or Scribd for PDFs has either have lot of text or have a top-to-bottom reading layout similar to Word documents.

Embed Flash (SWF) or Flash Video (FLV)

The best option to embed Flash content is via swfobject. It improves the overall user experience by providing alternatives in case Flash is missing and your Flash content also becomes more searchable. This tutorial has all the files and other details to help you get started with SwfObject 2.

Embed LinkedIn Profile

If you wish to display your LinkedIn profile in the sidebar of your blog, try LinkInABox. People (site visitors) can read a summary of your LinkedIn profile without leaving the site.

Embed Google Maps in Web Pages

Embedding a Google Map in your website is now almost as easy as adding an image just open the Static Maps wizard, search for location that you want to embed and specify the dimensions of your map. They'll provide a simple URL that actually points to a static image of that map.

Embed Another Webpage in your Blog

If you like to embed another website into your web page, your best bet is an IFRAME tag also known as an Inline Frame. Just set the SRC value to the address of the web page that you want to embed into your current HTML document. You could try IFRAMEs for inserting live search results from Google into your web page without having to worry about APIs.

Embed Windows Media or QuickTime movies

While it is possible to embed mov or wmv videos in web pages directly using the OBJECT tag, I recommend that you put these videos onto blip.tv and then embed them in web pages as Flash video. That's because your visitors can then play the video without extra plugins and two, they always have the option to download the video in the original format from blip.tv servers.

Embed Other Fonts in Web Pages

Most web pages use universal fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana since they are installed on most computers and hence your web pages will render correctly. If you want to try something different and render pages in fonts like Microsoft Calibri or Adobe Garamond Pro that are only available on some machines, all you need is sIFR it lets you use almost any font for your web pages using JavaScript + Flash and is perfect for writing newspaper style headlines.

Embed your Lifestream in a Web Page

You have a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Facebook, Amazon and a dozen other online places. It can get really tough for friends to track you at so many places so what you should do is create an account at FriendFeed, import all the different services that you use and then use the FriendFeed Badge to embed your lifestream activity on your main site.

Related tutorial: How to Embed Video in PowerPoint

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website - Digital Inspiration

In August, I blogged about the SEC's most recent guidance regarding companies' liability for linking to third party content. Today, I submitted comments to the SEC pointing out that their general position regarding linking contravenes 47 USC 230 with respect to civil lliability. (I believe the SEC guidance also pertains to SEC criminal enforcement actions, and those would not be preempted by 230). Unfortunately, I ran out of time to attack the overall illogic of trying to treat outlinks as the basis of liability in any circumstance. That will have to wait for another day. You can read my comments in PDF (that's the best because of the formatting and footnotes). Or, you can read the comments below.
_________________

November 5, 2008

Secretary
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-1090

Re: File No. S7-23-08, Commission Guidance on the Use of Company Web Sites

I am an Associate Professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Director of the school's High Tech Law Institute.[FN1] My research focuses on Internet law, especially Internet marketing law and search engine law. I have taught an Internet law course every year since 1995-96, and I practiced as an Internet lawyer in the Silicon Valley for 8 years before becoming a full-time professor.

My comments pertain to Section II(B)(2) of Release No. 34-58288. I write to point out that 47 U.S.C. 230 preempts the SEC's imposition of civil liability for hyperlinked material.

In 1996, Congress enacted 47 U.S.C. 230 to immunize websites and other online entities from liability for third party content. 230(c)(1) says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

As the statute's plain language indicates, the SEC cannot treat a company as the publisher or speaker of third party online content under any circumstance. As applied to the SEC's proposed guidance, 230 means that the SEC cannot hold companies responsible for any content they hyperlink to.[FN2] Although I am not aware of a 230 case that specifically addressed hyperlinked content,[FN3] the case law has been virtually unanimous that websites are not responsible for third party content even when they exercise significant editorial control over the content. For example:

In D'Alonzo v. Truscello, 2006 Phila. Ct. Com. Pl. LEXIS 244 (Phila. Ct. C.P. 2006), a blogger copied the entire contents of a newspaper article and republished those contents, apparently without authorization, on his blog. The newspaper article was allegedly defamatory (and the newspaper retracted it), but 230 immunized the blogger from any defamation liability even though the blogger affirmatively republished the article.

In Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal. 4th 33 (2006), an email list operator made the editorial decision to forward a third party's allegedly defamatory email to the entire email list. The California Supreme Court held that the email list operator was not liable for defamation for forwarding the email.

In Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D.D.C. 1998), AOL was not liable for republishing a contractor's allegedly defamatory content even though AOL had the express contractual right to exercise editorial control over the content.

Although these cases all involved defamation claims, the statute is not limited to those. Instead, 230 preempts all civil causes of action based on third party online content[FN4] even causes of action enforced by the SECunless otherwise specified in 230(e).[FN5]

Further, the immunization applies even when a website explicitly or implicitly adopts the third party content. For example, in Global Royalties, Ltd. v. Xcentric Ventures, LLC, 2007 WL 2949002 (D. Ariz. 2007), a website was not liable for continuing to publish third party content that the author had asked the website to withdraw, even if the website had adopted the content as its own.;[FN6] Accordingly, the SEC's standards for adoption of third party content may need some revamping for the online context.

Finally, 230 may protect websites' self-authored characterizations when third parties cause those statements to become untrue. For example, in Doe v. SexSearch.com, 502 F. Supp. 2d 719 (N.D. Ohio 2007), 230 immunized a website's marketing representation that all of its users were over 18 when a user rendered that statement false by lying about her age.[FN7]

Therefore, the SEC's proposed guidance may contravene 230 to the extent that it tries to establish civil liability based on a company linking to third party content or for the company's characterizations of that content. I encourage the SEC to consider revising Section II(B)(2) to reflect 230 and, as appropriate, acknowledge that companies do not face civil liability for hyperlinking to third party content.

I appreciate the opportunity to submit these comments, and I would be happy to elaborate on them further if that would be helpful. Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully submitted,

Eric Goldman
Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
Director, High Tech Law Institute
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053
(408) 554-4369
egoldman@gmail.com
http://www.ericgoldman.org

FOOTNOTES

1. I am speaking only for myself. I provide my affiliation for identification purposes only.
2. See, e.g., Christopher J. Volkmer, HyperLinks to and from Commercial Websites, 7 COMP. L. REV. & TECH. J. 65, 67-68 (2002).
3. The most analogous precedent that came to mind is Smith v. Intercosmos Media Group, Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24251 (E.D. La. 2002), which held that a domain name registrar was not liable for an allegedly defamatory website hosted at a domain name registered by its customer. Also analogous is Doe v. MySpace Inc., 528 F.3d 413 (5th Cir. 2008), which held that MySpace was not liable for tortious conduct (sexual abuse) that took place beyond its premises, even though the parties had met each other and communicated via the website.
4. See, e.g., Ben Ezra Weinstein & Co. v. Am. Online Inc., 206 F.3d 980 (10th Cir. 2000) (AOL was not liable for publishing inaccurate stock information provided by third parties).
5. 230(e) excludes federal criminal law from the 230(c) immunizations, so 230 does not preempt the SEC's criminal laws. However, civil claims based on those laws are preempted. See Doe v. Bates, 2006 WL 3813758 (E.D. Tex. 2006); cf. Voicenet Commc'ns, Inc. v. Corbett, 2006 WL 2506318 (E.D. Pa. 2006).
6. However, I should note that the recent Roommates.com en banc opinion, which addressed facts the SEC is unlikely to encounter, has some ambiguous but arguably contrary discussion regarding adoption of third party content. See Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008). Similarly, I am not addressing the application of 47 U.S.C. 230 to the SEC's entanglement discussion.
7. See also Prickett v. infoUSA, Inc., 561 F. Supp. 2d 646 (E.D. Tex. 2006) ( 230 immunized information syndicator for its representation that it had verified the syndicated information); Mazur v. eBay Inc., 2008 WL 618988 (N.D. Cal. 2008) ( 230 immunized eBay for its representation that its live auction service vendors were screened). But see Anthony v. Yahoo! Inc., 421 F. Supp. 2d 1257 (N.D. Cal. 2006) ( 230 does not immunize the dissemination of expired dating profiles with the implicit representation that they were still active); Mazur v. eBay Inc., 2008 WL 618988 (N.D. Cal. 2008) ( 230 does not immunize marketing representations that live bidding is safe, is conducted against floor bidders and involves international auction houses).

Officials from all three companies took turns introducing various aspects about the new phone, now officially being called the "T-Mobile G1 With Google." Sergey Brin and Larry Page from Google even made a surprise appearance to talk about Android's importance. After some initial introductions and setup, they showed the phone and its features in a promotional video. What we learned from that video is listed below:

Features Demoed In The Promo Video:

• Touchscreen - You can swipe across the screen, use a long press to access more features, drag-and-drop
• Music - one-click ordering from Amazon confirmed
• Music player is built in - one long press lets you access more features, like song options
• Gtalk IM included
• Address book can take you right into Google Maps
• Google Maps: Directions/Traffic View/Street View; can do panning in Street View thanks to the touch screen
• In "Compass Mode" the scene moves as you do
• In the web browser, there are onscreen controls to zoom in
• You can open multiple web pages in Google's browser
• There's a search button on keyboard
• A long press lets you share a link (URL) from within the web browser
• For apps, there's the Android Market, complete with user ratings and OTA downloads
• Pacman!

Q&A From The Press

Q: Status of T-Mobile's 3G network?
A: Will be in 22 markets by commercial launch data (October 22nd) and by mid-November it will be in 27 markets

Q: Will the phone be available in Europe?
A: There are 30 million U.S. customers and 100 million customers in the European market, so yes, it will come to Europe. It will be in the UK in early November and will be across Europe by 1st Quarter, 2009

Q: Can you use the phone as tethered modem?
A: NO

Q: Can you buy just a data plan only?
A: NO

Q: Can you view office documents?
A: You can read Word, PDF, and Excel docs

Q: Will it work with Microsoft Exchange?
A: There is no Exchange compatibility, but this is an excellent opportunity for a 3rd party developer.

Q: Can the phone be unlocked and used on other networks?
A: No, the phone is SIM-locked

Q: Is email push?
A: Gmail is push/IMAP supported

Q: Will there be a desktop app?
A: NO

Q: Is there Wi-Fi?
A: Yes

Q: What's the marketing plan?
A: Google and T-Mobile are working together to produce both TV and in-channel marketing which will debut in October. It will be the biggest campaign ever for a mobile device.

Q: Is the browser Chrome?
A: No, it is Web-Kit, which is "Chrome-like"

Q: Who's the target demographic?
A: The phone has mass appeal, there's something for everyone, but it's more of a consumer device.

Q: Will it work with iTunes?
A: It supports standard music formats like AAC, WMA, MP3, but not anything wrapped in DRM.

Pricing and Availability

The phone is less expensive than the iPhone! It's $179.

Existing T-Mobile customers can order on the internet on a micro-site and have shipped to their homes. October 22nd is the commercial launch date when it will be available in stores. There will be 2 plans. One is $25 for unlimited web and some messaging; the other is $35 for unlimited web and unlimited messaging. (In addition to whatever voice plan is selected).

Note: Stay tuned. We'll update this post with some more video and images shortly.

In essence, Google has applied the same EULA that it uses for Gmail to everything you put into the Chrome browser. What, you never read the gmail EULA? You do realize it gives Google copyrights in your email, right? Yeah, it does.

Anyway, here's the relevant clause from the Chrome EULA:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

That's potentially very bad. Should Google ever choose to make use of those rights it could cause problems ranging from simple embarrassment to loss of serious value. For example, I work at a company that makes Web-based tools for securities traders. If someone runs our tools in a Chrome browser, does that mean Google owns (or thinks it has any rights to) my customers' financial data? Should I be telling my customers not to run Chrome? Does this principle apply to anyone who ever does any home banking in the Chrome browser?

This condition seems completely unnecessary for a browser. I can't find any similar language in the Firefox EULA. The Internet Explorer EULA has language some people object to in terms of disabling and potential interference, but it doesn't seem to contain any terms claiming ownership of content. WTF, Google?

Over the weekend, I finally picked up an iPhone for myself thanks to my lovely wife who woke up and, no crap, said first thing when does your Verizon contract end?

She's obsessed with the thing.

Small Change for Small Applications

When it comes to making money with software, the iPhone App Store is the glossiest example of trend I feel creeping up on us: people paying for software.

Yes, people have been paying for software forever, but the expectations for most consumer software of late has been that it's free. GMail, YouTube, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and IM. And there's the encroachment on Microsoft Office from Google Docs, ZoHo, Adobe Buzzword, and others.

This is great for consumers, assuming that they pay for the software in other ways - looking for ads or helping the company in question stock up on eye-balls and the potential for a cash-out.

Developers, on the other hand, have had a tough time of it. If everything has to be free, it's hard to boot-strap a company without the capital to burn while you're figuring out your business model.

Looking at things like the App Store, Facebook apps, Ning, Bungee Labs, Force.com, and other (pretty much) SaaS-based platforms for small application developing, it's seeming like the idea of getting paid up-front for software is starting to cook again. The excitement here, for developers, is being able to tap into an immediate revenue stream for products, for software. The alternative is usually consulting and services which distracts from building the software.

As we've noted in the past, the current round of platforms here are typically much more locked-up - closed - than we expect in the freerer world. My feeling is that the trade off is finding the sweet-spot between lock-in tolerance and fast revenue: the faster you can make more revenue, the more lock-in you'll accept.

What's Changed?

The change here is an environment where people will spend $0.99 to $20 for a piece of software. I often comment that this user-mentality - spending small amounts of cash on software - exists in the OS X world, but it's been lacking from others.

Things like the App Store could start to chip away at a user's concept that they can pay for software in non-cash ways. SaaS people like SalesForce and even Google Apps $50/year work to chip away at that user-spend mentality as well. Ultimately, the SaaS angle could accelerate this move away from free even more than Apple. (Search-and-replace SaaS->Cloud if you need to be buzzworded.)

Indeed, running and/or distributing software over the web seems to be one of the blockers removed. Part of the benefit is transforming your (the one selling software) sales organization to be primarily web based and understanding how you go all SEO-crazy and beyond to insert offers to buy into the life of your potential customer/user as much as possible. You take your sales force off the green and out of the steak-houses and put them on the web and in social networks. People like Solarwinds (soon to IPO, no less) and Spiceworks (400,000 users and growing) lead on this kind of thinking.

I don't think it's a sure change now in the user's mind, but I think it's close.

Servicing the Marketplace

For vendors, the chance is to provide the monetization platforms to these developers. The vendors benefit is not only take a cut of the sales, but also attracting the developers to their world.

It sounds obvious, but in the open source/everything is free world we're in now, using you can make money quickly as a developer ecosystem feature/benefit isn't actually as clear-cut as those developers with bills would like.

Take Adobe, for instance, fresh on my mind from the Analyst Summit last week. Currently, Adobe wants to fill out its RIA developer ranks. There are several ways to do this: pull in the existing Flash world, poach/share Java developers, bring in web/LAMP developers, etc.

Even more compelling for developers than has good interfaces and can make sexy charts that Adobe RIA currently uses would makes me money quickly. Here, the idea is to rig-up a platform for allowing developers to sell the RIAs they develop - the back-office, distribution, and sales/advertising (see web-based sales notions above) for that.

Being an Adobe programmer would not only mean nice looking charts, but it'd mean being able to get money quickly from software.

Adobe is just one example, of course. Any outfit could for for that: like Sun with Zembly.

Disclosure: Adobe, Sun, and Microsoft are clients. And thanks to Charles for the term lock-in tolerance.

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Today's news from the more SaaS-y part of cloud-land is that SalesForce.com's platform, Force.com, now integrates with more of Google, in an even tighter way.

The Announcement

The ongoing idea here is to move all the on-premise, enterprise software up to the cloud, which here means the sort of classic idea of a SaaS, backed with middle-ware and programming as you'd expect in business applications. You know, cloud as URL users go to, not cloud as a bunch of virtualized servers you deploy your stuff on.

Put more succinctly:

Salesforce.com just released a Google Data client library for the Force.com platform, enabling access to the full suite of Google Data APIs using Apex code.

The demos we saw this morning were all very interesting, primarily because of their elegant simplicity:

• I need to schedule a sound system install in my SalesForce-based workflow system. Stuff cranks away, and the result is a scheduled item in Google Calendar.
• The accountants really like spreadsheets. We need to re-allocate some funding, so this little chunk of our SalesForce-based workflow system shells out to Google Sheets to let the accountants get their Excel warm-and-fuzies.

As was pointed out many times, while calls between SalesForce and Google were possible up-to-now, you had to do them on your own server. This announcement is all about SalesForce baking that integration to Google apps into the platform.

Threats

Really, this kind of ongoing thing is very impressive. With things like 1.5M users switching from Exchange/Outlook to Google Apps/GMail, seeing a workflow that crosses from SalesForce to Google Apps to schedule meetings, kick off email work-flows (though, we didn't really see any of these that I recall), and otherwise tightly couple business workflows with Google Apps start looking like a very real, here-and-now threat to Microsoft's Exchange and - maybe - SharePoint strong-holds.

Perhaps even Office, though it's hard to think of people switching over to Google Docs and Sheets just yet. Buzzword & co. seems more realistic (Force.com/Acrobat.com integration?) if less big name.

Platform-as-a-Service, Lock-in FUD

As with Amazon, SalesForce has packaged up their general web application platform and productized the use of it in the form of Force.com. From the conversations I've had today, people still think of SalesForce as being strictly CRM - managing the process of getting leads and harvesting more cash out of existing customers.

Indeed, it's not entirely clear why you'd use Force.com to build a sort of stand-alone application that didn't have anything to do with SalesForce.com - as it is now and as it will become in the next 10 years.

In theory, you could build such stand-alone applications, using the existing Force.com platform for cloud-as-infrastructure. But then you'd face the number one thing that makers I've talked with today site: lock-in.

Lock-in is a common enough idea in the on-premise world. It means that you develop your software, relying on a technology that's difficult, if impossible to transition from at a reasonable cost. The first form of lock-in, of course, is deciding what language you're going to write in. More normal forms are relying on a vendor for the platform to run your software on, or in.

Force uses the Apex programming language and - unless I'm missing something - only runs on Force.com. Once you write your application, you're locked-in to always having a relationship with SalesForce.

The question is: is this bad?

Obviously, the open camp would say yes. (Too status quo?) A more pragmatic camp would say yes on the condition that you're building an application from the ground up.

On the other-hand, there's an emerging place where it's just dandy: when you're selling features instead of whole applications.

(The ever-snarkier response to all these fears of lock-in is to ask if it's possible, really, to have it any other way. We'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader - remember to cite at least one example, or 2-3 if you're feeling A+-y.)

Hedging

From what I've seen today, it looks like your best bet for developing on-top of Force.com isn't in building full-blown applications, but either extending or augmenting the general types of business applications that exist in the SalesForce world. Plugins, features, extensions. Whatever you want to call them.

Don't get me wrong here: we saw demos this morning, like Appirio's, that seemed like full-fledged applications rather than just extensions. My architectural question is if this is, long term, a good idea.

There are at least two areas of risk for lock-in here: SalesForce raising their prices and/or another attractive platform coming along that you'd want to switch to, but will have to pay a high price in re-writing time to go to. See the freedom to leave.

If you're going to develop your whole application on-top of Force.com - instead of just parts or providing features/mini-application - the key is realizing that you'll be a Force.com developer. This is not necessarily bad in the same way that's it not necessarily bad to be a Microsoft developer or an Adobe developer.

Open Source in World of aaSes

But why get all hung up on my open source 1.0 biases? The questions for SalesForce, here, are the same ones for the likes of Bungee Labs (who seem to be working on open sourcing) and even the last mile of closed source folks in Flash-land:

• Do the advantages of open source - cost, transparency, and community - apply, even work, to the application layer of cloud computing?
• Do the developers of cloud computing care about open source, or are they jolly to be proprietary?

To me, these questions get down to the scale of your application and the breadth of where you want to take it.

Honestly, I'm not sure how far you could push Force.com as a general platform - I need to check it out more. There wasn't a whole lot of discussion about what Force.com doesn't do, but there was plenty of bandying about of Gartner's application server magic quadrant-ing, where Force.com showed up as most visionary. This, of course, suggests that SalesForce very much wants Force.com to be a generic application platform.

The point here is that the more breadth a platform seeks to have, the more I'd lean towards it being open source as advantageous. If you're just adding in features or building on-top of the platform, classic open source questions seem to matter less.

So there is that weird open question about Force.com: are we really to take it as a general runtime for any application?

ISVs and/or Corporate Developers

There's a whole other open question here as well. As I wrote in Twitter earlier today during the event:

Are Force.com developers ISVs or corporate developers? Writing software to sell, or software to use?

The ISV/corp developer split is one that people often over-look, but in platform plays like this one, it's a key point to nail down.

Pretty much all of the talk was geared towards ISVs (those writing software to sell it, not use it internally). What with the concerns of lock-in being chiefly an ISV concern, though, it seems like Force.com corporate developers would be especially attractive: get the benefits of custom - and customized - applications along with the benefits of cloud-as-data-center.

Clearly, at this stage Force.com needs to attract ISV developers. I'm not sure, however, that they're throwing the nets out for corporate developers as much as they could be.

Anybody Seen Open Source?

Stephen recently talked about Google as being an open source company, which is another fun pivot to look at this stuff on. For me, the nut is:

If it seems as if I'm downplaying the significance of the software here, that's because I am. Because while software is always the foundation, it's entirely possible that the value of the source code from a retail standpoint could be far less than the value of the data that it's used to collect, as Nick Carr argues. If that bold assertion proves to be true, or even partly so, we may yet come to regard these periodic arguments over open source business models as quaint and archaic holdovers from legacy monetization strategies.

My take-away is one of those oh-so-clever nonsense phrases I like typing up: commodification itself has been commodified.

The Crazy Notion of Paying for Software

SalesForce's pitch, demos, and all that are, of course, compelling. The web is compelling and anything built on-top of it looks like magic compared to on-premise software. The promise to developers, on-top of the technology, is that this is the kind of software you could make quick money off of (something SalesForce doesn't quiet beat the drum on enough).

It'll rattle plenty of open source people - I'm reading the comments in my head now - but that's never been a huge strength of The Promise of Open Source: you've always gotta weasel out some way to make money, or just be happy with small amounts of money while you wait for The Big Buy Out.

And in this age of iPhone applications, it seems we're slowly creeping back to a notion that a generation of developers - myself included - seem to have lost: you might have to pay for software, and maybe that's OK. You might be able to even make a living off the novel concept of people paying you for the code you write. Pay you directly for the software itself even: not with ads, the VC funding-then-acquired-cash-out loop-hole, support/training/consulting, or nuthin'!

I know! Shocker!

Disclaimer: SalesForce paid my travel and expenses out to Tour de Force here. Adobe is a client, as is Microsoft.

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