This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO.  I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.

Here’s my list for the week of Feb.20-Feb. 24, 2012:

Online Privacy Battles Heat up

Google recently announced a consolidation of privacy policies for its many different products into one comprehensive privacy policy for all Google products, that is scheduled to go into effect March 1^st. Google’s stated intention for the move was to simplify all of those privacy policies into one privacy policy.  The more cynical observers of the move saw it as a means for Google to be able to seamlessly share all data collected by all of their properties amongst themselves.  This allows Google to build a more detailed user profile and thus more effectively target you for advertising. This has unleashed firestorm of activity and blogging on Privacy.  This week, this article in ZDNet reported that the Center for Digital Democracy said that Google has misled and sugarcoated the new privacy policy, asked for FTC action. On Thursday of this week, the Obama administration announced the creation of a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”, which is said to be “voluntarily” supported by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. Read more about the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights at SearchEngineWatch.com or Marketingland.com. Will this “Bill of Rights” give any real privacy protection, or has the Obama administration been taken for a ride by these companies who have offered “voluntary cooperation” to a list of objectives that they will be in no way legally bound to actually comply with? The plan is to move forward with the Bill of Rights to establish codes of conduct that the FTC will be able to enforce, but by then the stakeholders working with government should sufficiently water down the code so that it no longer has any real teeth. The truth is that Google and Facebook provide amazing services to millions of users for free.  The price paid by the users for using that service is paid in units of privacy.  If you’re not comfortable with that, don’t use them.  As this ZDNet article points out, you never had any privacy, so get over it already.

Foxconn and Apple

On Monday Dateline aired a special report on working conditions at the Foxconn manufacturing facility in China, where some of the biggest names in high tech devices, including Apple, assemble their devices. You can watch the video of their report here.

Apple and Foxconn responded to the CBS News story and the working conditions at the plant with statements attacking 2 details in the report.  You can read about their response in this BusinessInsider.com story as well as this Mashable.com article.

This ZDNet article gives an interesting take on working conditions in China.  What do you do when a country has such a low level of humans rights that what we would consider barbaric is welcomed openly by millions of workers? 3000 workers apply for jobs at Foxconn every week.  As this BusinessInsider.com article points out, what we may view has horrible working conditions have been welcomed by some Chinese as their only alternative to rice farming or prostitution.

Google Heads up Display Glasses by the end of 2012?

Augmented Reality could be a step closer to amazing reality if reports of Google working on heads up display glasses are true.

Google heads up display glasses are said to be similar to these Oakley Thump MP3 player glasses shown below.

This article in Mashable.com says that Google is working on glasses with a built in camera that could make augmented reality an actual reality by the end of 2012. The heads up display would allow you to navigate on screen commands projected onto the inside on the sunglass looking devices.  Small head motions control the user interface.  They would be Android based and have augmented Reality functionality overlaid over the real world.  The price point would be in the $150-$600 range, about the same as a smart phone. Read more at PCWorld.com or Extremetech.com.

This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO.  I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.

Here’s my list for the week of Feb. 6-Feb. 10, 2012:

Path makes a Privacy Blunder

The ‘personal’ social media, Path.com, made a huge privacy blunder this week.  I wrote a blog post on January 9^th that outlines Paths plan to be a smaller, more intimate social media site, limiting its members to 150 friends. It was discovered this week, and reported in this businessinsider.com post, that Path, which is primarily designed for mobile use on smart phones, was scanning the address book of all of its users, and saving all of their contact information on their servers. Path responded to the charges by saying the reason for storing contact info was so they could alert users when friends from their contact list had joined Path. This explanation was fairly weak, since other apps including Facebook, foursquare and Instagram scan your contacts to alert you when a friend has joined, but they do not upload the contact info and store it on their server.  Path says a new version for Android will soon let you opt out of the ‘feature’, and they are working on one for iOS.  It may be too little too late for the fledgling social media. This post on ZDNet by one disgruntled user may be the typical reaction of people who had placed their faith in Path.

Protest against Apple for Chinese Working Conditions

The past few weeks have seen many expose stories in mainstream as well as tech media about the working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese factory that produces Apple products, as well as products for many other electronics manufacturers. This week the leaders of an online protest delivered 250,000 signatures they had gathered to Apple stores in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Bangalore, London and Sydney. Change.org founder Ben Rattray delivered the signatures to the store in San Francisco. The petitions ask Apple to make the iPhone5 the first ethically produced iPhone, and for Apple to take a leadership role in the Chinese production market. Read more about the protest here. This businessinsider.com chart shows what would happen if Apple took a leadership role by transferring just $1 billion of its offshore profits to wages for the employees of the Foxconn factory.

UPDATE: On Monday February 13, 2012 Apple announced that they had asked the Fair Labor Association to audit the company’s Foxconn Shenzhen and Chengdu, China. Read more about it in this ZDNet article.

Pinterest Becomes Fastest Startup to 10 million Unique Visitors

Pinterest, the social media site that allows users to share links of interest with pictures, became the fastest growing startup to reach 10 million unique visitors ever.  I discussed the start up, their business strategy, and their incredible growth in a blog post earlier this week. Pinterest’s core group of early adopters has been 18-34 year old women in the American heartland, which is a very different demographic than most start-ups target.  Will Pinterest’s model scale to reach other demographics with different interests, or will it remain mostly about women’s clothes, recipes, home furnishing ideas, and ‘cute’ pictures? If the format scales to be interesting for other demographics, Pinterest could end up bigger than Facebook or Twitter.  Its model also makes it very appealing as a marketing tool. Keep an eye on this growing phenomenon.

This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO.  I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.

Here’s my list for the week of Jan. 30-Feb. 3, 2012:

Google’s New Privacy- Reaction Continues

This story continues to dominate discussions in the Search Engine Marketing blogosphere. As announcements of the change were sent out to all Gmail users, and a page was set up announcing the changes to all users as they logged in, reaction to the change has been overwhelming and mostly negative.  This businessinsider article reported that according to Google ‘most users love it’.  This ZDNet article looks at Washington’s misguided interest in Google’s new privacy policy. This fastcompany article has a list of suggestions for maintaining your privacy with competing services.

Microsoft vs. Google in a Privacy Smackdown

It started with a post to the official Microsoft blog in the early morning hours Wednesday.  The post suggested that Google users fed up with privacy concerns should consider Microsoft’s suite of competing products.  It suggested Microsoft had more of a commitment to privacy.  It also announced plans for Microsoft to place ads in major newspapers that would make the same claims to Google users in an appeal to win them over. It escalated when Google responded on its public policy with a post titled ‘Busting myths about our approach to privacy’.  In it Google listed seven myths about Google privacy, followed by the facts the supposedly ‘busted’ the myths. Five of the seven myths cited sources from Microsoft as the origin of the myth. In a humorous turn to the story, Microsoft leaked a funny video called ‘Gmail Man’.  It shows Gmail Man reading everyone’s mail as he is delivering it.  The video was shown originally to a limited audience at Microsoft’s Global Exchange Server Conference, but somehow found its way onto Youtube thisweek.

Facebook IPO

Facebook filed paperwork this week in advance of its impending IPO.  The tech blogosphere analyzed and read all kinds of meaning into every detail of the paperwork. This ZDNet article looks at post-IPO challenges to Facebook and its ‘hacker way’. This article in WebProNews looked at things in the IPO filing that could end up killing Facebook. I looked at what some of the filings said about Facebook and their business model, and I examined the balancing act between user privacy and keeping advertisers happy in this blog post.

This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO.  I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.

Here’s my list for the week of Jan. 23-Jan. 27, 2012:

Apple releases 4^th Quarter Revenue

On Tuesday of this week Apple announced its revenue for the 4^th quarter of 2011, and as MG Siegler observed in this TechCrunch story, it was “The Day Apple Left the Tech World’s Collective Mouth Agape”.  The numbers were staggering: $46.33 billion in revenue with $13.06 billion in profit.

Google and Facebook Announce Changes

Possibly trying to go under the radar because of Apple’s stunning revenue reports, Facebook and Google both made announcements that could ultimately prove very unpopular.  Some have suggested they hoped these announcements would attract less attention in the technical blogosphere by timing them to coincide with the Apple Revenue numbers. Regardless, both stories blew up the tech blogosphere, as well as crossing over into mainstream media.  Google announced it would be sharing all tracking data across all of its properties, including Gmail, Google+, search, YouTube, and more. This will allow them to ostensibly generate more detailed user profiles to better target ads. Their justification, of course, was to provide a better user experience. Read more about Google’s change in my earlier blog post. Facebook announced that the Timeline feature will be rolled out as the only user profile in the near future. The Timeline profile should allow Facebook to capture more detailed user profiles, again to better target ads. Facebook also claimed the purpose was to enhance user experience. Read more about Facebook’s changes and the growing backlash against both companies in my recent blog post.

“Don’t Be Evil” Bookmarklet Shows Google’s Bias

A tool developed by Facebook and Twitter engineers took a slap at Google’s hypocrisy and their corporate logo.  The tool attempts to show what Google search results should look like if they indexed all social media, and not just Google+.  For a great explanation of how it works and more about the Focus on the User website, read this informative article written by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.