Google’s decision to help the repressive Chinese government censor search results on its google.cn service received loads of coverage and much of it was critical. One website was collecting doctored images of the Google logo to protest about the decision.
Google has made itself an easy target with its, now more hollow, motto of Don’t Be Evil but as the The Observer pointed out:
the motto was conceived when Google was a private venture dominated by its two idealistic founders. But it is now a hugely valuable public company owned by men in suits. And although its two-tier shareholding structure enables its founders to retain effective control, the imperatives of shareholder capitalism still apply. China is a massive consumer market in which Google was lagging behind competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft (not to mention homegrown competition like Baidu).
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No doubt a great relief to the 40 million of us in the UK who use mobile phones, not to mention the mobile phone companies, scientific researchers have concluded that there is no raised risk of getting a brain tumour from using one. (Though excessive mobile use did kill a Chechen leader.)
It does raise the question however of what would have happened if there was a raised risk. Uninvent mobiles? I suspect that we’d have gone into denial or reduced our usage until a tech fix came along. A future without mobiles seems unthinkable.
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The IT press continues to take an interest in the UK ID cards debate with this lengthy report on vnunet.com about how the House of Lords have sent the bill back to the House of Commons.
The government have not done enough to justify the costs (which may be as much as 3 times higher than their estimate according to the London School of Economics), and, ironically, the cards may make our identities less secure. The Lords also rejected their compulsory nature.
With a long history of vast IT cost and time overruns, it’s not surprising the IT press are so interested in this issue. The LSE’s conclusions are ominous:
Contradictions, guesswork and wishful thinking on the part of the Home Office make a mockery of any pretence that this scheme is based on serious reasoning
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The annual Consumer Electronics Show gets more and more overwhelming. Inevitably, Google came in with a couple of new innovations, interestingly the Google Pack offering a single download of useful, free software which many will love but has to raise even more concerns about the extent to which they are taking over the desktop. Another story was the battle for a new standard for video: Toshiba’s HD-DVD or the Sony’s Blu-Ray.
Here are a few round-ups where the pundits have tried to pick the best consumer technology items from the hundreds being promoted.
Engadget went for the wierd, Dan Dubno picked the eclectic, and the BBC found the sensible.
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I love the difference between these 2 reports from the same source:
- hyperbole describing the entertainment takeover of the games console (“we’re about to hit the crest of an extraordinary hardware wave”) and
- the report from Forrester saying that many consumers will be content to play games on their PC.
The technology suppliers frequently confuse their aspirations with customer demand (e.g. WAP, 3G, Internet fridges, etc).
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Podcasts – making audio files available and easily downloadable from the net – have up to now been dominated by techies talking tech together.
Here’s an interesting learning application where you can download essential first aid information, like how to do CPR, to your digital player.
You never know when you might need it but I suspect it is going to be better to listen and learn before the occasion arises. Picture the scene as valuable seconds tick by – fumbling for earphones, finding the right track, getting the volume right…
But for other, less urgent, problems it would be a valuable resource.
[For a pretty good and free program that fishes for the podcasts you want to listen to and automatically downloads them to your PC, try Juice (formerly ipodder). It also has some good background to podcasts].
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