An answer, at long last, from Blogger about the Dashboard discrepancy

Not only did Buzz finally disappear from my Dashboard today, but Brett Wilkins at Blogger furnished a very simple explanation on why there was still one entry for his service there.    Someone had added me as an author to his blog without my knowledge. It is one which I have never heard of, and […]

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Will we dump tabloids now we know more about the Milly Dowler hacking?

I don’t think there are too many people prepared to condone the News of the World’s alleged hacking of the cellphone of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002. Not only did the Murdoch Press paper hack the phone, but when her voicemail filled up, The Guardian alleges that the News of the World began deleting […]

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What this Google-sceptic thought of Plus

A friend wanted an invitation to Google Plus, and since I received mine a few days ago when someone shared a story with me, I thought it might work if I shared a story with her.    So, for half an hour today, I joined, with the view of sending her the invitation, and leaving […]

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What the media say about Google Plus

You have to wonder how many of the Google Plus reviews are being inspired by the press releases. Here’s a typical one today, which I picked at random.    Rob Pegoraro writes: ‘You don’t add friends to an all-encompassing list and then, maybe, slice it into subsets; instead, you group them in “Circles” and then […]

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Google organized the web, Facebook our social networks; what does Plus do?

I see the Google press machine has been switched on as the company pursues the Facebook social-networking market with Plus. Google, I’m betting, must hope that history will repeat itself. It wasn’t the first search engine, it simply did it better. Plus, in Googleland, it is a better proverbial mousetrap than Facebook.    I might […]

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Progress at TelstraClear; not sure if you could call it that at McAfee

While I still can’t get into TelstraClear’s support site, one tech has been responding to my feedback-form messages and following up—so I don’t have the difficulty of the telephone, where I have to start from scratch with people there.    And, because Daniel Borgshammar at TelstraClear is a intelligent guy, he’s managed to get to […]

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Privacy Commissioner agrees with my 2009 thoughts: New Zealand Post breached your privacy

A Fairfax Press headline today: ‘“Large-scale breach” of privacy rules by NZ Post’. The Privacy Commissioner has found New Zealand Post breached privacy rules in a promotion in July 2009, which I thought would have been a juicy story back then.    The reporters write: The 2009 survey asked participants 57 multi-choice questions, ranging from […]

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The new groups: we’re not spamming you, Facebook is

Facebook’s new groups have received criticism for two things: (a) you find yourself in groups you never asked to join; and (b) you are suddenly on a spam list.    When several of our groups were faced with the options of ‘archiving’ (i.e. closure and the deletion of all members) or upgrading, I chose the […]

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Google Ads Preferences Manager issue confirmed by NAI

  I’ve now had confirmation from the Network Advertising Initiative that Google has, indeed, been dodgy about its Ads Preferences Manager. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We were able to reproduce the issues you saw and have been working with Google for the last week to address them. I am happy […]

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Facebook resets email preferences, after it removes gay photo as ‘abusive’

Not only does Google Ads Preferences Manager reset on a regular basis and bugger what your preferences are, Facebook has today reset (at least for myself and one other friend) email settings. ‘Set emails to spam.’    Why Facebook does this regularly, I have no idea—but this is relatively minor compared to their removal of […]

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