In Don Norman’s talk at dConstruct, he said something that I’ve been saying for a long time:

“They have lots of people, lots of servers, they have Android, they have Google Docs, they just bought Motorola. Most people would say ‘we’re the users, and the product is advertising’,” he said. “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”

Norman is almost right, although he’s phrasing it wrong. Google’s customers (not users – there is a difference) are advertisers: they are the people who pay. What Google is selling is you, or rather your attention. The more it can make its ads relevant to you, by placing them in the right context at the right time, the more likely you are to click on them – and the click is the only measure of your attention that matters.

John Gruber, and many others, seem to see this as either a revelation or something shockingly bad – hence John’s snarky retort that “the truth has an anti-Google bias”. But “the truth” is that John does exactly the same thing. Like virtually every online publisher, it’s advertisers who pay his bills – so, in truth, his “customers” too are advertisers.

The idea that Google’s customers are advertisers, and what it’s selling is you (or rather: your attention) is no big deal. Every site, every publication, which carries ads is “guilty” of exactly the same thing.

What John sells isn’t content, but us, the readers, our eyeballs, our attention. Advertisers on Daring Fireball know that you, the reader, are a Mac nut, which in turn means they can pin down a lot of broad demographics because “Mac nuts” fall into quite a distinct pot. To his advertisers, John may (or may not) also disclose other aggregated information – breakdown of geographic location, any survey data he’s collected on more precise demographics, and so on.

Google is just more precise about it (at least in theory) because it knows more about us as individuals than any single site or publication can ever manage. That “individual” data isn’t usually tied to us as unique individuals, because Google doesn’t (yet) have that level of granularity. But the different is one of precision, not who and what is being sold. For Daring Fireball – and for Technovia, and Macworld, and every other site which carries ads – the customer is the advertiser, and what’s being sold is the reader’s attention.

Dave Winer should know:

If you miss five days of reading the news because you were on vacation (good for you!) the newspaper you read the first day back isn’t five times as thick as the normal day’s paper. And it doesn’t have your name on the cover saying “Joe you haven’t read 1,942,279 articles since this paper started.” It doesn’t put you on the hook for not reading everything anyone has ever written. The paper doesn’t care, so why does your RSS reader?

Dave’s totally right. It’s one of the reason why I probably read more of my RSS feeds via Flipbook (which doesn’t punish you for not reading in this way) than Google Reader.

The launch of Google+ has started a huge debate over the role of anonymity on the Internet. But what I see again and again in the debate about this is two massive straw men:

1. “Anonymity is essential so that the marginalised/endangered can speak”
2. “Real names are essential to stop bad behaviour”

Neither of these are, of course, in any way true. There’s a whole host of stuff from smarter people than me pointing out that the voices of the marginalised only have impact when attached to a consistent meatspace identity. The old concept of “you own your own words” from The WELL has a deep and resonant meaning here: words which a real identity visibly stands behind will always carry more impact than those of a completely unknown person.

But, more importantly, not every forum is likely to be one where those cases where anonymity is clearly required are likely to speak. For example: A comment stream on a post about a sports result is unlikely to attract comments from a rape victim which require that person to be anonymous.

And this is where the construction of these straw men is really stifling meaningful debate. The implicit assumption is that “the Internet” is a singular thing which must carry only a single correct policy on anonymity. To me, that’s a bit like saying “everywhere on the Internet must use English, because it was created by English-speakers”. It denies the fundamental fact that the web is not “a place” with a singular set of rules, but a confederacy of places, all of which have different needs, opinions, rules and so on.

For some sites, anonymity is essential – I doubt there is anyone who would disagree, for example, that a site which counseled child abuse victims shouldn’t require a “real names” policy. But for others, insisting on real names can be part of the arsenal of methods to encourage civil discourse – and let’s not forget, “civil discourse” is not always the aim of a community.

What’s required here, as is often the case, is a granular methodology. Again, I’d refer back to The WELL. On The WELL, your real name was always visible, as part of your profile. This was non-negotiable, as part of the “owning your own words” ethos. And it worked. The exception was for topics which could be seen as sensitive (usually around sexuality, but others too) where you only saw someone’s real name if they explicitly put it in.

I’d argue that for a general social network without pre-established forums, that control should rest with the original poster (in this case, me – but if you have a blog, you). OP’s should have the ability to make comments “Real names only” or “anonymity allowed”.

In other words, devolve the power.

Alan Patrick thinks not:

Is it a fair price – no, of course not, its a Bubblenomics business case. In any “normal” economy, paying $40m for a zero-revenue feature that uses your own platform to organise what are essentially SMS’s with pictures into columns, is completely daft. You can build that for a few hundred thousand and probably bribe a user base the size of Tweetdeck’s to comeover for far less – but it’s BubbleTime, and in BubbleTime its all about the urgent acquisition of eyeballs (remember them from Dotcom 1.0) Now!

It’s a harsh description of Tweetdeck, but a true one.

Now this is really rather fine. Byword, which is my weapon of choice when it comes to writing pretty much everything, has been updated with support for Markdown syntax. If Markdown doesn’t mean anything to you, then don’t worry about it to much1. If, on the other hand, you want it, you’ll probably want Byword too.

Byword’s Markdown support extends to a preview mode, so you can actually see what your post will look like like. And your blogging platform doesn’t need to understand Markdown: all you need to do is copy and paste the HTML which Byword outputs.

Byword is available from the Mac App Store, and there’s a free trial available for download from the Byword store.

If I’ve set this up right, you should now be able to find Technovia on Facebook. Yeah, I know the logo’s rubbish, but I haven’t had time to do a new one yet. Come along, Like it, and all that fashionable social media stuff.

Jonathan Ballerano:

“Another interesting twist is that Google fired the first shot a month before the patent call, bydropping support for H.264 from its web browser, Chrome.  Google did this in the name of openness and performance, but it is disingenuous on both counts (not to mention that these were reasons for adding H.264 in the first place).  H.264 is an open standard, and there is a “free beer” open-source implementation of the standard, called x264, that anyone can use or modify.  Furthermore, H.264 has a performance edge because hardware manufacturers have licensed H.264 to implement high-performance decoding that frees up the CPU, increasing battery life.  WebM decoding will require new hardware, obviating all of this work and license-paying that was made as part of an industry-wide effort.  Ironically, Chrome continues to license Adobe’s proprietary Flash Player, for which Adobe licenses H.264 (the extra software layer makes it inherently less efficient than decoding built into the browser).”

If ever there was any doubt in my mind that Google’s dropping support for H.264 in Chrome and adoption of WebM is more about hurting what it sees as competitors rather than being truly open, Jonathan’s thoughtful piece removed it.

Related articles

• Google Launches WebM Video Patent Cross-Licensing Initiative (ostatic.com)
• Google gains allies in the war over HTML5 video formats (infoworld.com)
• Samsung, LG & Cisco Throw Their Support Behind WebM (gigaom.com)

There’s been something of a storm over the “discovery” that your iPhone contains a database file which includes details of where you’ve carried your phone, and that this information is sent back to Apple (with your consent, although as often happens you probably didn’t read the license you gave to Apple, did you?)

But your iPhone isn’t the only machine sending location data back to Apple: Your Mac, if you’re running Snow Leopard, does it too. As does Safari 5, even if you’re running it on Windows (I think).

Last July, two US Representatives sent some queries to Apple over how it was handling personal information, and Apple responded to them in a detailed letter [PDF download]. That letter contained details of what location data Apple collected, and how it is used. As well as covering the uses of the data it collects from iPhone, it included details on Snow Leopard and Safari.

First, Snow Leopard:

So, whenever you make a location request – and that will presumably include any application which uses CoreLocation, such as the excellent NetworkLocation – OS X does a little look around, checks out where you are, probably notes which WiFi hotspots are available, and sends that data back to Apple. It doesn’t, of course, contain any data which could connect that location to you.

Again, your location is transmitted to Apple. But it’s not connected with you, personally.

Why does this matter? Well, here’s the point: Location services don’t happen by magic. To make location services work, companies have to collect data about where you are, and that data has to get stored somewhere. In the case of your iPhone, that’s on the phone. With CoreLocation on Snow Leopard, that information sits, anonymised, on a database in an Apple server somewhere.

If you want to take advantage of software which knows where you are, that data has to be gathered, moved around, and stored. It shouldn’t be a surprise. There are no magic pixies inside your iPhone, your Android phone, your Mac, your Windows PC, or even your browser gathering this stuff up. It’s databases. And they’ll live on, somewhere, not because people are evil and “WANT YOUR DATA TO SPAM YOU” but because if it doesn’t you can’t have the services work well and reliably.

Don Reisinger on why the tablet won’t replace the laptop:

“The operating systems lack worthwhile file systems, a more robust interface and all the other things that people will find in the operating systems running on notebooks.”

I’m not sure what Don means by “a more robust interface”, but I think he’s wrong about the importance of files systems. A file system is an abstraction, a metaphor, not something that’s set in stone. Not once in using the iPad have I pined for “a file system”. What I want – and what people care about – is simple: “can I read and create the documents that I want to read or create?” I don’t need folders, volumes, and all the other baggage. I just want my stuff to be there.

• Why they want your email address…
  (tags: spamming trolling griefing email)
• £100bn hole in local government pensions
  (tags: economics pensions politics)
• I am grateful to my hon. Friend the…: 22 Jun 1964: House of Commons debates (TheyWorkForYou.com)
  Work is not the chief end of man. Human beings are made and are entitled to enjoy a vast range of activities which may include creative work but which may more often be activities that might be dismissed as mere pleasure or fun. Do not let us dismiss fun as "mere".
  (tags: politics quotes)
• Keeper of secrets
  (tags: internet government wikileaks freedom security)
• The inhumane detention conditions of Bradley Manning – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
  (tags: us wikileaks bradley_manning detention politics)