Facebook (+1) vs. Google

Facebook’s blog today revealed the latest attack in the Facebook vs. Google battle. Facebook have joined forces with Microsoft’s search engine Bing to make searching “more social” and take a significant amount of users away from the power-house search engine Google.

Facebook’s blog makes a point of how significant our friends’ preferences and opinions are to our own choices, and the new partnership with Bing aims to give you exactly that with regard to whatever you’re searching for. For example, if I were to search ‘the Expendables’ on Bing, I could see how many of my facebook friends liked the film, which is supposed to help me make the decision on whether or not I will watch the film or influence my own opinion on the film.

The concept basically evolves from Facebook’s agenda to recommend you things, whether it is a film, cafe, restaurant or another person, whatever your friends like or whoever your friends are connected to will show up at the top of your search list.

As far as the Facebook vs. Google battle goes, the new partnership with Bing aims to encourage people to use Bing rather than Google as their primary search engine online. Bing has a significantly fewer users than Google but considering the population of Facebook, the new social search feature could see Bing become a significant threat to Google.

Of course, Google won't be taking this lying down. After the failure of Google Wave earlier this year, Google have been working on another social networking site to compete with Facebook titled Google Me.

While Facebook and Google continue competing for the internet, I do wonder what effect something like social searching will have on social interactions in real life. Will we have less to actually talk about when Facebook is doing it all for us, and will the quality of a friends opinion become irrelevant in favour of the quantity of friends liking something?

Can technology really change the world?

One laptop a day...
will that really make a huge difference in peoples lives?
would it be more important than food, shelter, clothes?
yes education is important..thats the only way to get yourself out of poverty..but how worthy is a laptop when your too weak from starvation to use it...
Negroponte has a point in trying to civilize and educate third world countires..but I would have to take Winstons side in this case.. yes technology is important but I would not classify it under a basic neccesity...
being a SST activist (this basically means that technology changes due to social needs, therefore it is not technology which changes us and technology is not a product of our society like technological determinist's assume)
I would have to agree with this concept...yes technology is important in our lives but we must also not forget that we are the reason why theres technology in the first place we play a MAJOR role in why technology is so advanced in the world we live in.
This makes the Marxist view a lot more appealing, it is true that people around the world benefit on behalf of those that suffer through exploitation and free labour the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
We are living in a society where we think that technology is so important in our everyday lives...we are made to believe that we can not function without it however in truth we are living in a superfical world and at the end of the day money can't buy all your hearts desires (also ideals from the Frankfurt School for social research).
This brings us to another point Google and Privacy?
there have been many moral arguments around Google's right to information online..who's property is it and who has the right to that property?
moral judgements would suggest that no one is allowed to use another persons property without permission of the provider while others would say that information online has become so normalised and once it is posted or put online it officially becomes public property.
I would have to agree with the second idea... at the end of the day google has made people more aware of other peoples websites, information, even books...yes that can be a bad thing sometimes but in reality it can also be a good thing..for e.g. google books which provide users online the oppurtunnity to flip through snippets of the book online, this can encourage users to go out and buy the book which is the case on my behalf on numerous occasions.
Lastly is the idea of downloads such as films and music..
Everyone has to admit that they have downloaded something for free over the internet, whether its an mp3 song, a film or even an entire album we all fall victim to the appealing notion of free downloads. So is downloading a song online the equivalent of going into a store and stealing a physical item??
In a way yes it is.. the creative individuals involved backstage do deserve to get rewarded for their hard work (as RIAA have stated, it is the creative people involved who are being stripped from their rights, the record company comes 2nd however this is because it is the artist who does most of the work at the end of the day)
so is downloading free media online bad? in reality yes it is but will that stop people from doing it? I highly doubt it..the internet allows individuals to do almost anything which can be detrimental to those putting great amounts of effort into their work.... However I do know a lot of people who will download the song free first and buy it from iTunes later if they like the track.

Google It

One of the things I most often use the internet for is a simple ‘Google it’. I see or hear a phrase or word I don’t understand, I can Google it. Someone on Television mentions something technical that goes over my head, I can Google it. It’s a simple and easy way to learn a little about a lot. For all that some talk about television, the internet and everything new media making younger generations stupid; it’s more of an argument of the need for the retention of knowledge.

For example, if one hears the phrase, ‘Statute of Limitations’ and has no idea what is meant, it’s simple to type it into Google and go to the Wikipedia entry and get an explanation. A couple of weeks later someone mentions it again, do you remember? Yes? Great. No? Don’t worry about, just Google it. The internet gives us the ability to change the way we remember information. If we can use the internet to so easily recall the information for us, what’s the big deal with not trying really hard to make sure something sticks in our minds without the extra help from our friend Mr Google?

Forget that IT degree

Eric Sherman, author of the blog Wired In, says the "brutal reality of cloud computing" is that as machines get to do more, people get to do less. A lot less. As in, so much less they get made redundant.

Nothing new there - that's what the Industrial Revolution was all about. So why is Sherman worried?

In a post discussing Hewlett Packard's announcement regarding its new US1 billion technology investment, which HP says "will benefit clients through new offerings and improved service delivery", Sherman points out that in fact 63% of that "investment" will be spent on redundancy payments for the 9000 high-level IT workers put out of a job. That's a lot of money to decommission people. But it seems that is the price to be paid for the transition to cloud computing.

This echoes a recent post from Martin Ford. Ford is a software developer and blogger who has looked at Google's recent announcement of a machine learning app (read Artificial Intelligence) which can learn from processing data and eventually take over task it is doing (read exit human operator). Ford sees the progressive application and growth of this sort of AI will result in the concentration of power in the hands of a very few, and predicts the white collar worker will follow the blue-collar worker down the road to oblivion. His provocative title Will Google Destroy Itself comes from his analysis that without a middle-class with discretionary income to buy what is advertised on Google, Google's current income model will fail.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends if Google remains smart enough to adapt and re-source its income.

Both authors however see the same outcome for IT workers, no matter how smart or educated. Without the entrepreneur gene, you're just a worker - and therefore expendable.

Which leads to an obvious question: what is it that people offer that machines don't? Something to do with personality maybe. So it is interesting to look at HP's blurb regarding their new investment offering "improved service delivery" and think about the word "service". There's the service that a machine can offer, and then there's the service that a human being can offer - two very different things.

I guess the outcome will depend on how fast AI can be developed to include emotional intelligence. I'm betting on a long time-frame.

Incognito?

So, "you've gone incognito"...Or have you?


If you read the small warning when you first open Incognito mode, you'll see a brief outline telling you that Google Incognito doesn't actually protect you from very much at all-- I think it's safe to assume however that most people will ignore that warning.


It seems safe to say that what Incognito mode is protecting your from is anyone on your computer snooping around, checking up on sites you've been visiting. Effectively, this protects you from anyone you share a computer with finding out that you've been looking at private material online.


What isn't Incognito protecting you from?
Pretty much everything else.


Here's a small list of everything that can still record and store information about you and your web searches and browsing (according to Google itself):

• The websites you visit in Incognito mode can still record your visit and store information about you. Having said this, Google Incognito does rid you of any traces or cookies the site may leave on your computer, but everything you do on the site is still known to them.
• Anything you download can still store informationa about you, and malware can still infiltrate your computer.
• Your ISP can still store information about your web browsing. Information that they can hand over, as we have learned in tutorials, to any Government officials that ask for it.
• Following on from this, Government agencies can still store, and get information about you and your web browsing history.
• Finally, Incognito doesn't protect you from Google itself. If you sign into your Google account whilst using Incognito mode, from then on Google will store all of your searches and webpages visited.

So, while Google Incognito might keep you safe from anyone else with access to your computer finding out about the sites you've been visiting, it actually doesn't keep you safe from anyone looking to gain and store information about you or your web browsing history.


It seems those "surprises" you might be planning in Incognito aren't that secret after all.