Periodically, I find that a week comes along in which a ton of important stuff on and for the web comes to a boil all at once. This is one of those weeks. Here are just some of the things that I am looking atThe Release of Office 2010 and the fight between hybrid mode (desktop + web) versus online only Facebook’s extraordinarily complex privacy settings and its all-hands meeting to address the issue at the same time as the small alternative Diaspora project gets big time press and becomes a b...

Periodically, I find that a week comes along in which a ton of important stuff on and for the web comes to a boil all at once. This is one of those weeks. Here are just some of the things that I am looking atThe Release of Office 2010 and the fight between hybrid mode (desktop + web) versus online only Facebook’s extraordinarily complex privacy settings and its all-hands meeting to address the issue at the same time as the small alternative Diaspora project gets big time press and becomes a b...

I have written about privacy on this blog several times before. This week the topic seems to be front and center again with Eric Schmidt stating in a CNBC interview that “[i]f you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” and Facebook introducing new privacy settings, which default to sharing with everyone. I love how this topic keeps coming around and believe it will continue to do so for a long time. The reason is that the persona...

I have written about privacy on this blog several times before. This week the topic seems to be front and center again with Eric Schmidt stating in a CNBC interview that “[i]f you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” and Facebook introducing new privacy settings, which default to sharing with everyone. I love how this topic keeps coming around and believe it will continue to do so for a long time. The reason is that the persona...

About a year ago, I wrote a post with the same title, except that it ended in a question mark. Since then I have become convinced that solving the problem of our ever growing data trails will require a reshaping of what we mean by and expect from the idea of privacy. Two things happened this week that brought this issue back to mind:On Monday in our partners meeting we got to talking about EZ Pass and how it creates a trail of a car’s movement (and by implication people movement). We talked b...

About a year ago, I wrote a post with the same title, except that it ended in a question mark. Since then I have become convinced that solving the problem of our ever growing data trails will require a reshaping of what we mean by and expect from the idea of privacy. Two things happened this week that brought this issue back to mind:On Monday in our partners meeting we got to talking about EZ Pass and how it creates a trail of a car’s movement (and by implication people movement). We talked b...

Yesterday, I met with someone launching an exchange for privately held companies . The idea is to have a marketplace that is somewhere between the inefficient one-off negotiation of secondary sales on one end and going public on the other. Pretty quickly our discussion turned to the disclosure of information about these private companies. One of the reasons given for being a private is so as to not have to disclose a lot of information to others (including potential competitors). So how do yo...

Yesterday, I met with someone launching an exchange for privately held companies . The idea is to have a marketplace that is somewhere between the inefficient one-off negotiation of secondary sales on one end and going public on the other. Pretty quickly our discussion turned to the disclosure of information about these private companies. One of the reasons given for being a private is so as to not have to disclose a lot of information to others (including potential competitors). So how do yo...

We have just had one of the periodic waves of articles and blog posts about privacy, touched off by news about Phorm. The typical concern, which was invoked by Tim Berners-Lee, runs something like this: You start reading a lot online about cancer and suddenly find that your health insurance rate goes up or is not renewed. The proposed solution to this problem, is to more clearly give the ownership of private information such as one’s clickstream to the individual. Much as a I like the basic n...

We have just had one of the periodic waves of articles and blog posts about privacy, touched off by news about Phorm. The typical concern, which was invoked by Tim Berners-Lee, runs something like this: You start reading a lot online about cancer and suddenly find that your health insurance rate goes up or is not renewed. The proposed solution to this problem, is to more clearly give the ownership of private information such as one’s clickstream to the individual. Much as a I like the basic n...