Andrey Vystavkin Blog

Recently, Google CEO Erick Schmidt gave interview on privacy of Google users. Here’s the quote:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

Global and Russian internet communities got nuts about this news, especially when Google published their User Dashboard service. Users got amazed by how much information Google is keeping and tracking about their users. Some of people straight away started crying about moving all their searching activities to Bing and switching from Google Apps to other alternatives. But, hold on, let’s take a closer look!

What’s Patriot act?

The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States (c) Wikipedia

As any US based company Google either Yahoo, of Bing(aka Microsoft) will never deny this Act. And by any call from “upstairs”, any US company will provide all the information about the user, no matter how strict their privacy policy is. Do you really have something “interesting” for US National Security Agencies to show? Or, you’re worrying about this?

If you don’t like the privacies user agreements that US based companies are offering – you can always switch to your native search engine (i.e. Yandex for Russians), but – I doubt that the company would refuse providing private information of the user by the request of National Agencies from your country – it’s 21th century, and we kinda “fighting the same enemy together”, in other words – if you information has anything violating National security – you’re going to get caught anyway – from this side of the boarder, or the other one.

How do we get data about customers?

As any company whatever it is, has the customer database, whatever you search, watch, read, download. All those “marketing” guys doing research on consumer behavior, and product marketing need the trends to prove that the company “needs” given product they’re about to launch. Banks do the same thing with department stores: they know more then you expect. The whole goal of it: give the customer what he wants! If you’re afraid of searching for something ridiculous official, you can always cover yourself with bunch of proxies – and the data will be kept there, not in Google/Bing/etc.

So, what to use?

Anything you like! No matter what you’re going to use, the twist that “everybody knows that you’re not a dog in the Internet” has come, unless you’re really paranoid about your private searching (hiding the fact that you’re googling how to make an apple pie in microwave!).

If you’re really afraid about the fact that you’ve been searching for something completely out of range/law – then you should really think that “you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”…

Heap Google, patriot act, privacy policy

So far, we have Android SDK at Google Code page and already some integration Plug-ins for Eclipse. An interface is nice and simple.CrunchGear also some videos on the architecture structure of Androids’ internals. How soon will iPhone OS X be replaced by Android, and will it be better then Mac mobile solution?..*/me will wait*

Gadgets, Google Android, Google, phones, platforms

It’s time when I have to move from Del.icio.us and Google Bookmarks. Twitter Atom subscription gives quite good opportunity of tracking all the interesting things caught from Twitter on daily basis. A combination of GoogleReader and Twitter gives a nice service with:

• Tags and categories can be made in GReader.
• Accessing your bookmarks from phone by following Twitter updates.
• Encapsulated Google Search in GReader won’t give a chance to miss any information once it was tracked through RSS/Atom feeds.
• You can update your twits from phone/IM: fast and easy and clicking less.

Gadgets, Links Google, Thoughts, Twitter, Web

The polemics on the topic of Microsoft’s death reached its more less structured level even though in many different portals like Slashdot, Techmeme etc. this subject has been discussed in any possible way, but let’s get a bit detailed about it.

Paul Graham in his article says that:

When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous than they seemed.I’d guess they were dead by 2005.

So, how dead is Microsoft? Giving his opinion, Duncan Riley wrote an article in 901am blog:

Micorsoft is alive and mostly well. Has it clearly failed in a range of endevours? absolutely, Microsoft’s internet strategy sucks and most people will take that for a given. Zune? do most people even know what a Zune is? probably not. Was the Vista development program a shambles? yes.

Main reasons, Paul mentioned in the post were:

• Google killed Microsoft
• Ajax
• Broadband Internet
• Apple

So lets check it out step-by-step.

Google, Ajax and dead Microsoft

Microsoft didn’t pose itself as leading web company, and the rise of Google killed not only Microsoft with its msn.com search engine, Google became the leading search engine on the Web, and it was one of the first companies pushing the idea of Web applications and promoting Ajax. Definitely, Web 2.0 bubble moved desktop apps development in the shade, giving more opportunities for the developers to launch their start-up companies. At some point, it’s easier to create a web application with less OS or hardware dependencies. Everything is based on the Web standards and your own Broadband. Since I’ve mentioned Ajax here, the XMLHttpRequests was originally implemented by Microsoft, but only now they got involved in Ajax community.

Apple Products vs. Microsoft

Apple. What’s about Mac computers? Or all the services Apple Inc. produces. Yesterday, Apple Store declared that they’ve sold the 100 millionth iPod. Of course, it’s an impressive number for this market, where iPod dominates without no doubts, and the Zune mp3 player couldn’t equally compete with Apple’s product. For sure, it’s hard to produce devices which do more less the same things and differ at few dozen dollars and the company label at the back. The simplicity of the device was the key of success for iPod.

Talking about OS X killing Windows – you must be kidding me! According to the stats, it’s hard to say that Mac really made Microsoft worrying about OS domination on the market:

It would be more correct to say, that other Operating Systems got more attention because of overestimated expectations for Windows Vista and the increase of antitrust policy in the EU about Microsoft. Other operating systems just increased their market share, like .Nix based Os, BSD based OS X, at the same way not counting the number of PC’s which has two or more OS installed.

Broadband and Web development mess

It’s really hard to believe that strategic management of Microsoft couldn’t expect the growth of Internet Broadband. But, I assume that focusing on the OS development they’ve underestimated it, and lost the Web Browser market with IE 6.x, which they’re trying to get back with the Internet Explorer 7. Web is all about standards and compatibility, which Microsoft couldn’t admit with IE 6. Always coming up with alternative solutions like ASP versus Perl/PHP, or ISS vs. Apache servers, they were continuously cleaving the Web, while they could have got more income on implementing some support services for existing Web development solutions in my opinion.

Going back to the main question of Microsoft’s death, you can see that they aren’t so true. Microsoft has a huge financial potential and ability of winning back lost positions at the market, but it will be harder year after year.

Blogging Apple, Development, Google, Markets, Microsoft, News, OS

May be it’ll sound a bit weird but at the moment, the globe, and usual hybrid geopolitic map of Cyprus contains more information than Google version of Cyprus. At least it maps where Nicosia, Limassol, Paphos and the other cities are.
It seems that no one from the tourist business valued the power of Google mapping system, which would give a great promotion of Cyprus proprietary companies, or tourist environment. If you want to sell a house, or offer the hotel for summer accommodation – use Google Maps, to identify the location of it.
Up to now, more detailed information about Cyprus is in standalone Google Earth client, but concerning a web version of Google Maps – it suffers tones of info.

Cyprus, Gadgets, Google Cyprus, Google, Interests, IT

Is there anybody who still denies the computerization of the world? The latest results from brandchannel.com proved that those people are the minority, since first positions of the brand’s research are mostly taken by computer companies or the ones which are related to IT market.

As we can see the breakthroughs of Apple Inc. about moving to Intel based processors and San Francisco conference where Steve Jobs released iPhone moved Apple on the leading positions in the society. Youtube which was bought by 1.6 billion dollars and remains the main video exchange source on the Net. Open encyclopaedia Wikipedia won the sympathies of the public. Google? It’s useless to talk about this giant since every blogger ,at least once, wrote about this company or the services they provide.

Blogging, Google Apple, Google, IT, News, Wikipedia, YouTube