[LINK] Moses: 'How the internet became a closed shop'

[Rick Welykochy]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> At 09:20 AM 22/12/2012, Rick Welykochy wrote:
>
>> I took the "leave google behind" idea quite seriously back in
>> March 2012 when they changed their UA to blanket and interoperate
>> amongst all their products. I've hardly noticed the change.
>
> Ditto. Although I do relent and use Google search (without signing
> in) from time to time. Some of the refined search tools are useful
> and aren't available in Startpage/Ixquick.

I find yahoo.co.uk (which is offered up as an alternative search engine
by my browser) to be quite good.


> You mention you have clients who use Google Docs. Do you have any
> advice as to how to do this without selling your soul? Do you have to
> login under your own account to get the client's docs?

I have a number of browsers. Anything google related is relegated to
Safari (cough cough) which I do not use for anything else, really.
And yup, I had to get a google account to use Docs. Oh, I use same
browser for Facebook when I absolutely have no other way of contacting
someone.

Facebook is particularly nasty w.r.t. privacy. I went to a TV site in
Denver, one I had never visited before. In the comment section of the
article I was reading appears my Facebook name and an offer to login
to submit a comment. I reckon Facebook planted a web beacon on the TV
site page which then fetched my Facebook cookie and returned some
"private" info back to the TV web site. Why doesn't somebody do
something!!

And we all know about google analytics and the ability for them to
track our journey through the web.

So best to have a spare browser that knows little if anything about you,
for those "special" moments on the web.


> I've also weaned myself from MS Office. When I got my new laptop, I
> didn't buy a copy of the Office Suite, and thought I'd see how I got
> along with Open Office. Works fine. It doesn't have as many extras,
> like the full range of templates, but I can live without them. I have
> found that sometimes .docx, although they do open, don't keep proper
> formatting. Sometimes layers get out of whack and I have to ask
> students to resubmit in some alternative. It's a lesson for them to
> be aware of the effect of the receiver's display options.

Exactly my problem with the client who uses Docs. They submit .docx (i.e.
the corrupt MS OOXML format) files to me and Open Office sometimes does
a crap job with it.

Suggestion: advise students that the accepted exchange format is
Office 97. That is what I do. At least that way, everyone can read
the word and excel documents, including OO. It is as easy as
"Save As...". Ironic, isn't it, that different versions of MS's own
office suite sometimes cannot handle their own document formats. Or
sad. Or pathetic.

Such is the continuing problem with proprietary formats. Similar effect
to the "enhancements" MS has made to HTML in the past, ones that only
worked properly in a couple of old versions of IE.

Refering back to the article, I don't think the Internet has become
a closed shop at all. Rather, if your use and view of the Internet is
through a few social networking sites and you rely on apps from
Google et al, then yes, you are living in a crippled appliance universe.

If you are tech savvy and perhaps make your living from digital technology,
the Internet is an incredibly diverse and useful tool for your profession.
Certainly not a closed shop.

Recall that most users cannot distinguish their operating system from
a web browser from an email client. When I try to explain just what
a client is (on the net), they glaze over and go back to surfing the
web with their operating system.

Try to explain what Link (or any list) is to a twenty something. If
it ain't Facebook or Twitter, they are neither interested nor do they
care. Yesterday, a forty-something friend messaged me on Facebook
because an email was "too much trouble." (!)


cheers
rick






-- 
------------------------------------
Rick Welykochy || Vitendo Consulting


The future ain't what it used to be.
      -- Yogi Berra