I’m A Super.com

New and pointless tool: Wikipedia edits.

Honest I have no idea why I wrote this 1 line application. But I have to admit, it’s pretty fun looking at the edits your work’s IP address had made to the wikipedia. Pretty revealing, to say the least.

Link: http://www.imasuper.com/minitools/wikipediaedits.cfm

In case you don’t get what it does: It grabs your IP address and shows you all the changes that IP has made to the wikipedia. Some of them may be yours… but if you’re on a public IP such as work or school, you’re likely to see some interesting contributions, depending on the type of people you work with.

Interesting story:

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashgof.htm

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials “track sickness”.

 ”Flu Trends” uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: “GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week.”

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others.

Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: “One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used… as early warning signal for flu activity.”

Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE’s chief executive vows: “From a technological perspective, it is the beginning.”

Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: “I think we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible with collective intelligence.”

That’s a great idea. Let’s take “anonymized” search data from a corporation notorious for being unclear and imprecise about it’s privacy and data-retention policies and let’s give it to a government agency.

See the Flu Trends yourself: http://www.google.org/flutrends/

Now before people start crying how about how I’m over-dramatic and a google hater, it’s important you understand my real concerns. My primary concerns are this:

• Google is NOT transparent and upfront about it’s privacy policies

They don’t spell out their retention time length, and even when other nations have forced them to, they set new retention times which are still unreasonably long.

• Google’s Motto is Do No Evil but sometimes, it’s out of their control

Take for example the battle between Google, and Viacom. Google, who has a tendancy to maintain all data (Gmail, Search terms, queries, maps, locations) indefinitely, was Sued by Viacom over copyright infringement in regards to YouTube videos. Google was forced to hand over logs and records indicating all IP addresses/users/persons who had ever viewed youtube videos, and which videos they viewed.

Recently, Viacom and Google came to an agreement in which they would no longer provide ‘personally identifiable’ information in the logs, but the records handed over would still contain unique identifiers, in the event Viacom was “forced to determine individualized fault“.

I pick on Google because they have not yet chosen to put it’s users interests first. If they did, they wouldn’t log everything, forever, without disclosing how long that might be. Because the truth is, no matter how “Unevil” they try to be, sometimes it’s just not up to them. If the courts can force them to turn over information for simple copyright infringment of television shows, what can more powerful government entities and legal battles force Google to turn over?

If you could ask a Presidential candidate just one question, what would it be?

We’ll even go so far as to live in a fairy-tale for this post, and let’s pretend they have to answer it in a reasonably direct manner, with no talking points or off-topic banter. In real life, this is rarely the case, but for the sake of “What If’s” lets play that game.

After much thought, I’ve decided I want my question to reflect on their character, as well as their intentions. After all, I want my one question to forcibly reveal as much about a political candidate as it possibly can, right?

It has to be a question that will provide you something you can’t often get anywhere else. After all, there is talking-point after talking-point on the Candidate websites, in press releases and other distributed political junk. Their “positions” are usually easy to determine, even if they change from time to time :).But if we have just one question, we’d better make it an exceptionally worth-while and revealing question. Something like “What are your plans for the economy” would simply be a waste of a rare opportunity.

And then it hit me. Since all the major, and even minor but relevant candidates running are generally  members of the Senate or Congress, I realized exactly what it was I wanted to know about these candidates.

It’s these Senators and Congressmen that are telling me time and time again that if elected, they can truly change my country for the better. My one question?

As a Senator/Congressman, why do you think you need to be elected President of the United States in order to make a difference?

Presidents don’t pass legislation. Presidents don’t typically author legislation. The Senators and Congressmen of our nation are the best politically positioned people to make a difference in the way our government operates, and the direction in which our country goes. Why does Barack Obama, John McCain, Clinton, Huckabee, and even my often-favorite Ron Paul believe that being president will finally empower them to once and for all make a difference in the nation? Are they telling me that as the authors and approver’s of our nations legislation, they’re simply powerless against a president who’s veto can be overthrown by the very position they hold?

I wish I could ask all the candidates that question. Their answer would be telling of their character, thought process, and intentions for the Presidency of my country.

What would your question be?

This post is placed before you in an unbiased and undetermined manner. Take from it what you will.

Long-Ago Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”

Thoughts?

Google is finally collecting $$$ from end-users.

Picasa Web Albums and Gmail users can now upgrade their google accounts to add more storage. It looks like the Purchase Additional Storage Option is actually somewhat expensive. Especially considering what they give away for free.

Prices are as follows:

• 10 GB ($20.00 per year)
• 40 GB ($75.00 per year)
• 150 GB ($250.00 per year)
• 400 GB ($500.00 per year)

https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=65431

The price actually seems a little unreasonable. At best, it’s around $1.25 per GB/Year and at worst it’s $2.00 GB/Year. That’s compared with a 1 TB Hitachi hard drive at 129.99, or around $0.12 per GB. And most hard drives have a 3 Year warranty these days.

People choosing to upgrade their account will see that their Picasa Web Albums and Gmail Storage space now simply support more. You can’t provision space between the accounts. If your Web Albums uses all the space, you can’t set some aside for your GMail account, or vice versa.

This brings about an interesting change in Google’s business model, which in the past has been an effort to make money from advertisers, and not having to collect money from end users.

This isn’t a big deal right now. They already give you 7 GB’s, but What will Google be doing next? You have to please those new shareholders some how.

Comments welcome.