webrampage

Yeah well I was just going through Gmail’s TOS and I found something fishy. Something not so friendly. Something that freaked me out.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

I’m not a lawyer, but what I understood after reading this a few times is that you basically give Google the permission to mess with your emails. They can do whatever they want. No privacy! I don’t know what else to say. I feel like Google’s little bitch.

I knew that Google had a lot of privacy issues, but woah… this is like taking it to the next level. I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I never thought they would have this in their TOS. Smart corporate bastards! Now we can’t take any legal actions. They’ll just say that we agreed to it.

This reminds me of the rumours about Google thinking of displaying people’s emails in their search results because they thought it could help other people (for some weird reason). I hope Google doesn’t do that. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it.

The thing that I pointed out in Gmail’s TOS was the same issue with Google Chrome’s TOS. There was a lot of complaining and warnings about it. People were fucking pissed. They wouldn’t even download Chrome because of that. Google came out and told us that it was a mistake. I’ll just quote what Gizmodo said, “Google knew it was in there and hoped it would slide.”

And you know what? The TOS for Gmail is actually the TOS for Google. They use the same thing for all their shit. So, doesn’t that mean we’re completely fucked? They just know way too much stuff about us and now they can do whatever they want with those info. Kinda creepy since Google isn’t as innocent as it pretends to be.

Well I don’t know what you guys are thinking, but I’ll stop using Gmail. Well actually I don’t really use Gmail anymore. I just use it to chat with a few people who doesn’t use Live Messenger (aka MSN). But, I would really appreciate if you shared how you feel about this and what you’ll be doing.

Uh yeah… we have a problem, IE team. Its not really that big of a problem. But, its gonna be huge one pretty soon. Actually you know what? Its already a big fucking issue!

The problem is related to Internet Explorer, of course. Wait a minute, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t find a big ass exploit in IE7 that will allow me to reach my goal of world domination (somehow). Well its about IE6.

I’ll give you a little history lesson. IE6 is a browser from Microsoft which came out before IE7. (Pretty obvious.) IE6 came out in 2001. Its 2008 right now, so its been 7 years since IE6 was first released. Pretty ancient, huh? Well the thing that bothers me is that why the fuck is 25% of the market share using IE6?

Like WTF? IE 7 came out in 2006. Two years! Two fucking years and you still have 25% of the people using the old ass IE 6? Fuck me! 25%! Something is seriously wrong. I can’t even believe that people didn’t get their browsers updated in 7 years.

When we make a site we need to mess around to get it to work with IE6. IE8 is about come out and I wonder if that means a pretty big fraction of IE7 users won’t update to IE8? And then we’ll have to make sure our sites work in all three versions of IE? Oh crap!

That’s not the only problem. Its could also be a potential security issue and why let those people live in the past? Imagine someone leading his/her life without knowing there’s such a thing called a microwave oven. Plus why work on newer version if a significant number of your users are still using the antique version? IE team doesn’t seem to give a shit about this.

The IE team has a lot to learn from the Windows people. They should have done the things they did. Like how they put up a message that pops up every day and says “bitch activate your copy of Vista!”. That would have totally worked. Or just automatically upgrade it for them. You need to make it really easy and simple. You need to push people to do it!

Just because IE is the most popular browser doesn’t mean you give little or no effort at spreading the word about the latest version. I wonder if IE6 users even heard of IE7. Like seriously, when Microsoft offers a new service or product all they do is talk about it on their stupid newsletter which no one actually reads. Spend some money! But, don’t spend 10 years’ marketing budget on Jerry Seinfeld!

Microsoft you have an advantage. Windows! 91% market share! The best place to advertise. Just put up a nice little message that will pop up on people’s desktop whenever there’s a new update, news or other stuff. The simplest solutions are the best solutions.

Well IE team do whatever you need to do, but get those damn people updated. Please no more IE6 after 2008! This problem is going to be a huge pain in the ass within a few years. And you guys (the readers) have a role to play too. You need to tweet, plurk or spread the word about this problem. Like just in case the people from Microsoft doesn’t read WebRampage for some weird reason.

Oh and let me know if you think they can manage to get most of the people upgraded and if not, what problems would we face?

People have been talking about this thing called Twitter “follow spam“. So, what is this thing? And are we defining it correctly? Today I’ll talk a bit about it.

Follow spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you’re actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention, get views of your profile (and possibly clicks on URLs therein), or (ideally) to get followed back.

That’s what the people at Twitter wrote on their blog. Well that explains what “follow spam” is. You just follow tons of people, so that they add you back and/or click on the link on your profile. Now I would agree that this is pretty annoying. But, not everyone is trying to “spam”.

On rare occasions we may see a person who is mass following and actually cares about every tweet.

See Twitter is also saying that. Yesterday, an old lady was bitching at me and was accusing me of spamming Twitter. Hmm how so? She said that I added a “zillion” people on Twitter, so that they click the link on my profile.

Okay I’m actually interested in people’s tweets. I reply to a lot of them and have like a small conversation. I agree that I added a bunch of people on Twitter. But, that wasn’t “follow spam”. Now of course, I wanted them to follow me back. What’s the point of tweeting if only a few people are following you?

Did I add random people? No. I added people who were interested in tech & web. Most of the people I added were TechCrunch’s followers. Did I start spamming them with links to my site? No. I made like 2 or 3 tweets about my sites. 2 or 3 out of 171 tweets? Is that really spamming (or huge self-promotion)?

Is Obama spamming Twitter? He is following 64K people and he’s got about 61K followers. I’m not sure how he managed to add 64K people, but I don’t think he wants to spam. He just wants to keep more people updated.

I don’t agree with the current definition of follow spam. It should be when you follow thousands of people (who you’re not interested in) and want them to follow you back. And you spam them with your links! Maybe this would define follow spam a bit better.

I know that there are lots of spammers on Twitter. I mean the REAL spammers. But, not everyone is a spammer! So, What do you think? Do you think my way to define it is better? And what about popular bloggers who keep posting links to every single one of their posts? What about Obama?