Rabidgremlin's
Soapbox

Google has just updated its advertising system to do “behavioral targeting”, in essence they track you as you move around the web and display ads that are targeted towards you based on what the perceive are your interests.

For instance if you visit a bunch of sports related sites then Google will determine that you are into sports and serve up sports related ads to you.

This is all done using tracking cookies and is built around the Doubleclick tracking infrastructure.

Google have also asked anyone who displays Google ads on their to update their privacy policy information. Since I display Google ads on this blog  (and make 0 dollars to be honest, why don’t you click on some of the ads?) here is my updated privacy policy:

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

You are warned :)

More importantly what if you don’t want to be tracked ?

Well Google has two pages for you. The first lets you opt-out of the tracking system and the second lets you adjust your Google Ads preferences.

The preferences page is a particularly interesting, in that it shows you the “interest” areas that Google has derived based on your surfing habits. You can also manually add interest areas if you want!

My advice however is to just use a browser add-on such as Adblock Plus for Firefox and you will never have to worry about seeing those ads ever again (you will however disable the blocker for rabidgremlin.com, won’t you? )

I just sat down and watched the kutiman thru-you youtube mashups. They are fantastic.

What the guy has done, is find various youtube clips of people singing or playing instruments and edited them together to make full blown songs. It must have taken ages.

I’ve put together a play list of all the tracks but here are my favorites:

Apparently a smallish asteroid just had a near miss with Earth. 2009 DD45 passed by at 63000km which is well inside the Moons orbit.

It was realitively small, so if it hit, it would have only (only!) done the same amount of damage as a single nuke.

I suppose the worrying thing for me is that it was only found 3 days ago ! If it was going to hit us, 3 days isn’t really much time to do anything. What happened to all that near earth tracking stuff that everyone was working on a few years ago ?

One can only hope that it wasn’t noticed earlier because it was so tiny and that a bigger one would be found earlier.

We really really need to get off this planet ASAP !

mPass for the iPhone is now available. If you are a lucky iPhone owner then you can download the application here or visit the AppStore and search for “mPass”

For those of you who are iPhone-impaired (like me), here are some screen shots:

I stumbled across a flash game called Auditorium last night. It is an awesome game, combining physics, particles and music to make an addictive puzzle game.

The graphics are fantastic, each completed level looks like a living bit of abstract art. The first few levels (called acts) are available for free. I’m really tempted to shell out the $10 to get access to all 15 acts (about 70 levels).

Click here to play or click here for more info on the game play

Looks like Section92 may be delayed !!!

In a surprise announcement this afternoon, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson says the government will delay the implementation of the controversial Section 92a of the amended copyright law.

See here for more info….

Could be in response to a leaked letter that shows just how RIANZ would like things to be, which is pretty far from where the current draft code of practice is at.

[Update]: Prime Minister John Keys has announced a delay until March 27. See here for more…

In the parliament debate, National’s Christopher Finlayson explains their reasoning for reinstating Section 92A:

Christopher Finlayson: … The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. We support what is being done there. Essentially, it is putting back into place what had been there before the bill went to the select committee.

So basically MONEY, MONEY, MONEY…Read more on this sad and sordid tale here.

Interesting (but brief) video of Labour and National on section 92a during a Q&A session.

Basically National blames Labour for passing the law (even though they supported it) and saw they will watch how it works… Not a particularly useful response.

Cartoons by Rod Emmerson, Mike Moreu and  Dylan Horrock on Section 92a

Actually I suspect I just broke some copyright laws by posting these images here ;)

Oh so much prettier then the G1 and has a virtual keyboard to boot. Those who have played with it seem to love it.

I want one and it looks like I’ll be able to get one since Vodafone will be releasing them here in New Zealand!

Joy joy joy…