Some people don't seem to worried about privacy as our (formerly private) information becomes more ubiquitous on the web. Personally, I find it kind of creepy. Even if you don't post on Facebook, have a blog or twitter account, I'll bet when you search your name you find more than you'd expect. If you don't, use one of the "find this person" sites and they'll come up with more than you want shared.
Two more entries in the where's my privacy folder:
First, the creepy one: Lifehacker reports on Creepy, which is, well, let me quote the website:
creepy is an application that allows you to gather geolocation related information about users from social networking platforms and image hosting services. The information is presented in a map inside the application where all the retrieved data is shown accompanied with relevant information (i.e. what was posted from that specific location) to provide context to the presentation.
Which means if you use social networking sites to "check-in" your location Creepy will tell us where you hang out, how much and when.
Creepy Stalks Twitter, Foursquare, and Flickr Users by Aggregating GPS Data
Then we have Google creating the app that will allow us to take your picture to find your information. It was only a matter of time before we could use the facial recognition software to identify you and the rest of the web to track your information down.
Google making app that would identify people's faces - CNN
Of course I'm happy and content because I don't have anything to hide - but shouldn't we start putting better privacy protections in place to start catching up with the technology?
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Google Maps Navigation (Beta) will now automatically route you around traffic, the Official Google Blog announced Monday. Because you've got better things to do than wait in traffic, they tell us.
My first thought on seeing this was, "I wonder what Garmin and Tom Tom think of this?"
From the blog post:
You don’t have to do anything to be routed around traffic; just start Navigation like you normally would, either from the Navigation app or from within Google Maps. Before today, Navigation would choose whichever route was fastest, without taking current traffic conditions into account. It would also generate additional alternate directions, such as the shortest route or one that uses highways instead of side roads. Starting today, our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates. That means that Navigation will automatically guide you along the best route given the current traffic conditions.
Not only can you save time and fuel, you’re making traffic better for everyone else by avoiding traffic jams. Keep in mind that we can’t guarantee that Navigation will be able to find a faster way, but it will always try to get you where you’re going as fast as possible.
You can begin routing around traffic with Google Maps Navigation for Android in North America and Europe where both Navigation and real-time traffic data are available.
Official Google Blog: You’ve got better things to do than wait in traffic
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