The world didn’t end while I was on holiday, and neither did my columns. First, I grabbed a review unit — the sweet little Nokia Booklet 3G I had lying around — to take along. Security reasons, you understand. I had cleaned it up thoroughly in preparation for its return to Nokia, so imagine my surprise when I fired it up and it alerted me of a new email. That prompted this column on ITWeb. I always said Google could very easily be evil.

While I was away, I first wrote a column in response to the UK parliamentary whitewash of the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit email leak. However, the noise around Eugene Terre’blanche and Julius Malema prompted its delay, in favour of this: While FIFA takes over, we fight. A week later, upon my return, Anatomy of a whitewash found its way online.

I have some more very juicy bits lined up about FIFA. It doesn’t get any prettier as we count down to the World Cup. I’ll keep you posted.

During my research for my columns of this week and last week about the leak at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, published at The Daily Maverick, I came across some curiousness involving Google. Here’s the full story, as published on ITWeb.

The rot has begun. Scarcely has Microsoft bought its slice of Facebook (over which I left), than advertising is starting to appear. Right there in the news stream; a large, glaring advertisement. This is what it looks like:

A few things are notable. Unlike the Facebook Flyers, which appear on the left-hand-side, very visible but without wasting space needed for the news stream, and unlike Google-style text ads, which are non-intrusive and take up little space, this advertisement appears slap bang in the news stream, where interesting updates from friends vie for screen real-estate even on a very large screen. I’d guess on a typical notebook screen or a mobile device it would take up a good proportion of the visible screen space.

It is disguised as a real update, as if a friend just posted some new photos. That’s devious and offensive. Magazines (credible magazines, at least), decline advertisements that attempt to appear like regular editorial, since this hurts the integrity of the publication. I were in charge of Facebook advertising, an advert that looks like a legitimate update would be declined.

It appears to be completely untargeted. Credit reports comprise one of the biggest categories of online spam. What next? Pump-and-dump share schemes? Invitations from hot babes looking for money, honey?

It is true that some other social networks — including Orkut in particular — suffer from spam problems, especially in group discussion forums. This is something they will have to combat if they intend capitalising on the discontent created by Microsoft/Facebook deal. But at least they don’t (as far as I’m aware) condone the spam. At least they don’t place the spam themselves, where it clogs up an already-cluttered news stream.

In all ways, this particular Facebook advertisement is offensive and sends a clear message of where Facebook is going: more clutter, more noise, less signal, less usefulness. It lacks even the minimal redeeming quality — unintentional humour about Yahoo! spam filtering — of this inviting offer I recently received:

Should have guessed, really. It’s not like Google does anything on our side of the network. The long-awaited Gphone is not a device, but another open application platform. Hot on the heels of the OpenSocial announcement, it has launched Android, backed by the Open Handset Alliance. This group includes big Windows Mobile customers, such as HTC, whereas Google’s strategy is to provide access to information independent of device or platform.

Here’s an explanation:

Sheesh, I’ve seen the dot com bubble come and go, but I’m starting to buy the company’s valuation. After all, it’s P:EG ratio is only 1.33, and that makes the share a buy…

Update: The original video, which had been linked to from Google’s official blog, was removed by the user and replaced with the one you see now.

Marc Andreessen hasn’t sat on his laurels after Mosaic/Netscape and now runs Ning, a place where anyone can create their own social network. He explains, without resorting to (much) technical jargon, the concept behind Google’s OpenSocial API. It’s well worth a read, even if you’re wedded to closed, proprietary platforms (read: Facebook), but especially if, like me, you aren’t.

Since leaving Facebook (the story of which is told here, here, here and here) I’ve been waiting with some anticipation for news of Google’s plans for social networking. Paul Jacobson has found some news on the subject. Says he:

As I understand this plan, Google is releasing a bunch of APIs, probably initially focussed on Orkut, to be rolled out across most, if not all, of Google’s properties. This would result in a kind of social network/interactive layer over these sites and services. Developers would be able to develop apps based on these APIs, presumably for distribution across the Google network and use on Google’s sites.

… I think this is going to be a new beginning for a new paradigm of the social web.

Sounds promising. Very promising.

I promised I’d leave Facebook if it did a deal with Microsoft. I said I’d make good on this promise.

Some impatient souls (or should I say Facebook Fanboys) weren’t even prepared to grant me a few days to tie up loose ends and inform friends and group members, but insisted that I delete my Facebook account instantly.

This update is for them. My account is now gone. To be accurate, it is available for perusal only by Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft.

I can be found on Orkut, LinkedIn and Plaxo Pulse. I’ve never liked the idea of using more than one social network site, however, so eventually I’ll choose. I quite like the update stream and look-and-feel of Plaxo, but in the end I’ll probably settle on Orkut. Especially since it’s due for a re-launch and overhaul starting next week. I can’t wait.

It’s been a good four months. I watched the South Africa network on Facebook grow from 100,000 to 400,000 members, and missed Miss South Carolina by minutes. Maybe she is on Orkut. That’s where I’m going.

Adieu, Facebook. I never was sure about the propriety of the Facebook feature that copied your blog posts as notes. But then, I never was sure about the propriety of poking random people either, or giving them growing gifts.

If the notes annoyed you, my apologies. If you enjoyed them, thanks. Soon, however, they’ll be no more. If you kept track of these posts via Facebook, you’ll have to subscribe to my RSS feed instead, or become a guinea-pig for the brand new e-mail subscription service on your right. (If it doesn’t work as expected, please do let me know.)

Microsoft is buying a teensy sliver of Facebook for a whole lotta dough, with the intention of advertising at me. Personally. It thinks it paid $300 for that right, but I’m not up for that. The deal is all over the news, and as usual, The Register has by far the best headline and funniest take on it.Shortly after I blogged about the impending deal, in which I explained my deep misgivings about the prospect of doing business with a company whose products, privacy policies and security record I don’t particularly like, and whose online services I’ve long vowed never to use again, I made a public promise. If Microsoft buys a stake in Facebook, I’m leaving.

I’m not saying that Google is any less of a privacy risk, but I sold my soul to them a long time ago, and to date, it hasn’t burnt me. There’s no turning back now, and I have no spare soul to sell to Microsoft. Call it a risk exposure minimisation strategy. Orkut was all the rage in 2004, when I last tried it, but it was a dog. It’s been groomed a little since, had its nails clipped and stuff, but still seems to enjoy some canine capriciousness. I’ll get used to it. Someone, somewhere in the Googleplex, must be paying just a little attention to Orkut, surely?

I’d better get used to it. Because in a few days, soon as I’ve informed everyone, handed over the groups I manage, and backed up whatever data I have on there, I’ll never point my browser at facebook.com again. Maybe eating the cookie will make me feel better.

Adieu, Facebook.

Update: I’m now on Orkut. Apparently, it’s up for a relaunch on 5 November, so I’m looking forward to see what the Googledroids have conjured up. If you’re there too, you can find my profile here.

There’s an interesting battle brewing that may decide the fate of Facebook, the hugely popular social networking site. The country network of which I’m a member, South Africa, has tripled in size to 300 000 in just three months. I didn’t know there were that many internet connections over here.

However, there’s a dark cloud on the horizon. A very dark cloud. Microsoft is, according to the Wall Street Journal, in talks to buy a stake in the startup:

Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.

But Microsoft must first outgun Google, which has also expressed strong interest in a Facebook stake, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft’s Passport signon technology (now rebranded as Live ID) has proved to be wide open to abuse, and not only by external miscreants. When Microsoft bought Hotmail almost ten years ago, the webmail pioneer turned into a sluggish performer and a hotbed of spam. As this page documents, Microsoft itself had for years been both negligent and willfully complicit in some of the abuse. On one occasion it changed, without notification, all users’ preferences to share information with third parties, for example. On another, it tried to claim copyright on everything sent via Hotmail. It certainly has not been particularly respectful of users’ privacy, and has burned its trust relationship with its more savvy customers.

I’m sure Microsoft has tightened up its privacy policies by now. It’s appointed a Chief Privacy Officer and its PR machine makes all the right defensive noises. However, a 3 500 word policy can hide many secrets. My reading of its copyright notice suggests that it still claims an exceptionally broad licence to copy, use and sublicence anything you post on any Microsoft service, even if it is intended only for a private community.

So I vowed never to use any Microsoft-owned online service — MSN Messenger, Windows Live, Hotmail — ever again. Publications that required Passport Network registration were simply dropped from my reading list.

Facebook is already over-cluttered with applications. Some are useful, some cool, some annoying, and some just downright offensive. I don’t mean in the prurient sense; I mean in the spam hotbed sense. I usually decline to install them, but I accepted a fun one involving beer just yesterday. Contrary to explicit instructions not to, it invited a random selection of friends, some of which I really didn’t want invited. This kind of spamware can kill Facebook.

But not as quickly as Microsoft can. If Google buys Facebook, I’ll live with it. The Googleplex 0wnz me already, and I’m not even a heavy user of its services. However, it has yet to show the kind of negligence or nefarious activity that will compromise my trust. For now, the convenience of its online tools outweigh the very real privacy risks. But if Microsoft buys Facebook, I’m outta there like a shot. The Hotmail fiasco alone was enough for me to never trust Microsoft with private information of any sort again. Through negligence, incompetence and deliberate action, Microsoft has abused the trust of users too often in the past. Here’s hoping Facebook doesn’t become the latest victim.

Update: In good Facebook tradition, I’ve created a group: If Facebook sells to Microsoft, we’re leaving.

Having searched the planet to exhaustion, Google is aiming higher. It is sponsoring a $30 million Ansari X-Prize to the first privateer to land a robotic explorer on the moon. The goal is to prove that private space exploration is not only possible, but can be done cheaper and more efficiently than the government can do it. Recalling how proud I was to be human on that day in 2004 when SpaceShipOne won the first X-Prize for suborbital space flight, I’ll be following this attempt with a great deal of interest.

You’ll probably also be allowed onto Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s exclusive private aeroplane runway at NASA’s Moffett Field if you manage to get to the moon before the US government does, in six or more years, at a cost to the taxpayer of billions of dollars.

So hurry. And while you’re there, please take new photographs of the weird section (pictured here), which was last photographed by the Lunar Obiter back in the 1960s. Just to make sure that it really is Swiss cheese.

This just in from ZDNet:

British billionaire Richard Branson said on Wednesday he was hoping to trace missing adventurer Steve Fossett through a satellite mapping service offered by Google.

Branson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. he was worried that Fossett, who disappeared over the Nevada desert after taking off in a small plane late on Monday, had not activated the aircraft’s emergency tracking beacon.

“I’m talking with friends at Google about seeing whether we can look at satellite images over the last four days to see whether they can see which direction he might have been flying and whether they can see any disturbances anywhere that they can pin from space,” he said from Barcelona, Spain.

When I first saw the Google Trends graph comparing searches for different Linux distributions, I drew the same conclusion Duncan McLeod did in his post “Ubuntu winning the Linux wars.” The chart is certainly striking:

Problem is, search volume as a measure says nothing about why people might be searching for a term. It is quite possible, for example, that people search for Ubuntu because they’re having a lot of trouble with it. Maybe it breaks a lot. Maybe Red Hat or Fedora users are smarter. Maybe Novell SUSE users get better support. Perhaps users of other Linux distributions go to their community forums before hitting Google. Such alternative explanations cannot be made with any more certainty, but the Google Trends chart is of no help in deciding who is right.

It is also possible that multiple explanations are valid. Ubuntu might confuse a lot more people because it really is winning the Linux wars. Again, the Google Trends chart is of no help, but the DesktopLinux.com 2007 Desktop Linux Survey is:

Now the interesting part is the difference between the two charts: There’s no scale on the Google Trends chart, but the Ubuntu line ends at 5.7 times the height of the Suse line. I assume this correlates with 5.7 times as many searches against the respective terms. Yet in an actual survey, Ubuntu is only 1.4 times as popular as Suse. That leaves a lot of Google searches for Ubuntu unaccounted for merely by its popularity, suggesting that at least some other cause is at work here.

And that really is interesting, because when I came up with the possible alternative explanations, I didn’t believe them myself. I was just trying to be argumentative about what I thought was an interesting blog post. That just goes to show, first impressions and preconceived ideas can be dangerous when interpreting what statistics might mean.

Any other ideas? The stats are there. Speculate away.