] There comes a time when a company gets so powerful, and
] the perceived potential to abuse that power so large,
] that public opinion begins to turn on it. True, Google
] has been one of the world's most valuable brands for
] several years, and there's no sign -- yet -- that the
] general public has cooled on it (even if Apple recently
] pushed Google to second-best brand). But we've noticed a
] growing dissatisfaction with Google in various niche
] constituencies over the past several months.

SiliconBeat: Is Opinion tide turning against Google?

] No matter how you look at it, AFP will lose this battle.
] It is inherently just an attempt to extort money out of
] Google. What AFP does not realize is how badly they have
] damaged their clients. Political Gateway is one of their
] clients and we have been devastated.
]
] Google decided to respond to the extortion and stupidity
] of the lawsuit by actually winning the battle.
] Google's response? They stopped syndicating the news
] from sites using AFP of which this site is one. Not only
] is our AFP news not syndicated, but our editorials and
] independent news feeds are also blacklisted. Any news
] posted after Tuesday morning at 3am cannot be found on
] Google anywhere. It is a matter of time before the other
] services that "grab" our news follow suit.

How AFP killed an Online News Site by Suing Google

] The Benjamin case is thought to be possibly the first
] internet-related case in which a defendant has settled
] publicly after making comments anonymously.
]
] Rosenblatt's Mr Smith said: "In September and October
] 2003, he may have thought he could say these things
] anonymously and would not have expected that in March
] 2005 it would end up costing him a substantial amount of
] money."

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Collins Stewart hunts down internet libeller

] Beginning with Quicken 2005 for Windows, QIF Data Import
] will no longer be available for most accounts.

I heard about this, but here's the page about it.

Summary: Quicken Interchange Format (QIF) has become the de facto
standard for presenting financial and billing records in a non-CSV
(Comma Separated Value) manner. Everyone reads and understands it;
GnuCash, MS Money, etc. It is trivial for a financial site to provide a "feed" of it for a given set of records.

Perhaps too trivial.

So Quicken is now promoting OFX (Open Financial Exchange). They claim to have supported it since Quicken 98, but apparently the uptake hasn't been what they had hoped. No one uses it. Expensive licensing, perhaps?

So Intuit took drastic measures as the dominant player in its field: first, Quicken 2005 and on no longer support QIF except for credit card records (strong lobby). Second, all users of 2002 and before versions (most years are non-essential upgrades) have to upgrade to 2005; all the online services will no longer work otherwise.

The whole point of a package like Quicken, these days, is the online functionality; you give it your online accounts, and it figures everything (stocks, cost basis, checking accounts, credit cards) out.

While I can sympathize with the folks at Intuit if QIF really was a kludge "over 10 years old and was designed for technical support purposes, it was not for transaction download". But this really sounds like a heavy handed attempt at reasserting market dominance.

Intuit: QIF Import Users Resource Center

] Why is this search different?
]
] This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web
] that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you
] find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps
] you find content published by authors that want you to
] share or reuse it, under certain conditions. Learn
] more...

Yahoo! Search

] From time to time we've invited guest bloggers to write
] on the Yahoo! Search blog. Today we have a post from
] Larry Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and
] well known expert on intellectual property law in the
] digital world.

Yahoo! Search blog: Larry Lessig on Searching Creative Commons

] "We have always been curious about why cardiovascular
] deaths can occur in the early hours of the morning, when
] people are peacefully sleeping," Somers said. The study,
] published in the March 24 issue of the New England
] Journal of Medicine , suggests that for people with sleep
] apnea, sleep can be far from a time of quiet rest.

So I meet with a sleep disorder doctor about this on Friday.

But, like my motive for being an Organ Donor (the rumor of
'do no resucitate"), maybe this isn't such an awful future to
be looming over me. Don't most people, if they care to die,
care to die in their sleep?

Forbes.com:

] The images above - exclusive to the Wooster site and
] provided by Banksy - are of Banksy installing four pieces
] in New York's most prestigious museums - The Brooklyn
] Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of
] Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History.
]
] Dressed as a British pensioner, over the last few days
] Banksy entered each of the galleries and attached one of
] his own works, complete with authorative name plaque and
] explanation.

Wooster Collective : Stickers / Posters / Graf / Culture Jamming

] A source near T-Mobile's high level security teams
] has informed Gizmodo that the carrier has given an
] informal ultimatum to Danger, the company that produces
] the hit Sidekick and Sidekick II. The problem isn't
] the device itself, but the security of the backend
] servers, which Danger also manages. If the security
] issues plaguing the platform are not fixed, says our
] source, T-Mobile intends to stop selling the Sidekick.

Unconfirmed: T-Mobile Gives Danger Security Deadline : Gizmodo

] Tags, or folksonomies are actually a lot simpler than
] much of the acedemic debate surrounding them. Put simply,
] they are a user defined method for organizing data. Im
] going to try to explain what they are, why they are
] important to marketers and web devs and suggest some ways
] you might use them. Follow the title link above for the
] full post.

Best overall summary.

OK, no more folksonomy links for the day.

Tags & Folksonomies - What are they, and why should you care? | Threadwatch.org