Smalltalk with James Robertson

I take a skeptical view of this demand from the EU that Google change out streetview pictures every six months rather than every 12:

Currently, Google holds Street View images for a year but the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has said the search engine must chop this in half, as 12 months is a "disproportionate" length of time.

If there's a privacy issue, I fail to see how 12 months would be bad, but six months would be ok. This looks an awful lot like a way to raise Google's costs to me.

Technorati Tags: law, bureaucracy

Martin Kobetic has posted an example of using Xtreams - looks quite good.

Technorati Tags: xtreams

Apple Seems to be being a bit slippery about the iPad and Flash:

The iPad-Flash disconnect first came to light by way of Apple blog AppleInsider.com. The gang at AI noticed that promotional images posted on Apple's Web site appear to depict the iPad displaying Flash-based content from NYTimes.com.

While they've been verbally open about Flash not being supported, the ads are something else again. While I understand the issues around Flash - bloat, battery drain, etc - the web is what it is, and Flash is a huge part of it. I think Apple is going to have to swallow hard and let it on board.

Update: Apple has yanked the ads in question, and Adobe has gotten desperate.

Technorati Tags: apple, flash, iPad, adobe

Dave Buck is considering another "Intro to VisualWorks" course offering:

I have some time opening up in March and since Simberon hasn't held an Intro to VisualWorks course in a while, I thought I'd check to see if there's enough interest to hold one. If you have enough people at one site who want to take a course (or any of the other courses we offer), I could also deliver an on-site course.

Follow the link and let Dave know if you're interested!

Soon, you could see ads in Google maps that never existed in the real world:

This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.

This is the kind of technology that could have some hilarious end resuts. FailBlog should do very well off this :)

I still can't settle on a browser. Yesterday, Firefox started being unable to successfully upload to Vimeo. Chrome worked, but I have other irritations with Chrome. Meanwhile, on Windows, I was trying to browse an intranet site at Cincom, and getting a 500. Call Helpdesk, ask other people, no one else has the problem. I fire up Windows in a VM, try it there - works fine. So apparently, IE got a transient 500 response at some point , and then helpfully cached it for me.

These tools all stink, just differently :)

Since this is a site I put up myself, using a paid VPS service, I decided it made sense to run some ads. Readers of my Cincom blog have noticed that I read a lot; the links to future book reviews I put up will likely use Amazon affiliate links. That's not a huge change; I've been using Amazon images and links for those books anyway; this just helps me defray some of the cost of renting the VPS.

Technorati Tags: amazon