Go to CNN.com from anywhere outside the U.S. and you’ll be immediately directed to one of their international editions – and because CNN still hasn’t figured out the difference between Canada and the U.K., Canadians happen get the international edition with links to all the latest soccer and cricket news.
Go to a Web store like Best Buy or Amazon and you’ll immediately be directed to their Canadian storefronts, and all content and prices will be Canadian.
Google, Yahoo and the other search engines automatically point you to their Canadian ‘.ca’ addresses, even if you initially tried to access their .com sites. By doing so they can more easily direct you to their Canadian content pages, such as news, weather, stock quotes, and more.
This redirecting technology is known as geolocation, and it’s been around almost as long as the Web. Thanks to new technology, however, it’s starting to get a lot more specific.
Instead of identifying you as a client from a particular country, new systems can identify you as a resident of a particular province, city or town – depending on how specific they want to go.
For example if you’re in Vancouver and type ‘French restaurants’ into a Google search, you’ll wind up with a list of bistros in the Vancouver area. Web sites, especially online gambling sites, also use this technology to keep users out because of the differing laws in those particular countries.
Some privacy advocates are concerned that this technology, which can be genuinely helpful, can also be abused. For instance, how will you know if you’re getting the lowest price for a product or service if you don’t get to see the same price list that everyone else does, regardless of where they live? If news Web sites further tailor their content to specific markets, there’s a potential that geolocation will block out the different views and stories that make up the big picture.
According to the CNN Technology section there’s also a growing concern over geolocation during the election cycle, as candidates attempt to pander directly to specific markets.
For example, if people in Detroit, Michigan are most worried about jobs, people in Deerborn, Michigan are most worried about crime, and people in Ann Arbor are most worried about the war in Iraq, a politician’s Web site could be set up with different front pages that are customized for each of those communities. In other words, the front page you see could depend on the location you’re accessing the site from.
Is this practice dishonest? Not necessarily, but it can be misleading. It saves politicians from ranking the importance of issues themselves, which makes it more difficult for people to vote according to their own priorities. In addition, assuming all political parties have access to the same polls and demographic information, elections could ultimately be decided by plank issues rather than platforms.
There’s also the potential to mislead people about the current state of their local news. For example, if you go to Fox Sports and the top stories are always about your home teams, that might seem convenient to most users. At the same time however it also masks the fact that the majority of your media is concentrated in a handful of national corporations by giving you the illusion of true local coverage.
The benefits of geolocation technology are undeniable. Google currently offers merchants the ability to tailor ads and content to specific cities, cutting down on the number of results you have to go through before you find what you’re looking for in your neighbourhood. Countries are using geolocation to block everything from child pornography to hate literature.
In the future, don’t be surprised when you turn up a growing number of local results every time you search the Web that are custom-tailored to your region or personal interests – just remember to always consider the source of the information, and to shop around for alternatives.
There’s not much you can do if you want to opt out of geolocation because the technology uses ISDN numbers and server information to pinpoint your general location.
The one thing you can do is to periodically erase your cookies. Cookies can identify you as regular customers at various Web sites and can also be used to build a profile of your preferences. That in turn allows sites to generate content and ads to sync with your preferences.
Internet cookies are not the same as spyware and can actually be a good thing for many users, so you have to consider whether the privacy factor outweighs the convenience.
U2 races thieves to market
Stealing music from U2 is a little like stealing food from Ghandi – of all the bands in the world, nobody has played more benefit concerts or made a greater economic and social contribution than Bono and boys.
That reputation didn’t stop thieves from absconding with an advance copy of the Irish band’s new album, Vertigo, last week. The album, their first new release in four years, wasn’t supposed to hit stores until November after a huge PR campaign.
Suddenly a leisurely album release has turned into a race to beat the thieves to the market.
"If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month," said Bono, U2’s frontman and a recent candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"It would be a real pity. It would screw up years of work and months of planning, not to mention f–ing up our holidays. But once it’s out, it’s out."
The band is watching the peer-to-peer file swapping networks like Kazaa closely to see if songs from Vertigo are making the rounds.
Cell phones allowed on planes?
Before you fly these days flight attendants and the captains never fail to remind passengers to turn their cell phones off before takeoff. Although they don’t come out and say it, it’s implied that your cell phone could somehow interfere with the airplane’s electronics. And if they go, you go.
"Safe" phones are provided by many airlines, but at such a exorbitant rates that most people go without it.
It turns out that there never really was any technical problem with using cell phones, providing that there was coverage in the area. Cell phones were banned in-flight for a number of reasons, but mostly out of consideration for other passengers.
I don’t know if you noticed but people tend to talk a lot louder when they’re on their cell phones, and all the little delays – "Hello? Hello? Are you there? Frank? Frank? Oh hey Frank!… Sorry, I thought I lost you there… What?… I missed that last part… They want how many units?" – make for some really annoying, one-sided conversations. Believe me when I say that the airlines were doing us a favour.
But no more. Selfishness has triumphed once again as airlines are working to integrate new phone technology that will allow people to use their own handsets – with all those annoying personalized rings – while flying the formerly friendly skies.
Airlines are currently discussing ideas for use to minimize the impact on other travellers – phone booth areas that can only be accessed mid-flight like the washrooms, phone-friendly sections, rules on times of use (up to an hour after takeoff and an hour before landing, no calls on night flights, international flights, etc.)
We’ll see about that. When people thought cell phones were dangerous they turned them off without fail. Whether they can do the same out of courtesy remains to be seen.
