Berners-Lee’s words concerning web access raised a couple of eyebrows, and definitely raised the interest of this writer.

“Access to the Web is now a human right” he continues, “It’s possible to live without the Web. It’s not possible to live without water. But if you’ve got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.”

Berners-Lee’s quote certainly adds an interesting thought to how we perceive the world wide web. Has the web manifested to such a point that we believe it to be a need in our society? This led me to think of my life, and where I would be without access to the internet. It was a pretty scary exercise.

His quote also brings to mind the net neutrality debate. It strikes to the very heart of the matter, exposing the debate between the opposing sides. If web access is a right, then should providers be allowed to control it as they see fit, or should regulation be put into to place to allow our right to remain unfettered?

Along with his comparisons to water, Berners-Lee stated how ISPs should have less control over how users access the web. He also warned of mobile apps, and how they should be “web apps” which are accessed, allowing the open web to stay relevant.

Facebook filed suit against Power.com in December. Facebook claimed the one-stop social-media aggregator was infringing upon their copyright, violating their TOS and scraping proprietary data. At the time, we weren’t sure whether “proprietary data” included user information.

Power.com finally decided not to take this sitting down. TechCrunch reports that Power.com has now filed a countersuit, claiming Facebook is “unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things.”

Facebook also faces legal action from RootZoo, an erstwhile advertiser. After analytics from their Nov 2007-June 2008 campaign varied greatly from Facebook’s reported data, RootZoo requested Facebook’s logs and a refund. Facebook said no to both.

RootZoo’s complaint uses 2 June 2008 as an example of the discrepancies between the two. While Facebook reported 804 clicks on their ads, RootZoo’s analytics programs show 300 clicks from the social networking giant.

While there have been rumblings about Facebook click fraud for some time, this is the first suit in the matter.

What do you think? Does Facebook have anything to worry about from these legal claims against it? Is there anyway to avoid getting slapped with lawsuits once people see you’re making some money?

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The new “Everyone” level is in addition to previous levels of “Only Friends,” “Friends of Friends” and “My Networks and Friends.” You still have the option to customize who can and can’t see your profile information, too, as well as selecting exactly what categories of profile information “Everyone” can see.

Facebook explains the benefits of this feature:

By changing your Profile setting to “Everyone”, anyone who finds you through a search on Facebook or sees a post or comment you make can now click on your content and view the elements of your profile you’ve opted to make open. While some special rules remain in place about who can see your profile if you are a minor, people generally won’t need to be friends with you or share a common network in order to view your content if you choose the new “Everyone” setting.

In the past, searching for friends you haven’t seen in a while or someone who has a common name may have been difficult. You may have only been able to see their search listing and a small thumbnail version of a photo, if that. With this change, people can use the “Everyone” option and make it easier for you to find and connect to all the people you know.

I’m pretty sure you still have to be logged in to be able to see someone’s profile set to “Everyone,” and the public search results listing setting they already have will remain the same.

Almost a year ago, less than half of Facebook users were willing to share their profile with current or prospective employers, but we all know our bosses (or potential bosses) are checking us out online these days. Perhaps this level of access is a good place to create a “sanitized” version of your FB profile—one without access to your pictures or status updates, perhaps only with stuff you’d put on your résumé. Or is that what LinkedIn is for?

Will you be changing your info to give “Everyone” access? If so, what will you let “Everyone” see—and what will you keep hidden?

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Microsoft confirmed the existence of a flaw in one of its complementary products. Advisory 955179 highlighted the issue with the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access.

The flaw leaves unprotected users at risk from specifically crafted web pages aimed at breaking in through the exploit. If attacked, people run the risk of arbitrary code being executed on their machines.

“The vulnerability only affects the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Office Access 2000, Microsoft Office Access 2002, and Microsoft Office Access 2003,” Microsoft said.

“The ActiveX control is shipped with all supported versions of Microsoft Office Access except for Microsoft Office Access 2007.”

US CERT said it knows of no “practical solution” for the problem. Instead, people may wish to try disabling the problematic ActiveX control by setting its kill bit in the registry. Such changes should be undertaken only by people who are comfortable with backing up and editing the Windows registry.

Running as a user with reduced privileges may mitigate the exploit until it is patched. However, Microsoft offered no guarantee that running with limited rights will completely protect against potential exploits against this vulnerability.

The recent holiday weekend also proved difficult from a security perspective from another avenue. Security vendor Symantec said it had blocked 3.5 million junk emails with 4th of July themes.

Since the Microsoft vulnerability could be exploited through an emailed link, people should continue to toss out suspicious emails, even from known senders, and avoid clicking links in messages.

As the leading search engine, those who use Google in an attempt to find what they need probably won’t find it if it’s stuffed behind an online search form at an agency’s site.

Today, the Google Public Policy blog noted the company’s testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about this problem. Google’s J.L. Needham called out forms as an obstacle to indexing content effectively:

The most common barrier is the search form for a database that asks users to input several fields of information to find what they’re looking for. Our crawlers cannot effectively follow the links to reach behind the search form.

Google tipped the Sitemaps protocol, accepted at all of the major search engines, as a way for government sites to help guide the spiders to the content that citizens want to discover in search. It’s also in use at the government’s main information portal, USA.gov.

The search ad company also cited the release of a Center for Democracy & Technology report on how the government has published information and made it available to searchers. Their report lambasted availability of responses to some important queries:

A search for "New York radiation" does not find basic FEMA and DHS information about current conditions and monitoring.

A search to help grandparents with a question about visitation of their grandchildren in any search engine does not turn up an article of the same title located on the Web site of the Administration for Children & Families.

A search for "small farm loans" turns up the commercial offers for loans, and statistics about government loans, but not most of the major federal government programs designed to help fund small farms.

Like Google, CDT exhorted the Feds to pass the E-Government reauthorization act, and to take steps to enable search crawlers to find content more efficiently.

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AT&T Sort Of Opens Wireless Access

When the FCC adopted two of the four conditions of openness Google asked for with regards to the upcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, open applications and open devices, we called those the less important ones out of the group.

Proof of that came from USA Today, citing AT&T wireless business CEO Ralph de la Vega on the topic:

“You can use any handset on our network you want. We don’t prohibit it, or even police it.”

Don’t look for that openness to extend to the iPhone, Apple’s hot gadget exclusively licensed to AT&T. “The iPhone is a very special, innovative case,” de la Vega said in the report.

Engadget’s Ryan Block isn’t impressed with de la Vega’s openness:

Yes, you can take your AT&T SIM, put it in an unlocked device, and run it on their network without much hassle — but that doesn’t make AT&T any more “open” than the final-say testing facility Verizon intends to use in “openly” making approvals (and disapprovals) of devices and software.

The real openness will come when someone, be it Google or an existing wireless company, implements the open networks and services Google asked for as auction conditions but could not convince the FCC to adopt. Swapping a SIM card isn’t the same thing.

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Perhaps someone will bring this up when the Syrians arrive for the Annapolis conference, but probably not, especially if Bush Administration wonks think they can extract some concessions from Syria over Hamas. Facebook censorship isn’t going to take up time on the Annapolis slate.

Ammar al-Qurabi, head of the National Association for Human Rights, said in the Reuters piece, “We have asked officials and they said Facebook could become a conduit for Israeli penetration of our youth, but the real reason for blocking the forum because it provides for criticism of the authorities.”

Such criticism has been part of building a part of Syrian society that isn’t under the grip of its government. Criticism has been part of American society all the way back to Thomas Paine, but it probably won’t rate a mention when the conference begins along the Chesapeake Bay.

“They cut off communications between us and the outside world. We are used to this behavior from our government,” Mais al-Sharbaji said in Reuters.

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The site is has already added social media – or at least one element – along with RSS feeds. You can submit stories to Digg via the “Digg This” link at the bottom of each story. And you’ll be able to read the entire article, free and with advertising, when it’s linked from Digg.

The story about how the WSJ adding a “Digg This” link was Dug by Digg’s founder Kevin Rose. It made the home page and has more than 12000 diggs already. I wonder how the demographic of the journal – I’m not really sure why the WSJ hasn’t dipped more than just a toe in these waters – perhaps by adding at least Del.icio.us bookmarking or comments. Just give me Kevin J. Delaney and Amol Sharma’s articles, who cover new media.

The article announcing the change was on the Wall Street Journal’s site. It gives a few paragraphs and then requires you to sign up and give up your credit card number before you can read the rest. THE FULL WSJ.com ARTICLE IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS. It’s not stated when that tagline might be removed.

Some wonder if the entire site would be free or just sections of it. News Corp. is poised to acquire Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, next month. The controversial $5 billion sale added The Wall Street Journal to the Murdoch’s news empire, which already includes Fox News, the New York Post, and London’s The Times.

Murdoch wants to expand their reach internationally and modernize the business. Murdoch talked about new talent, said “we’ll be able to make huge strides in quality, in attractiveness and in the value of The Wall Street Journal.”

Now let’s take a sidestep to think about how the demographics of the WSJ compares to the average Digg user. According to their own data, the Wall Street Journal readers online are highly educated with high net worths (in 2005, the average household income of readers was $215,000 and they had an average net worth of $1.6 million). A demographic that advertisers would love. It didn’t give ages in the summary I saw. Digg demographics as of last year were mostly younger men. According to a post last year by ZDNet, Digg’s demographic is 94% male and “generally twenty or thirty something techies earning $75,000 or more.”

It looks like Digg has become mainstream and newspapers like the WSJ are catching up to the rest of the world online.

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