WebProNews

There don't seem to be too many people who are in the middle on the issue of Google's Autolinks feature. Some think it's great.

Others (myself included) don't like the idea of Google adding links to my page-for the sake of making money-that I didn't intend to link to.

InfoWorld's Jon Udell is out with another one of his terrific screencasts, this one a four-minute look at Autolinks and the issues that underlie whether it's appropriate or an abuse. Udell doesn't have an answer, but he does ask everyone to chill out for a while while we figure out what the rules should be. By way of explanation, he gives us a brief look at a bookmarklet he created so he could find books in libraries based on their listing in Amazon. There's a relationship between Web content and Web services that is complex and intertwined, so where to draw the line becomes equally complicated.

Udell deserves credit and thanks for making the effort to produce so concise and thoughtful an analysis of the situation that's so easy to digest.

Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.