thelump.net

This Week in Lumps
#55 [01/07 - 07/07]

· This week starts with a warning; if you live or work in any of the capitals of the United Kingdom, you may want to keep a low profile over the next week or two – that is, of course, unless you want to have your face (unknowingly) photographed and plastered all over Google Street View UK. ‘Unconfirmed’ sightings in Edinburgh and Cardiff, coupled with ‘confirmed’ sightings in London and Dublin prove that Google are ready to unleash the camera cars around our streets catching us all pulling silly faces, crashing our bikes, and robbing houses.

For those needing clarity on the ‘modern day’ mapping system, I’ll explain: no longer do you have to rely on the latest AA paper map to guide you around a part of town you’ve not visited before, and long gone are the days when asking a rambling local the way was the norm – nowadays you can log onto Google Maps or download Google Earth and stroll around cities, towns, and suburbs, with 360° panoramic street-level views – all by the click of a mouse. Think Sat-Nav, crossed with Flickr and UpMyStreet.

It launched to just a few US cities last May, and since then it’s created quite a buzz – not all entirely positive. The latest negative press has come from Europe now that parts of Italy and France have been mapped. Privacy International, a UK rights group, believes the technology breaks data protection laws. A spokesperson for that group said:

“In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends”

Media outlets who share an identical view with Privacy International claim that the car-mounted cameras could invade the privacy of members of the public engaged in “compromising acts”, but if the American version is anything to go by, we don’t have much to worry about. This is taken from the Telegraph column:

“In America, people have been photographed in potentially tricky positions. One man appeared to be climbing a fence, while two men in San Francisco appeared to be gazing at a woman as she bent over. An ambulance driver was seen stopping and eating a sandwich.”

Not exactly life threatening, is it?

Going back to what I mentioned earlier, there have been some unconfirmed sightings within the UK, although I’m not entirely sure what constitutes an ‘unconfirmed sighting’; what kind of confirmation are these people after? It’s surely not an everyday occurrence that you see a car with a panoramic camera mounted 4 feet above it; do they still need Google plastered across the bonnet? Do they need someone walking 10 feet in front of the car with a loudhailer proclaiming “Google is coming” complete with a marching band and the Red Arrows flying overhead?

It’s not been the best week for Google in terms of privacy; A few days back it was revealed that they had lost the private data of quite a few of its employees, which was followed up days later with the news that they are to be forced to release records of its YouTube users to Viacom. A tough break, considering it was only last month they were made to place a direct link to its privacy policy on its homepage.

In light to the recent bad press, Google have come out and said:

“We will not launch in UK until we are comfortable Street View complies with local law, including law relating to the display of images of individuals. We will use technology, like face-blurring, and operational controls, such as image removal tools, so Street View remains useful and in keeping with local norms wherever it is available.”

Until then, take this advice: if you are planning on doing something indecent or immoral over the next fortnight, do it inside, with the curtains closed… Google might be watching.

~

· Eager O2 customers (like myself) have been met with an earlier-than-expected disappointment regarding pre-orders for the new iPhone 3G. A special section of the O2 website opened at 8am Monday morning, and within an hour the website had crashed under the weight of visitors, in what an O2 spokesman described as ‘phenomenal demand’ for the gadget which goes on sale on Friday. After just 2 hours the phone and communications company had ‘run out’ completely. (See here, here and here… for exactly the same story)

Around 200,000 had registered interest in pre-ordering, which dwarfs the 35,000 who showed initial interest in the first model. Text messages were distributed around 7:40am, telling people to log on and order. Later on in the day, an O2 spokesperson admitted she did not know how many people had been able to pre-order before the upgrade website was suspended, but was aware that they were working to restore the site as soon as possible and were “pretty confident” they would have enough handsets to cope with the demand.

Those still hoping for a pre-order success have been informed to “keep trying” the website, for any news of it opening up again. As of Tuesday lunchtime, the site is still showing:

“Due to a huge demand for the iPhone 3G, we are currently out of stock online. Come back on 10 July [sic] for more information”

However may I add, as an O2 customer for the last 20 months, I’ve been made very much aware that the companies targets are always aimed towards new customers, and seem to care less for the existing ones. In the last 18 months I have been contacted exactly… zero times by anyone from O2, either to talk about my phone, how I can get more from my contract, how to lower my bill etc; actions which I am well aware happens with other network providers to customers on long-term contracts. This ‘out of stock’ message may hint that the balance between those phones going to stores for new customers slightly outweighs the phones reserved for existing ones. Lets face it, it’s only good financial sense that you run out of stock for people you’re already charging, compared to selling out before you can gain new business.

In fact, I’m convinced that a 65/35 split is probably a more likely scenario than a gross under-estimate in bulk ordering what looks set to be the biggest selling gadget of the year.

It appears as though O2 had planned on a very good Friday, perhaps expecting people queuing up outside stores, and if the US is anything to go by, where lunatics started to queue last Friday (a whole week before sale day, no less), then it seems their prediction is spot on. It is of course helped by all those who planned on pre-ordering, but will now have to join the line outside the shop on the High Street.

Am I going to join that line? No, not really. I could spend the day working instead, earning the amount of money it takes to buy it, and just wait patiently for the stock to fill up…

…Or alternatively, the marketing hype to fade away.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Christian Bale showed interest in a 3rd Batman film, but would walk away if Robin appeared, Digg’s turned on the new recommendation machine, the rumours that Richard Hammond and James May were considering leaving Top Gear turned out to be total nonsense, clarified by the TG blogs, which mirrored the squashed rumours that a Friends movie was in the works, and congratulations to Mozilla, who hit 8 million+ downloads in 24 hours, and now have a 19% share in the market. After 2 weeks of use, i have to say I’m impressed, no faults at all, I just wish all of my add-ons worked.

and what would you do if you found a man in your basement covered head to toe in barbecue sauce?

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