Edits to this article appear at the end (Nov. 4, 2007)
Well, this will stir things up a bit.
A few hours ago Google launched “Google Pages”:http://pages.google.com/. If you have a “Gmail”:http://mail.google.com/ account you can create your own web site on Google using a very nifty AJAX interface.
The application itself is great, although the standard templates leave something to be desired.
Some of the nicest features:
* An “undo” button
* Ability to add images, links and pages easily
* Testing links while in edit mode
* 100MB of storage
* Simple, memorable URL
You should really try it out. But you might want to *think twice before you hit “publish”.*
See that last feature (simple memorable URLS) is also the greatest weakness of Google Pages and I think it is going to cause a *huge* headache for Gmail users. And *a potential PR nightmare for Google.*
Why?
Category: Privacy Issues
Let me play “David Blaine”:http://www.davidblaine.com/ for a moment and channel your inner thoughts.
Think about your privacy policy.
Imagine the first line of it. Read it silently to yourself in your mind and I’ll see if I can make out what it might be.
Are you thinking “Your privacy is very important to us”?
Since it’s that time of the year, and I loathe shopping in the real world, I’m spending more than my usual amount of time shopping online.
Last week I was on Henry’s Website in the middle of purchasing some camera gear when I stumbled across a touch of pure e-commerce genius. Right below the section of the shopping cart where I could enter my credit card information was a simple but powerful eight-word sentence that rocked my world.
Next to an optional checkbox was written…