Wait and See on IE 8

Internet Explorer 8 is coming! Yay! And it will be standards compliant! Woo hoo! I can't wait to get my hands on it!

But just when will that be? Looks like there will be an initial beta sometime in the first half of 2008 (which probably means May or June).

Okay, so I guess I won't get to play around with it anytime soon. But did you see that IE 8 passed the Web Standards Project's Acid2, a key test for determining the standards compliance of a Web browser? That's something that Firefox hasn't been able to do yet, so take that Mozilla!

Well, an internal build of IE 8 passed the Acid2 test. I'm not sure if we can even call it an alpha. But this must mean that IE 8 will be standards compliant, right?

Hmm...I'm not too sure about that. Now that I think about it, I think I'll wait until I see a final shipping version of Internet Explorer 8 before I get too excited about its proposed features and standards compliance.

Because when it comes to Microsoft and the promises of early alphas and prototypes, cautious skepticism isn't a bad thing.

GPS adds dimension to online photos

To plan an upcoming hike in the Alps, John Higham scoured scores of photos plotted along his route on a digital map for clues to the steepness of trails and the availability of accommodations or camp sites.

These images were just like all the other vacation photos shared by travelers and amateur photographers, except they'd been tagged with location information in an emerging practice known as "geotagging."

Armed with such data, Higham didn't have to search endless combinations of keywords and guess how photographers would describe images in captions. By zooming in on the map, he could easily find geotagged photos along the Via Alpina and gain a fresh perspective.

"I do like to see a place before I go and study more about it," said Higham, 47, of Mountain View, Calif. "This affords me a way of seeing not just a map or satellite image but the landscape of where I want to go."

That's just one of the growing number of uses for geotagging, which is largely practiced by tech-savvy and professional photographers but is likely to expand. Global positioning is becoming omnipresent as more cell phones and digital cameras have built-in GPS support.

"It's something that will become integral to the way digital imaging works," said Aimee Baldridge, a New York-based writer and photographer who tracks trends with digital imaging. "I think it's definitely headed for the mainstream."

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture with geotagging can add a few hundred more.

Now, naturalists can map their bird sightings or chart out seal populations. Archaeologists can mark where they unearth artifacts. Travelers can wow family and friends and bring life to slideshows.

"When you add a map to a presentation, you've added another dimension, especially if you say, `I took this great trip to China, and it was 5,000 miles over the course of a month' and they see a route," said Andy Williams, general manager with the photo-sharing site SmugMug Inc.

Higham has used geotagging to help friends and family track his yearlong journey around the world and a rafting trip later down the Colorado River.

For paintball competitions, Mitch Richardson of Salt Lake City geotags photos of an abandoned mining town nearby — he can mark places to hide and hazards to avoid on a map.

Typically, a photographer carries a standard GPS device that records location and altitude data every few seconds. That information then is matched with the time stamp on photos, using software like Pretek Inc.'s RoboGEO.

Devices that already support geotagging include some GPS-enabled camera phones from Sprint Nextel Corp. and a newly unveiled gadget from Pharos Science & Applications Inc. High-end cameras from Nikon Corp. and Ricoh Co. can directly connect to GPS devices, while the upcoming PhotoFinder from ATP Electronics Inc. will write GPS information directly on a camera's memory card.

And photo-sharing services like SmugMug, Google Inc.'s Picasa and Panoramio and Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr let you manually add photos to a map. Zoom in to New York's Central Park, for instance, to find individual photos taken at Strawberry Fields and other landmarks.

Google, meanwhile, extended geotagging to its YouTube video-sharing site last summer.

Professional aerial photographer Allan Goldstein gave up selling archival images from the Chicago area years ago, finding specific photos too cumbersome to locate on demand. He started the business again in October after discovering he could simply tag each image with its GPS coordinates.

But relatively few photos are posted with location information yet — Flickr estimates 5 percent.

There are privacy considerations, and the failure of satellite-dependent GPS to work reliably indoors. Also complicating matters is the fact that GPS devices tag the location of the photographer, while the landmark being photographed could be miles away (British entrepreneur Richard Jelbert attempts to solve that by embedding a compass that can help calculate the landmark's actual location.)

But most importantly, geotagging still typically involves carrying an extra gadget and fiddling with software on a computer back home.

John Hanke, director of product management for geolocation services at Google, said he expects more camera manufacturers to include GPS this year and make it less cumbersome.

Dan Catt, senior software engineer with Flickr, sees huge potential as more people become aware of GPS and geotagging.

"That mainly comes down to GPS devices in cars and mobile phones raising people's awareness of location-based services," he said. "It wasn't really in people's consciousness even a year ago. ... We're very much at the beginnings."

Turkey bans YouTube for second time

A Turkish court has again blocked access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube because of clips allegedly insulting the country's founding father, according to reports Sunday.

It was the second time Turkey banned the site because of clips deemed disrespectful to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It is illegal in Turkey to insult the revered figure, whose portrait still hangs in nearly all government offices nearly 70 years after his death.

Users trying to access the Web site from Turkey were met with notices in English and Turkish saying it was banned under an Ankara court order issued Jan. 17.

Last March, another court blocked access to YouTube for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Ataturk, a war hero who founded Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The ban was lifted after YouTube removed the offending videos.

In September, a court in the eastern city of Sivas ordered a ban after saying video on the site insulted Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the army, but the ban was never implemented.

Vatan newspaper reported Sunday that the current ban also was imposed because of videos that were allegedly disrespectful of Ataturk.

It was not clear how long the current ban would last. The state-run Anatolia said officials from YouTube, which is owned by Google, issued a statement saying the company hoped access would be re-established quickly.

The YouTube bans in Turkey have highlighted the country's troubled record on free expression. Several prominent Turkish journalists and writers — including Nobel literature prize winner Orhan Pamuk — have been tried for allegedly insulting "Turkishness."

Turkey is not alone in blocking YouTube. Last year, the Thai government banned the site for about four months because of clips seen as offensive to Thailand's revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

And in May, Moroccans were unable to access YouTube after users posted videos critical of Morocco's treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975. An official blamed a technical glitch, but could not explain its nature or why it affected only the YouTube site.

Nasa investigates virtual space

The US space agency is exploring the possibility of developing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.

The virtual world would be aimed at students and would "simulate real Nasa engineering and science missions".

The agency has published a "request for information" (RFI) from organisations interested in developing the platform.

Nasa believe the game would help find the next generation of scientists and engineers needed to fulfil its "vision for space exploration".

"A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of Nasa's educational cyberstructure," the RFI reads.

"The MMO will foster career exploration opportunities in a much deeper way than reading alone would permit and at a fraction of the time and cost of an internship program."

Space mission

Nasa already has a presence in the 3D virtual universe.

The agency owns an island in Second Life where individuals and groups with an interest in the space programme can meet, share ideas and conduct experiments.

CoLab, as it is called, is the brainchild of scientists at the Nasa Ames Research Center in San Francisco.

The agency hopes that the environment could one day be used to allow the public to take part in virtual missions.

"We at Nasa are working hard to create opportunities for what I might call participatory exploration," the director of the project, Simon Worden, has said.

"We are looking at how this island can be a portal for all to fly along on space missions," he told delegates at the National Space Society's (NSS) conference last year.

"When the next people step onto the surface of the Moon in a little over a decade, your avatar could be with them," he said.

The latest proposal was published by Nasa's Learning Technologies Project Office which supports and develops education projects to promote science and technology.

Job seeker

The document says that games are becoming increasingly important in education and could be useful for teaching a range of skills.

"Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity," it says.

The document calls for a game engine that includes "powerful physics capabilities" that can "support accurate in-game experimentation and research".

"A Nasa-based MMO could provide opportunities for students to investigate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career paths while participating in engaging game-play."

Other organisations such as the US armed forces already use online gaming as a recruitment tool.

America's Army for example introduces players to the "seven Army Core Values" and now claims to be one of "the most popular computer games in the world".

Nasa has asked for interested organisations to respond to the request by the 15 February.

Facebook faces privacy questions

Facebook is to be quizzed about its data protection policies by the Information Commissioner's Office.

The investigation follows a complaint by a user of the social network who was unable to fully delete their profile even after terminating their account.

Currently, personal information remains on Facebook's servers even after a user deactivates an account.

Facebook has said it believes its policy is in "full compliance with UK data protection law".

"We take the concerns of the ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] and our user's privacy very seriously and are committed to working with the ICO to maintain a trusted environment for all Facebook users and ensure compliance with UK law," said a statement from the site.

Protecting principle

At present, Facebook users who wish to remove their profile from the site are given the opportunity to deactivate their account.

But once deactivated the information, though no longer accessible, remains on Facebook's computers.

This is useful if you might reactivate your account later, but not the same as full deletion.

Users who wish to completely delete their information must, according to the automated response from Facebook's Customer Service, “log in and delete all profile content".

For some users that can be a very laborious process and that concerns the ICO.

"One of the things that we're concerned about is that if the onus is entirely on the individual to delete their data," Dave Evans, Senior Data Protection Practice Manager at the ICO told BBC Radio 4's iPM programme.

"An individual who has deactivated their account might not find themselves motivated enough to delete information that's about them maybe on their wall or other people's site."

The over-riding data protection principle motivating the ICO is that organisations should only hold information as long as necessary.

Facebook maintains it is in compliance with all data protection legislation and says it does not use information from deactivated accounts.

Network problem

Mr Evans said that he believed that Facebook were committed to being seen to do as much as possible to safeguard people's privacy.

"We've agreed with Facebook to discuss with them issues around what they do with my information if I wish to deactivate my account".

In addition, he said that the ICO would look at Facebook's privacy policy, the rights to data the company asserts and the privacy implications of applications embedded in Facebook.

Although Facebook and many other social networks are based outside of the UK, Me Evans believes that UK law could still apply.

"They are established in the UK for UK legislation to cover their activities."

He said it was the clarity of information users receive on signing up with social networking sites that is the central concern of the ICO.

"One of the things that we'll be working with the sites to achieve is to get better quality information to users to make it absolutely clear to people what exactly will happen to their information once it's posted."