It Rains In Triplicate

Man sues apple over iphone sealed battery

While there is probably a better link the story, and I’m late to the party, a few comments:

1. Who carries around a spare phone battery any more? I use my cell phone(s) a lot, and I’ve never bought a spare battery, let alone expect to field replace it
2. If we could sue a company over a bad / disagreeable design decision, where do I sign up? I have a list grievances against a whole number of companies several miles long.

So here’s the problem that needs to be solved:

Why should I (generic consumer) trust you (generic web 2.0 company) with my personal information

You provide an interesting service (e.g., financial tracking (mint.com), social networking (linkedin.com), word processing (google.com), but to leverage your service everything I do is stored in your black box, which may or may not be secure, may or may not be run by scrupulous individuals, and may or may not be backed up. Further, the legal ramifications of you selling my information to someone else aren’t all that clear, and my only legal recourse to you doing something bad is binding arbitration.

However, these services are compelling, let me work with my data from one of the many computers that I use day-to-day, and often provide functionality that may not be otherwise available in a pure desktop environment.

So, the outline of a solution:

Postulate that:

• it is increasingly trivial to install a web server with a buttload of disk space on my home network, that may even be a black box (c.f., Don Norman’s The Invisible Computer rants), and that I have lots of bandwidth, and
• a good web 2.0 service probably separates its data access (model) from its business logic (view and controller).
• some developers (e.g., google gears) recognize that storing all my data on their backend may not be ideal in all situations (i.e., disconnected operation)

So, I want the option for the web 2.0 application to store its data on my black box. A black box that I can back up, move, encrypt, and firewall.

If my relationship with a company ends, I can delete that data. If I feel like putting on the tin foil hat, I can unplug the thing. If my data gets compromised, it is my fault, but, I have a definite motivate to ensure that it remains safe.

I argue that someplace, the web 2.0 ecology will see a massive data leak, sometime in the next few years. Too many companies want all your information, have lousy EULAs, and no real motivation to ensure that all your data is safeguarded. But, the SAS / Web 2.0 model is compelling, and won’t go away ..

Because if you can make it blow up, you can call it science

I’ve been thinking about a ton of posts, hoping to make a dent in them today.

First off, Jabra released the bluetooth headphones I’ve been looking for, the Jabra BT-3030.

Essentially, it is a dog tag or clothing clip that pairs with a bluetooth phone or A2DP device and pipes the sound through a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Works like expected, I’m done searching. No with all my various headphones, works with my ipod, iphone, mac, and bluetooth to 3.5mm adapter from my junk closet.