Web Security

If you're one of the many people who don't have a Google mail account, Google is fine with that—but they'd still like you to create an account for their other services. Web apps like Google Docs, Google Reader, and Google Calendar all require a Google account to identify you and keep track of your settings, even if it's linked to someone else's email service.  Now, Google is making it even easier to set up an account with them, and keep your e-mail where you want it. 

You might expect that I get a lot of e-mail, and you'd be right. Wading through the hundreds of messages I get in my various e-mail boxes can be a little overwhelming, and there have been times when I've completely missed messages because of the sheer volume of other stuff that ends up in them, despite spam filters and other ways I've used to cut through the chaff.

Facebook, the company, has never been shy about trying to roll back the chains on personal privacy.  Now the chains are moving again, as Facebook rolls out a new service called Facebook Places.

Places is an effort to bring the location-awareness that is already available to users of Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, and Gowalla with smart phones. The main difference is that Facebook has 500 million users, including a sizeable number of more mature users who would never care to be Foursquare "mayor" of anywhere.

The latest round of scams, pranks, hoaxes and other nonsense running rampant on Facebook has many of my friends, and even some of my family, reconsidering whether they really want to be on the social networking service.