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New Google products are usually welcomed, but Google Sites has come in for some flak too

Google bought Jotspot, a wiki site, in October 2006, and has finally launched its own version, Google Sites, to a round of barracking. TechCrunch notes that: “Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out.” Many say it looks more like Google Pages.

Another common complaint is that Google Sites requires Google Apps.

At ZD Net blogs, Dennis Howlett reviewed the product in Google Sites - spoiled by usability issues, and complains that it’s “dog slow”. He says:
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Google has responded to European regulators who have suggested that Internet Protocol addresses of users be considered personally identifiable information.Not surprisingly, it disagrees.

The issue matters because the standards for what companies do with data that can be traced back to an individual are subject to tighter rules than other information they use — as they should be. Google records the I.P. address associated with every search it handles.

In a post on the Google Public Policy Blog, Alma Whitten, a software engineer, points out that often the I.P. address assigned to any one computer is changed on a regular basis by the Internet provider that services that computer.
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EBay has settled a seven-year patent dispute with MercExchange, a legal fight that prompted the Supreme Court to issue an important ruling on intellectual property.

EBay said Thursday that it had bought the three MercExchange patents it had been accused of violating. The price was not disclosed, but eBay said the figure would not materially affect its financial results.

MercExchange, based in Great Falls, Va., sued eBay in 2001, arguing that eBay’s “Buy It Now” option, which lets eBay sellers make items available at set prices instead of auctions, infringed MercExchange patents. MercExchange’s founder, a patent lawyer, Thomas Woolston, patented technologies related to an electronic network of consignment stores.
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Here’s an interesting clock made out of humans

See the clock ticking here http://billychasen.com/clock/

Mitchell Baker has one of the best job titles in computing: she’s chief lizard wrangler at Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, which has a reptilian mascot named after Godzilla. If I ever had a fancy dress party, I’d invite her to appear in character. And she might. Although she trained as a lawyer, she’s also a trapeze artist, so there’s clearly more to her than meets the eye.

Mozilla started with Netscape Communications, but the company was originally called Mosaic, after the first popular web browser. Baker joined Netscape’s legal department in 1994, and has been involved with Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox ever since.

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