Turkeys and Robots Don’t Matter, G+ Buttons On Google Doodles Matter

People are all caught up in today's Google Doodles but for all the wrong reasons. Yes, there's a customizable turkey for the US and a fun sci-fi game for Europe. But did you notice the G+ button hovering below the turkey? Google is now using its most visible, accessible, viral element to get people to sign up and share on Google+. If worked into future Doodles, this could be quite fruitful.]]>

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Web “Start-Ups” Hit Cash Crunch. Or Don’t, Depending On Whom You Ask

WSJ reports that in contrast to the exuberance of most of this year, "for the past couple of weeks" startups are having a harder time raising early stage and Series A funding. "The start-up financing market is getting weaker by the week, no question," said Angel List's Naval Ravikant in the piece.Techmeme's Gabe Rivera (disclosure: Rivera just so happens to be my current significant other) tweeted out the article with a rejoinder, "You people could have blogged about this before WSJ got around to it" sparking a fierce Twitter debate between numerous high-profile investors including Chris Sacca, Chris Dixon, Mark Suster, Josh Felser, Ravikant and even a cameo by our own MG Siegler.]]>

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“For Those Who Don’t Want To Believe”

I feel uncomfortably like a prophet. In January, and again last week, I wrote about the prospect of UAVs used as weapons by terrorists; yesterday a man was arrested who "planned to attack the Pentagon using 'small drone airplanes' filled with explosives and guided by GPS." In August I wrote about omnipresent mobile phones turning the world into a panopticon; today's NYT has an article about ordinary Koreans paid by the government to snitch on scofflaws with photo evidence. Last year I wrote a piece for The Walrus about the crucial importance of online pseudonymity for bloggers reporting on the Mexican drug war, now that the traditional media there has been terrified into utter silence; yesterday the headless corpse of one such journalist, a woman named Marisol Macias Castaneda, was found next to a scrawled message warning people not to write about the drug cartels on social media sites.These are not three separate subjects. Cheap and/or ubiquitous cameras and facial recognition make surveillance ever more omnipresent; the dangers and uncertainties of other new technologies, like hobbyist UAVs, lead to calls for even greater scrutiny; and eventually online anonymity/pseudonymity will be the only kind there is. That isn't entirely a bad thing. It's because of crowdsourced surveillance that New York police lieutenant Anthony Bologna faces two investigations after apparently gratuitously pepper-spraying protestors. But it means the ability to remain pseudonymous online will only become more and more important in the years to come.Do the services that connect people online seem to realize this? Sadly, the answer mostly ranges between "No" and "Hell, no."]]>

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