Google is my new Bestest BFF

Google is my new best-friend-forever. How do I know this? Easy - over a dozen people I've never met have emailed me to tell me so in the past day.

Google replaced a colored bar with numbers. The implications are huge. The enthusiasm over the transparency, on the other hand, is what's curious. Google, so far ahead of the pack in so many things, is now catching up to much smaller keyword traffic analyzers who have offered numbers for decades.

Did those smaller keyword traffic analyzers become my BFF by doing so? Did everyone and his pet gerbil email me, frothing with joy when they heard? No. Because TRANSPARENCY should be a rule, not an earth-shattering exception.

Bless their hearts.

Stalkers, Hackers, Pests, Online Lice

A friend of mine is under 'stalker' attack. Every time she turns around, there's this guy. He's chased her from social bookmark site to a social network to another website to another social network to another social bookmark site, and on and on. Friendly fan? Sicko weirdo? She can't tell, but it's freaking her out.

Advice welcome. She is my friend and I do not want her scared of the surf. It makes me very grumpy.

Surpriiiise - You've Been Opted IN

I signed up for something last week, unchecked the default-checked Check This If You Wish To Hear About Special Offers From Our Partners checkbox, read the Terms 'n Conditions and Privacy Statements before pushing any final buttons.

Within two days my email inbox began filling up with dozens and dozens of Special Offers From Our Partners Only Available Through This Email Right Now! stuff.

I nav'd back to the original source of all this noise and did some poking around under the hood (View Source on a webpage sometime for a real treat). Sure enough, the wires to the checkbox to opt in were dangling in midair, connected to nothing of substance in the form code.

For a place so eager to send me sh*t, they are amazingly reluctant to get any back. Their own Contact Us email bounces back in abject failure.

Yet another thing for me to gripe about, like I really needed more. Yay.