Previously, I discussed how we are being monitored digitally in our bedrooms as much as on the world wide web, in order for companies to ‘better target ads’ to us, their customers. Since then, there have been a few events that add to my pessimism regarding internet services (i.e. search engines), directing me to believe that they are seriously invading our privacy, or are on route to do so.

• Yahoo allegedly hands over information to Chinese authorities about an author of some politically-charged internet writings. He was subsequently charged and jailed (and tortured, probably). The Chinese couple is currently suing Yahoo.
• Google rats out YouTube TV-show uploader, who brazenly offered never-before-aired episodes of a major television show. Now Google offers a new copyright-protection tool called “Claim Your Content” for companies to easily report piracy on YouTube.
• Google is trying to weezle its way into television ads & radio advertisements as well.
• Google will soon offer GDrive, to let people backup their entire hard drives, etc, for free. It’s not enough that they control millions of people’s email, internet searches, calendars, etc, but now all their personal files as well?
• WebOS is becoming more and more of a viable future way of working on the computer. With web applications popping up every day and the world wide web becoming increasingly accessible to all, it is only a matter of time before all our computer work will be actually executed online.

Now of course, there are good things and bad things which come out of these developments. One good thing is that we will be digitally and globally connected, able to access (and work on) all our files and documents from anywhere in the world. Of course, this comes at a price: privacy. Each and every single move we make in the digital world will be logged, somewhere. And internet companies will continue to cave in to big conglomerates for fear of lawsuits (ex/piracy case vs. Youtube) as well as governments for fear of being shut out of a huge market (ex/Chinese case). Other companies will be able to target ads to us (I personally don’t like this idea, some might think it’s good), and governments all over the world will be able to get any information they want about anybody. Does that really protect us? If it does, then that protection comes at another price: freedom of speech. Just look what happened to the Chinese writer.

By now we all know how our movements online can be monitored in order to display targeted advertising on our screens. But did you know that this practice has migrated from our desktops into our bedrooms?
New York Times article, “Ads Made by You, in a Click“, by Louise Story, chronicles the new wave in marketing: customizing advertisements according to location, local events, weather, and demographics, where the companies themselves can set up amorphous ads in minutes. It seems though, that some of the tactics used to gather information about customers has gone too far. One company can already stake people out through their remote control clicks. Got cable or satellite? What you watch, when, and for how long, becomes marketing data, which is so advanced that these companies can send spanish ads to latinos, toys and game commercials to kids, and so on.
So, is this good or bad? On the one hand, we, as customers, may get exposed to more relevant commercials, learning about products we may actually want, but on the other hand, our privacy is being compromised, and we play no part in choosing the ads interrupting our tv shows. If it was up to me, I’d opt for watching only the funny commercials…
UPDATE: (4/15/07)
And now that all U.S. households will have to be equipped with digital TV’s (no more old-school antennas after the digital switchover!), this issue will be even more crucial. I’m surprised Google hasn’t already advanced in that (the television) area…or have they?

I thought it was built-in only for Evolution, you know, that mini-calendar that opens up when you click on the time/date in Gnome’s panel. Well, it is actually possible to have it open (read only, though) another calendar, as long as it’s web-based. [note: there are some other possibilities, but I don’t understand them enough to expand on them.]
So although I can’t get a local ics file to show up in that calendar, if it is sync’ed online, for instance with Google Calendar, then it’s possible to have it show on your desktop.
I followed Britt’s & Bryan’s guides, and both of them were gracious enough to answer my dumb little questions regarding command-line syntax. Basically, for Ubuntu Dapper, all you have to do is type, in one line:
/usr/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/*****gmail.com/private-******/basic.ics
at the command-line (with your personal information where the *stars are).
After going through all that, though, I realized that whatever calendar you have added and enabled within Evolution will show on the mini-calendar applet. You don’t have to open Terminal - just add calendar/s as necessary in Evolution.
Unfortunately, it seems you can never uninstall Evolution, if you want to have control over that panel-applet, and you will only have read-only access to it. If you know a workaround for that, though, please tell!
Helpful sites:

• Lukewarm Tapioca - Britt’s guide
• Mashing Google Calendar with Gnome - Bryan’s guide
• Topaz Now - EXTREMELY insightful post on the topyli desktop for GNOME, includes ideas on setting up desktop synchronization & management of information
• Holy Grail of Sync’ing - useful post on synchronizing calendars & contacts
• Schedule World - claims to help you synch with everything