The suit continued Friday with arguments before the judge on a case in which Apple demands that several web sites disclose the sources from whence they obtained allegedly protected information. The three sites that were sued supposedly released information about upcoming Apple products that could only have been obtained by some person breaking a confidentiality agreement. The sites seek to use California laws that permit established media to protect confidential sources. Of course the main stream media would also seek in most cases not to leak protected information … or would they? A decision is expected this week or next to our understanding. There is a pretty good write up about Friday’s arguments on Mercury News.

Ebay is reported to have a problem on it’s site that permits a phishing scammer to link directly to Ebay and in turn Ebay redirects to the phished site. According to C|Net, that hole may soon dry up. Seems like it could be done in several hours, what is taking days? The big boys (and girls) can join all the anti-phishing initiatives they want, but when they are allowing their own sites to be used to further the illegal activity, they need to act faster than days to shut it down, especially when as like this one, the word is out that the exploit exists.

Ebay completed it’s purchase of Rent.com this past month. Imagine the possibilities, you find your next apartment, furnish it on Ebay and pay for it with Paypal. What is next, a plumbing service?

Gmail is an aggressive free email service that has been tested for quite some time by Google. To date, the only way to get a Gmail address is to be invited by another user. When we were first invited to join, we were given seven invitations. Interesting, because the spread of Gmail is similarly like the game six degrees of Kevin Bacon, where players try to figure out how one actor/actress played in a movie with another who played in another with a different actor and within six steps have reached a movie in which Kevin Bacon appeared. If I have only seven invitations, and I give them out, how long before every web user has one? What makes it more interesting is that every time you use one, you get another soon. Now, they have increase the number of available invites to FIFTY and they continue to replenish.

So what does this mean? It means if you want one, you got one, just use our contact form and we will get one out to you. And some think it means a move towards taking the experiment out of the beta phase and into production. Maybe. The concept is simple, give lots and lots of storage, allow you to search your email easily (have you ever wondered which of your various accounts you used for something and had to go looking? I have), and bring you relevant advertisements which are not overly obtrusive. I hope it is financially viable for them because it works quite well.

A C|Net article reports that Apple obtained a preliminary ruling that bloggers who disclosed possible trade secrets are not entitled to keep the source of that information private and confidential. The traditional press has long fought this battle to keep sources confidential. Some state laws provide protection for the press, but this case may suggest similiar protections are not available to blogs. The issue will continue to ripen because many blog sites take on a very press like quality, complete with levels of editors, advertisers and the like. Meanwhile, some mom and pop small town newspapers may be less professional. Interesting times.

Eweek has an nice article in which they detail that search advertisers like Google and Yahoo are becoming more concerned about abuse of their advertising systems, both by companies competing for keywords and also by adsense type participants trying to earn more revenue by arranging fake click throughs for ads on their site. I can see the danger in this for these companies that make the majority of their revenue from search advertising and the like.

I’ve inadvertently clicked on a couple of the ads on our site in the past myself, I was trying to get the URL for that site so I could add it to the site filter to stop competitors advertising their products on our site (like other counter service retailers). I’m now mildly concerned that I’m going to get into hot water with Google for following Google’s advice about how to block ads you don’t want to display on your site (you have to paste the URL to the competing site into the adsense “URL filter” to block them, sometimes the only way to get the URL is to follow the ad, other times you can try and copy and paste the URL from the ad, but the last time I tried to do that, I accidentally triggered the link because I have the “Super drag and go” Firefox extension installed which allows you to follow links in a new tab by just dragging the link a couple of millimetres). This is going to become a big issue in the courts at some stage, and I’m worried both that the guilty will get away with it, and that the innocent can get dragged into court over it. Considering the small amount of revenue these ads generate most of the time, I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the risk and I for one would like some reassurance and guidance from Google on the issue. This Eweek article goes into much more detail on the issue.

Segway released a couple of new models, including one for golfers and other off road riders, in it’s 2005 line. They are also now starting to offer color. Unless I had a job that required me to cover a lot of space or bad legs, I don’t see myself enjoying one of these. They do however allow many people to work more efficiently. Google apparently has several and some consider it one of the ultimate geek toys.