Technology Blog

On Wednesday, Paul Jacobs spotted a Google Street View car in his village.

It was executing a nifty turn in the dead-end street just outside his home, and that made him cross, because it appeared that the camera mounted on a pole was peering over his high fence to get a view. He and a neighbour John Holmes rushed out of their homes to confront the driver.

A short while later - after an amicable chat with the man from Street View - the car left this quiet village outside Milton Keynes. It appeared that Broughton could rest easy, with no prospect of cameras shoving their lenses where they’re not wanted and invading the privacy of this quiet backwater.

Two days later, I’m here with a large BBC satellite truck and a cameraman - and at least two other camera crews have been spotted in the village this morning. The village was also featured in the local papers yesterday and much of the national press this morning. So how private is this place now?

But make no mistake, the battle of Broughton is another embarrassment for Google - and gives us another interesting angle in the debate over privacy. Just hours after Street View was launched last month, complaints were already coming in about unblurred faces and embarrassing incidents caught on camera.

Google acted quickly to deal with those issues and it appeared that the controversy was over. Millions of us have been using the service - not so much, I suspect, to visit landmarks but to check out that house we used to live in years ago and tut-tut over the nasty shade of paint the new owners have chosen for the front door.

But now - for the first time, as far as I can see - a whole village has revolted. Paul Jacobs insists he’s no Luddite or Nimby - and uses Google himself for navigation. He just feels they’ve overstepped the mark, coming a little too close with their cameras. “I’ve no objection to them taking wide shots of vistas - it’s when they’re taking close-ups of people’s homes, that crosses the line.” His neighbour John Holmes puts it more firmly - “an Englishman’s home is his castle” - and wants Street View out of the village altogether.

You may point out to them that estate agents pictures of people’s homes are widely available on the internet - they’ll respond that those shots are taken with the owners’ agreement.

Google says it isn’t breaking any law by taking these pictures - they’re always shot from the public highway. And by agreeing to black out homes if people aren’t happy to have them shown, they’re going further than they need to. After all, if you or I want to take a picture in the street and then post it online, there’s nothing to stop us.

But what Google is finding again is that its sheer scale and reach makes people nervous. So the people of Broughton seem relatively relaxed about having our cameras pointed down their street. But the idea of any one of Google’s hundreds of millions of users making their way down the village streets and peering over the hedge? That, they believe, is a step too far.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, internet guru Tim O’Reilly threw out the possibility that perhaps the name should be changed.

He said he and his friend John Battelle of Federated Media had been playing around with an alternative which was Web 2.0 + World = Web Squared.

When I asked Mr O’Reilly if he loved or hated the name Web 2.0 that he popularised, he let out a big sigh and said “Awww does it have to be one or the other?”

Eventually he admitted “I love it and I hate it. It’s a term that has been very effective and very successful in getting across an idea. I spent a long time talking about that idea around the turn of the Millenium, talking about building the internet operating system. It didn’t catch on and all of a sudden we had this new term Web 2.0 and everyone got it so how could you not love that?”

In the end he said “I have mixed feelings about it. I am delighted with its effectiveness, it did what I wanted it to do. To catalyse the industry after the dotcom bust that things weren’t over and that something mattered about the companies that had survived. They knew something that the others didn’t. And I think that continues to be true.

“The companies that are succeeding today understand better than others what it means to be building software in the age of the internet.”

As to really getting behind Web Squared, Mr O’Reilly said “It was just one of these idle thoughts where you go dub dub dub and then you go one more w and that gets you to web squared, right?”

My unscientific research on the expo floor found more people hating than loving the Web 2.0 title.

Paul Thompson said “Keep it. It hasn’t been around for very long and you need a few years to build an identity. If you replace it with Web Squared, people will go what happened to Web 2.0?”

Mark Kirthcart thought “it’s sounding a little dated and overused.”

Sindee Thomson’s view was “Web 3.0 will be here soon.” For her, Web Squared was a total no no. “I hate it. It reminds me of mathematics and I was never good at my sums. I think it should be Web Cubed.”

Brooklynn Morris was a big fan. “I think Web 2.0 is a great title but I think people don’t like titles in general especially when it gets in the way of free concepts.”

Kevin Marshall said he thought people were “tired of Web 2.0 because of all the hype around it. Web Squared however, I don’t think is any better.”

Alistair Mitchell suggested that instead of Web Squared it should be “Web Shared because the web today is all about sharing - sharing the content of your life through things like Flickr, Facebook, where you live, where you are and how you work.”

Taomas Rio said “Web 2.0 is too techy. Sure the core of people who come here know what it means but the internet is always evolving so why do you need versions or numbers to categorise it?”

As for Web Squared, Taomas was aghast. “Oh no that’s web weird!”

Any better suggestions?

It’s clear that there has been a huge amount of social media activity around the G20 summit, and the demonstrations in the City and at the Excel centre. But some are suggesting that these new tools - in particular Twitter - have been vital to the organisation of the demos. I’m not so sure.

It does seem as though just about everyone involved in G20 - from the politicians to the journalists, from bloggers to demonstrators - has been snapping, filming recording everything in site and uploading it to the web to share with the world.

I spent Wednesday trying to monitor events via Twitter, Facebook, AudioBoo, and various websites. One good place to go was this site, created by a group of journalism students who set out with mobile phones to record the day’s events. Alex Wood, who masterminded the project, even ended up providing this video from his mobile phone to the BBC.

My own Twitter searches came up with some useful insights - though it was as ever hard to pick out the genuine eyewitnesses from all those simply reprocessing what they’d just seen on the television. I particularly liked this message from one frustrated Twitterer trying to get the word out from the Bank of England:

“Mobile coverage v bad prob due to number of anarchists also using iPhones”.

Just a minute - anarchists using iPhones? Or Twitter? Does that really compute? One is a mobile phone that you might think was more of a yuppie toy than a revolutionary tool - the other is a social network used principally by an older, more establishment crowd than, say, Facebook. Or maybe those are just my preconceptions?

I asked Alex Wood what his impression had been yesterday. He said there were a surprising number of people around him using both Twitter and iPhones, but he wasn’t convinced that they were the main ways that the demonstrators had been organised.

The G20 meltdown website had been the place to go to find out what was happening next, and he said there was also a more old-fashioned method: “They still used the good old megaphone - people were announcing on megaphones that they were putting on an alternative summit in East London.”

And he says there was just a small core of people bent on trouble: “The core of the anarchists, who were smashing up RBS, did what they did and got out quickly.”

Did they organise that via Twitter? I’d be surprised - it’s a very public place to talk about something you don’t want the police to hear.

There certainly have been plenty of fresh insights into the G20 events from sources other than the mainstream media. There are AudioBoos - sound clips uploaded to the internet from outside the Bank of England. There are hundreds of photos on Flickr, like this gallery. And there are bloggers from around the world inside the summit trying to get their voices heard.

But as far as rallying anarchists is concerned, maybe a megaphone is still proving more useful than an iPhone.

If you’ve visited the cinema or watched a DVD over the last few years, you’ve probably also been on the receiving end of a pretty stark warning. “You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag ” says the trailer before the film, hammering home the message that piracy is a crime.

But now those trailers - and another anti-piracy series involving “Knock-off Nigel” will be seen no more.

They’ve been replaced by a series of short ads promoting British cinema and thanking the public for supporting movies by buying a ticket or a DVD. And, as far as I can see, there’s not even a mention of piracy.

So did the get-tough tactics fail to do their job - and has the industry now changed tack?

“Your campaigning needs to evolve over time and have an appropriate message for today,”Eddie Cunningham, president of Universal Pictures International told me. He was explaining the new strategy to me on behalf of the Industry Trust, the body producing these trailers and fighting to promote the copyright cause for the UK film and TV business.

Mr Cunningham insisted that I was wrong to suggest the previous robust campaign against piracy had failed. ‘”If you went back to 2004, the majority of people didn’t realise it was a crime, by the end of that campaign the majority of people realised it was. Research shows us that most people now find it unfashionable - there’s been a gradual change in attitudes.”

There’s no evidence yet though that the tide has turned when it comes to the sheer scale of piracy - though the film industry has commissioned some research which it says could provide at least a hint that progess is being made.

But it seems the real news is that the nature of the anti-piracy battle has changed in two ways. Just like the music industry, the movie business has decided it’s not worth alienating its own consumers and the focus has moved from physical piracy to the online variety.

In 2004 most people didn’t have a fast enough broadband connection to make it worth the bother of downloading a movie via file-sharing software - now it’s becoming a relatively simple “hobby”.

And what really struck me about my conversation with Eddie Cunningham was his strong words about the internet service providers and his conviction that the government would force them to co-operate in the battle against piracy. “if you or I owned a house in which prostitution was taking place,” he said, “or where drug dealing was happening, we’d be responsibile.”

In other words, the ISPs are looking on as the crime of film piracy takes place down their broadband lines, and doing nothing about it.

In France the government is trying to bring in a “three-strikes” law, which would mean persistent film and music downloaders could have their broadband connections cut off.

Mr Cunningham thinks the same thing could be imminent here, if the ISPs don’t agree to self-regulation: “It’s absolutely critical for the creative industries which are terribly important for the UK, that the government steps in and does something. It’s theft and it’s only happening because we’re making it a bit too easy at the moment.”

So behind the softly-softly approach to piracy, there’s still a threat. It’s just aimed at what the film industry seems to regard as the “Knock-off Nigels” among the internet service providers, rather than at film fans.

UPDATE, 09:40: In a surprise sequel, the Industry Trust has got back to me this morning to say that Knock-off Nigel hasn’t been consigned to history after all.

While the “piracy is theft” will be withdrawn, Nigel will llive on, alongside the new “thank you” adverts. So the strategy is even more complex than I thought. Filmgoers will be complimented and mocked at the same time.

The theme of this year’s Web 2.0 Expo doesn’t shy away from the fact that the economy looms large over the event.

“The Power of Less can mean how to get more done with fewer resources,” said conference co-chair Jennifer Pahlka. It seems to be the mantra of our times, but Jennifer and the Expo are putting a positive spin on things.

“It can mean the attractive power of simplicity, and it can mean all the ways in which constraints drive creativity and opportunity.”

So this year more than ever it’s simply about doing more with less, something we have all become familiar with I am sure as companies downsize and reorganise and friends and family get laid off.

And this year’s event will be scaled down. There are fewer attendees, fewer exhibitors, less money, fewer parties, less pizzazz, less hype and no conference T-shirt.

The first day was very quiet, and always is, but seemed even more so this year. Last year there was quite a bit of buzz ahead of Microsoft’s Live Mesh announcement and Yahoo’s news that it was rewiring Yahoo to become more social.

This year just doesn’t seem to have the same fizz or anticipation. No big product announcements are expected and the only thing to get excited about is Palm who may well make some headlines when the company’s Michael Abbott makes his keynote later today.

It should be noted that Palm, which unveiled its hotly anticipated Pre smartphone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier in the year, is not at the CTIA Wireless conference going on in Sin City at the moment.

Even though CTIA is all about mobile, the issue is a big topic at Web 2.0 and I will be following it up.

I also plan to have a look at the emergence of the real time web given the influence and impact of Twitter search. I know some of you are tired of the Twitter coverage but they will be getting some attention here with sessions on how to use the micro-blogging service in business and on analysing your followers for profit.

The Brits are back this year as well for a second time and all this week 20 start-ups will tour the Valley and press the flesh of venture capitalists and CEOs alike in a bid to make contacts and deals. Their organiser and leader Oli Barrett is taking them around all the Valley high spots such as Google, Microsoft, Plug and Play and Oracle.

Two companies have come back for a second visit so I will be catching up with them later in the week to see how they think things have changed in Silicon Valley over the last year and what their hopes and expectations are for this year’s WebMission UK.