It seems Palm has decided that they are OK with being slimy about undisclosed privacy and user tracking. Give a chance to comment on the recent expose about detailed user tracking buried inside the Palm Pre, they tell us (paraphrasing) “everybody does it” and “we’re happy our users trust us”.

MobileCrunch re-highlighted this news from a CNET article, but goes easy on Palm, while exposing how they track users location, what applications they have been using, what applications they have installed on the Pre (including those not authorized by Palm), and other personal data unique to the user’s Palm Pre. If you read the article literally, it is almost as if they had been threatened by Palm and were treading lightly.. exposing but being careful to not openly suggest the Palm Pre was a privacy-invading abuse of consumers.

The Economist wrote about cell phone tracking, and location-based services do indeed need to report back location in order to deliver maps, directions, etc. But they don’t need to report back all that other personal data that Palm is collecting from Palm Pre users.  According to the MobileCrunch article:

When it comes to location tracking and device activity, you must alert the user and specifically request permission. If you don’t, you are spying, plain and simple. Regardless of what Palm is doing with this data, the user needs to be completely aware that it is being sent.

Palm seems to disagree. See this excerpt from Palm response (emphasis added):

…Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer’s information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust.

They have no intention to violate your trust! How re-assuring, no? How about if a vendor asked you for your social security number and mother’s maiden name, and assured you they had no intention of violating your trust?

I have a follow up question for Palm. One day, when a Junior Marketing Executive at Palm gets a brilliant idea to exploit some of that juicy data, will Palm notify me of their new intent to violate my trust? I know they don’t have to, that’s the whole point.

Believe it or not, they’ve got that covered in the Privacy Policy as well. The default is that they can do whatever they want under that elastic justification “to enhance your device experience“. The lawyers make it sound less abusive by adding “For changes that are materially less restrictive or protective of your personal information than the privacy policy in place at the time of collection, we will seek your consent before implementing any such change.” Hard to imagine a case where they make an open, elastic data use agreement more restrictive, if that is even possible.

Scrutinize the Palm Pre Privacy Policy here, but be careful because Palm lawyers are just as clever as the rest of the lawyers in this industry: “We reserve the right to change our privacy policy. Please check our website periodically for changes…“

It seems every week some hustling web entrepreneur publishes a new “blog post” about how to be a better entrepreneur, how to be more successful, how to make more money, etc. These are expensive if you read them — they waste a lot of your time. Success is not about money, but they don’t know that, and so they are not really worth listening to, are they?

I just revisited an old Jason Calacanis comment about SEO / affiliate people being really smart but small time… that in his eyes, they were not really successful because they didn’t make the big plays (like he does?). Sad… really sad.

I suppose not everyone appreciates that there are plenty of words of wisdom already published by masters of language and communication, often packaged in enjoyable wrappers. You can get them on your Kindle, or at your local library if you area small-timer like me.

Here’s one of my favorites:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

That’s “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

The New York Times continues to publish articles on what it calls the “free vs paid debate” (Google it). They are trying to figure out, in public, how to charge for news delivered over the web.  The article notes that people can’t expect news for free, and advertising is not supporting web publishing efforts.They seem to try to justify some sort of subscription model, and I am betting it will be a back door tax (levied through ISPs or such) if they have their way. And why is that? Because that’s the only way to hide the value proposition from us consumers.

Good information is valuable. Many of us pay for quality information every day. We subscribe to expensive journals, and belong to membership sites from which we gain seemingly valuable insights.  We spend money attending meetings because of the information (all forms) we gather through participation. We pay for quality information. Pay is the action verb in that sentence, which reflects intent which drives the commerce.

We (apparently) don’t get quality information from the news media. How else can you explain that we, in general, don’t want to pay for it?

Someone can charge for online content, but I doubt it will be the New York Times or any other old-school media outlet for that matter. They simply don’t have the culture of value we need. They have trained us over the years, so we know where the value is in the published news media.

Here’s a clue for the New York Times: many of us are ignorant and lazy, and we used to pay $10 per week to have your “news” delivered to our doorsteps. We knew it was full of bias (editorial bias, selection bias, presentation bias, etc) but since we are lazy, we didn’t care. It was OUR news which we paid for. Did the story about Gaza have a slant? Who cares! It was OUR story about Gaza, which WE chose to pay for. We knew it wasn’t 100% truthful news… we learned that about you guys long ago.. that you have agendas driven by politics and advertising, and other things money. But we were ok with that.. we chose to pay for it.

Another clue: many of us are smart and righteous about value. We paid for the Sunday Times because for $5 it was a whole day’s entertainment, plus some. We enjoyed it. We tolerated the daily because, well, it was one of many slanted stories we read in hopes of forming a valid opinion of fact. If it takes work to be properly informed, well, we will do the work of reading through the New York Times bias and figuring out the truth (as near as we can).

So now does the New York Times think it can claim to be accurate, factual news, on the web, with a value proposition to match?

We have so much free entertainment on the web, we don’t need the Sunday Times anymore (although some people will still see value). We have so many different perspectives available to us on the news, that YOUR different perspective doesn’t have so much value any more. We’re not choosing it anymore. We’re not paying for it. And every time you let one of your really good thinkers leave to start their own blog, we follow to that (free) blog because it has value (to us).

If you repackage your content as factual news… well I’m afraid you have to suffer the performance metrics the rest of us on the web suffer every day. It’s true or it’s not. Your facts will be checked, your slants will be exposed, and your hidden agendas will be highlighted and amplified. You may even become fodder for those free entertainment sites I mentioned, as well as those free alternative perspective sites I mentioned. Your walled garden of “news reporting” is walled no more.Was it ever news, anyway? I bet it was.. many years ago.

TV got this years ago. Today Bill O’Reilly reports the news, and Jon Stewart reports the news. Very popular news shows, right? Think about it.

I don’t think this bodes well for us citizens, as our “news” becomes nothing but slant, editorial, and infotainment. Scary to think what hapens when no one will pay for “news” anymore, and we are left with only the stuff that is supported by marketing messages or political agendas or fear mongering. But HEY! That ship left port YEARS ago! You all destroyed our news media a long time ago, even if you don’t think that anyone actually knew that you were  doing it. We did. And you did. So stop pretending that the loss of “real” news will be harmful to society. Get over it. We are SO over you already.

I’m getting bored hearing how the New York Times will figure out a micropayments subsciption model, or AP will find a way to charge for every 5 words it spits out into a news feed. Yawn.