NP: Stewart Copeland, The Equalizer and other Cliffhangers

Two news items caught my eye that are probably bad news for privacy advocates, but good news for people like me who are looking for jobs in research and analysis. First, Wired looks at URL-shortening service bit.ly, and how they might look to generate revenue by offering trending and analysis of who links to what. And the New York Times reports on how offline data about consumers is getting more and more integrated with online information for targeting purposes. This is obviously going to raise the hackles of some people, but right from the start, the article points out that a lot of this offline information was already being collected. It's just the changes in technology that are allowing it to be implemented in new ways that Internet users may find creepy now that they spend so much of their time online. Of course, these changes themselves aren't totally new, as the NYT piece also cites DoubleClick's early efforts to bridge the online-offline gap all the way back in 2000.