Tech Week In Review 10-2-09

Google Wave Hits The Shores. Nobody Gets an Invite.

Well, a lot of people got invites, but I wasn’t one of them. According to many who actually did get invites, Wave is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, it’s an awesome service for collaboration, but it’s not something that’s going to replace Twitter, FriendFeed, or Facebook. Seems like it’s just a little too realtime and comes up a little short in providing the user with tools to manage it effectively. Some think Wave is overhyped while others are begging for invites like the crackhead in Menace to Society. Check out Wayne’s Wave screencast . (Wave details)

What If Anyone Could Get Your Gmail Shut Down?

Apparently, some bank employee was attempting to email some loan statements to a representative of one of their customers. Not only does the employee send the documents to the wrong Gmail address, but they also randomly attached a list of “1,325 individual and business customers that included their names, addresses, tax identification or Social Security numbers and loan information.”

The bank responsible for the whole mess, the Rocky Mountain Bank, sued Google to reveal the user’s identity (pointless) and “deactivate” the user’s account. (Doubly pointless.) If the user was going to sell or otherwise share the information, he’d have done it already. Scarier still? The judge in the case granted it. (via Inquisitr)

So, some random person can email me something by accident that has absolutely nothing to do with me and I can get my Gmail account shutdown because they suck at life? This case better not go anywhere because this could be a very dangerous precedent.

More Proof That Myspace is the Hood of the Web

New evidence from a recent Nielsen study supports claims that Myspace users are poor and mostly minorities. Facebook users are usually more affluent. What does this really mean? I’m not sure, but it’s probably important to figure out what’s going on here. It’s not as if Facebook costs money. Do some people not know Facebook exists or do they just prefer Myspace? Do you have any ideas?

According to the research, the top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence (aka the “richest” users) are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the lower third. The bottom third segments related to affluence (aka the “poorest”) are 37% more likely to use MySpace. Also of note, Facebook users are more likely to use LinkedIn, a site for professional business networking, and again, another factor which points towards the differences in demographics between the two social networks. (via RWW)

Should Obama Be Killed?

How would you feel if this poll came scrolling through your Facebook feed? Well, apparently 751 people saw this poll on Facebook and voted in it. Whose fault is this? Facebook? The developer? The user who created the poll? Either way, the Secret Service didn’t appreciate it and ordered FB to remove it (it had already been taken down by this time, though). (via Mashable)

Google Blends Trends with Search

You’re probably familiar with Google Trends as a tool to figure out how hot a specific topic is. It’s useful in figuring out a niche to market in or in figuring out what topics you should blog about to get some traffic to your blog. Google has decided to integrate it’s Hot Trends feature directly into search. So, if you happen to search for one of the 100 fastest-rising search terms, you’ll see trends information for it. Personally, I don’t see how this is going to be of any benefit since you need to already know which topic was hot and decide to search for it in order to see the trends information on it…which means you already knew it was trending. Maybe I’m missing something here.