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Republican presidential candidate John McCain joked to a small crowd of supporters that he was using Internet search engine Google to research his list of potential vice presidential candidates for his ticket.

“You know, basically it’s a Google,” Mr McCain said, to laughter, when asked how the selection process was going during a 10,000 dollar per person lunch in Richmond, Virginia. “What you can find out now on the internet - it’s remarkable.”

We tend to agree with ClickZ’s Kate Kaye, who interviewed Google political guru Peter Greenberger who concluded Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hampered by its failure to use search advertising consistently throughout the primary season, as both the Obama and McCain campaigns did.

We like the fact that McCain calls Google “a Google” as opposed to President Bush who referred to the search engine giant as “the Google.” It proves he’s much more Internet-savvy.

So who might be on McCain’s short list of candidates?

Based on a Google search for “vice president” there’s the obvious choice:

US House approves prolonged protection for Vice President Cheney - 13 hours ago
WASHINGTON, June 9 (Xinhua) — The US House of Representatives passed a legislation on Monday to prolong the protections for Vice President Cheney

Then there’s Condoleeza Rice, who’s actively campaigning for the slot according to ABC News:

Political Radar: Dan Senor: Condoleezza Rice Is Pursuing the VP Spot
If you don’t like Dr. Rice for Vice President, then you are a liberal …… The Republicans who think that Condi is qualified to be VP or President have to …
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/dan-senor-condo.html -

We like the dark horse candidates found on the bottom of Page One:

Blog Search
Brian Schweitzer for Vice President - The Creature Politic - 20 hours ago
Arianna Huffington for Vice President - Financial Post - Diane Francis - 17 hours ago
Vice President - Flimsy Sanity - Jun 8, 2008

Once the most popular reasons for reinstalling your operating system is that it is often the easiest way to deal with a preponderance of viruses, spyware and other collected nasties that find their way onto your computer. So when reinstalling, it make sense to secure your like-new PC as best as possible. Here are five programs that make that possible.

AntiVirus – AVG Free
The most important security measure you can take on a new computer is protecting against viruses and Trojans. That’s where anti-virus software comes in. AV software, usually, runs in the background of your computer, analyzes new files received via email, downloaded or elsewhere to make sure they are safe. You can also schedule it to check your computer for viruses it may have missed, or manually check whenever you want.
For AV software to be good, it needs to stay up-to-date. For it to be tolerable to the user, it needs to run lightly in the background, and it needs to easily offer the user options to override it when it’s too aggressive, as nearly all anti-virus programs have been reporting too many false positives lately. AVG’s Free version accomplishes all that—and does it for free. Runner ups include NOD32, Kaspersky and BitDefender.

Anti-Spam – SpamBayes
Viruses may be the most dangerous problem possible affecting your computer, but Spam is probably the annoying. According to Akismet, nearly 90% of all email received is Spam. That comes out to 1,000 spam messages per day for an average user. While most of that Spam is trapped on your mail server, more than enough makes it through to your email reader, clogging up your folders, slowing down your email downloads and generally making finding real emails that much more annoying and tedious.

That are plenty of solutions for combating Spam, including the filters built into Microsoft Outlook, but I’m a big fan of SpamBayes. I’ve been using the open-source SpamBayes filter for more than five years now, ignoring newer and flashier filters. Why? Well, for one, it just works. It catches nearly all my Spam, and I get very few false positives. The way it works is also significant; like the name suggests, SpamBayes draws its power by using Bayesian algorithms to determine what is spam and what is ham. Simply stated: SpamBayes learns from you. Every time you tag a message as spam or ham, SpamBayes analyzes the email for clues as to what makes spam and what comprises ham. The more emails you tag, the smarter it gets.
SpamBayes is easily added on to Outlook, other desktop mail applications, webmail or even to your mail server. Set up is a breeze (just tag a few emails and go) and the program is light and fast.

Anti-Spyware – Ad-Aware and SpyBot
If viruses are dangerous and spam is annoying, spyware is the unholy marriage of the two; it slows down your computer, hijacks your home page and—as its name suggests—spies on you. It certainly annoys you, and can be very dangerous, either leaving your PC susceptible to viruses or stealing private data from you. Above all, it is intrusive. And it comes from some unlikely sources: companies you know, love and trust.
But you don’t have to succumb to it. Anti-virus programs like AVG will prevent most spyware programs from lodging on your computer, but there is more you can do. Firstly, read the End User License Agreement (EULA) on every new software program you install. Don’t just blindly click ‘Next’ when installing new programs. Secondly, download the above two programs: Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Both will scan your computer for spyware, adware and malware programs, and offer you the option of removing the programs they find. The free version of Ad-Aware won’t protect your PC in real-time, but you can upgrade to get that feature. SpyBot, which is freeware, includes TeaTime, which provides free real-time protection, including registry monitoring. SpyBot can even replace spyware programs with “dummy programs” so you can still run spyware-dependant programs. Between the two, you can remain completely spyware-free.

Extra Protection – Sandboxie
Even after all that protection, sometimes you need a little bit more. That’s where Sandboxie comes in. Sandboxie is a remarkable (and free) program that protects your PC from everything and anything run on it—by providing a virtual “sandbox” for that program to run it. Within the sandbox, no registry changes can be made and nothing can be installed to your actual PC; nothing bad can happen.

Someone sent you a program they swear is virus-free—and AVG also thinks it’s clean—but you’re still unsure about? Run it in the sandbox. You teenage niece is using your computer and you don’t want her messing anything up? She can browse the internet and work in Sandboxie. Son uses P2P software? No problem when it runs in Sandboxie. Don’t trust Internet Explorer? Set it to always run sandboxed. All downloads need to be approved by you before they can run. Executables run without affecting anything else.
And Sandboxie manages to give you all this protection without slowing down your PC. It runs quietly and unobtrusively in the background, and gives you that extra measure of protection you need.

The UK will roll out a new set of advertising and marketing regulations May 28th. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 include some interesting laws that will impact web marketing as Judith Lewis of London-based SEO Chicks reports.

The big law many SEO marketers may have to be careful about is the use of flogs - fake blogs or reviews by employees or other profit motivated people. Without disclosing that these reviews etc are being posted by motivated writers can end up being legally dangerous.

Apart from the fines involved there is also the possibility of jail time. How that would work for a US based company that happens to find themselves in UK search results is yet to be determined. What about companies that are global marketers, will they need to filter what content is sent to UK traffic?

This could be a major impact on web marketing and how things play out should be watched closely by all global marketers.

The Sacramento Public Library Authority Board upheld the action of the city’s libraries filtering access to the internet on library computers, despite challenges from the ACLU, the Sacramento News and review reported.

While there are those that see this as censorship - electronic book burning if you will - many people within the community see it as protecting family values. Both sides have validity and combined they reflect part of the difficulties of what can be accessed on the web.

The anti-censorship group say the filters stop access to legitimate health and sexuality information, while their opponents see the filters as protectors of children. The libraries do allow the filters to be turned off for adults and children with written permission from their families.

One member of the council summed up the anti-web position.

“It would probably break every rule in the book, but I’d say go and unplug every computer in every library,” SN&R quoted.

When concerns over data collection and behavioral advertising arise, it seems that the glass half empty people are the loudest. But in a recent response to the FTC’s Self-Regulatory Principles, Google has pointed out the impact that online advertising has had on the economy.

Google highlighted that in 2007, they paid out $4.5 billion to publishers utilizing the Adsense network. These monies either supplements or provides full-time income to many site owners including bloggers. They pointed out that many people have opportunities that just weren’t available 10 years ago.

Additionally, the revenue that Google generates enables them to provide services for free to the general public.

Google wrote that these innovations only occur within a self-regulatory framework:

“To be effective and credible, however, self-regulation must have as its foundation agreed-upon fair information practices and must be informed by ongoing dialog with and input from consumer advocates, the Commission, and other stakeholders. The FTC staff’s draft self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising provides an excellent foundation for developing the most effective consumer protection, while maintaining an online environment in which innovation and competition can thrive.”

But Google is careful to distinguish its advertising from being labeled “behavioral advertising.”

“As currently drafted, the proposed principles would apply to contextual advertising, which we define as advertising that is provided in response to the current activities of a user. For example, our AdWords program allows us to provide ads on Google.com in response to search queries entered by our users. In addition, our AdSense product allows us to provide ads to visitors to the web sites of third-party publisher partners based on the content of pages visited. In essence, then, our contextual advertising allows for the delivery of advertisements based on search queries or our analysis of the content of a web page being viewed. We believe that this type of advertising should not be considered behavioral advertising, even if such analysis takes into consideration previous search queries.”

These comments also come in the wake of news from Europe of a policy adopted by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which would reduce data collection by search engines to just 6 months. Such a regulation could greatly impact the ability of search engines to provide relevant ads, which could have a ripple effect on the greater revenue streams generated by their ad networks.

Almost a month after the EU approved Google’s DoubleClick acquisition, officials from 27 EU nations have unanimously adopted a proposal that could force search engines to reduce the amount of time they store personal information. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party met for 2 days in Brussels last week and agreed that six months should be the maximum amount of time data is stored.

Last year Google cut its data storage to 18 months to comply with EU rules. Microsoft and Yahoo followed suit by reducing their storage to 18 and 13 months respectively.

Experts think this could have implications for online advertising. The booming industry is expected to see tremendous growth in the coming years, but relies heavily on personal data to target ads.

In the U.S., efforts have been made by various state officials to limit the way search engines collect information but to largely no avail. Most recently, state officials in New York and Connecticut introduced bills to thwart data collection.

When you have parts of your site that you don’t want the search engine spiders to index, you let them know using a document called robots.txt. But for the coding-challenged, creating that document has not always been easy. Thankfully, Google has created a robots.txt generator as part of its Webmaster Tools.

Once your document is created, you can test it with the robots.txt analysis tool. Google points out that not every search engine recognizes robots.txt. They recommend securing truly sensitive material with password protection.

It’s a big week for the Google Webmaster team. Today, they’re hosting the first ever Google Webmaster chat, which begins at 12pm EST/9am PST. The chat will feature a site clinic and also discuss image optimization.

Seems the European Union is becoming more sensitive to the workings of the internet. Recent rulings have changed their once strong position about its impact on Europe and its people.

Recent reports tell that they are ready to approve the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google - regardless of what had previously been thought to be a move closer to an online monopoly.

The latest is their decision not to make ISPs give the information of users who have used P2P software for sharing files, a battle that has been fought globally for copyright issues of music and film.

“The European Union’s highest court ruled this week that Internet service providers in the EU do not have to give entertainment companies the names of Web users suspected of illegal file sharing.

Internet service providers only have to disclose the names of suspects in criminal cases, not in civil lawsuits, the EU court upheld.

EU countries generally provide consumers a broad range of privacy protections,” AVN reported today.

It will be worth watching how these new decisions change the internet legal landscape in Europe.

A year after the first Data Protection Day in Europe, Google will be part of the celebration of the now-renamed Data Privacy day, aimed at educating people about their data and how to manage it.
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