Web Simple

The Real Cookie Monsters

Your computer needs a diet. It used to just load up on cookies every time you hit a website. Now it’s gobbling up super-cookies and “PIE,” allowing companies to track your web movements and making you more vulnerable to cyber threats. What the heck is a super-cookie? How could anything named PIE be bad? Let’s start at the beginning…

Cookies have been around a while. They are small text files automatically put on your computer that contain tags (string of code) to identify you as a unique user. Inside these files, all sorts of information is stored, such as which pages you visited, when you last visited, and any voluntary information you gave the site. The site that gave you the cookie has complimentary file with the same tag ID.  That way, it knows who you are when you come back. There is a nice write up about cookies on WiseGEEK, if you want to know more.

Cookies can be very convenient. If you ever went back to a site where you put in a password and it “remembered” you, that happened because of a cookie. Website preferences, online shopping carts and wish lists are all possible because of cookies. Cookies, however, have other functions. Websites collect cookies to gain information about usage. They track things like traffic flow, page popularity and how long visitors stay on a site. This information is usually anonymous and aggregated. Some say the major reason for cookies is advertising. They allow websites to track how many people come to the site and click on ads, which is how they get paid.

Where things start to get scary is when the marketers start getting involved. When you visit a website, it triggers past logs of your actions and calls up information about your surfing habits. It also associates  any volunteered information about you (name, address, phone number) with that log. These “profiles” hold a lot of marketing value, since they can show what you like, where you go, and what you purchase on a site. Some advertisers place ads on many of the most popular websites and then pass your cookie information across the web. Tracking you across multiple sites provides them much more data about your preferences and habits. They then can serve you more targeted advertisements and make more money. As creepy as it sounds, this is a 100% legal business practice. However, cookie profile information can be hacked to reveal your personal data. Identity thieves and hackers can then use this information to mimic you online. (more…)

More

Data presentation and processing is quickly becoming the mainstay of your desktop computer.

As soon as Blackberry made e-mail easier to process in your hand, the stock of a desktop tower started to decline. Today mobile devices and their applications have made causal web browsing easier in your hand than on your desk.

However, there are some browser-based applications that can really punch-up the entertainment and business value of your clunky laptop/desktop. Cooliris is one such app that makes your CPU tower cool again.

Compatible with Firefox, Safari, IE, and Chrome, Cooliris is a web-page preview and picture display applet for your web browser. The picture service of Cooliris aggregates pictures in an easy-to-flip through interface called the “3D Wall”. Pictures and videos are ordered and scattered across your screen so that you can see all (or most of) the pictures/videos at once. Then just by pushing the arrow keys on your keyboard left or right, your screen comes alive with a rush of images flying by like a railway express train.

The pictures can originate from a simple Google search in the “Images” category, a set of images on a social networking site (like Facebook), or pull from the images saved on your hard drive.

The web page preview feature of Cooliris allows users to see connected web pages without navigating to the web address. If a user “hovers” her/his cursor over a hyperlink, a small blue box with a magnifying glass appears. A user need only move their mouse arrow onto this blue box and a fully functional preview of the attached web page appears in an embedded window. This feature is particularly helpful if you are a heavy wiki user and just want to see other pages at a glance.

For business users, this presentation technique can be used for graphical data or a set of PowerPoint charts that you want to show in a different way. This is sometimes a “one trick pony”, but can have a dramatic effect in the boardroom. Casual users will find the picture feature fun and a helpful way to see voluminous Facebook picture albums.

You can download Cooliris here. Enjoy!

More