It is Not Your Friend.

See Bank of America.

See Bank of America wig out in the face of economic meltdown.

See Bank of America punish credit card holders* while niggling for one more hard, fast hit of green. (Naughty, naughty green.)

I got my "Important Amendment" letter two weeks ago. The verdict: a brand-new APR of over 19 percent.

After 5 years of on-time payments and happily-indebted loyalty! Come on.

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* Via Candace.

The Lowest Common Denominator

I think the most groundbreaking thing about internet advertising is that it has made everything trackable: how users surf, where they go, how much time they spend on a site, what they ultimately buy, even what they're looking for at outset.

And because everything is trackable, ads are better tailored to consumers. This is what made Google AdSense so attractive to so many. This is what made behavioral tracking so frightening to those who prefer the illusion of anonymity.

The promise behind the Semantic Web ("Web 3.0") is of a universe that caters entirely to us. Anything with a chip or an agnostic barcode will be internet-ready or readable, and anything internet-ready should be able to serve us what we seek at any given moment.

But will it give me what I really, really want? Will it give me more me?

Surface Elements

Tony Chung over at Geek What tagged me with one of those spill-five-secrets virals. It doesn't strike me that I have many secrets but in any case I'm going to try throwing some together. While I work on it though, I'm going to distract you with this:I just had to. Because yeah, I dig a good production wrapped up nice.