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The Independent Center for Privacy Protection in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has asked local websites to remove their Facebook Pages and remove any Like buttons on their websites.

I almost never click on Facebook ‘Like’ links on websites. I do on videos and photos and comments posted by my friends on Facebook itself. I have liked a few pages that I know as well. The reason I don’t click on every ‘Like’ button is my concern about privacy. Most people don’t think their privacy is compromised when they click on those ‘Like’ buttons. They are not aware of what those clicks are used for other than expressing their ‘Like’ for what they read. Even if the websites and Facebook make it clear what they are used for, most people won’t pay attention and many won’t understand the implications, if there are any.

Is it right for the state to intervene and try to protect? What about people who know what they are doing? In this particular case, there may not be much benefit to the end user who clicks the like button. Most of us probably won’t feel enraged by the action of a state in this case.

As in other cases, this is a slow build up. Just like how it happened with video games in Germany and Australia.

Right now I am not very excited about a firmware update for my Samsung Focus. It is working almost like a feature phone for me right now. It definitely seem to have served the purpose of detaching myself from the phone. I am not that excited to look at the phone to do stuff anymore. One Note is the only exception.

I haven’t connected my Windows Phone to a computer in almost a month. I cannot think of a reason to do connect and sync. Is it a good thing? In a way I don’t want to connect my smart phone to the computer. I wish I was not syncing with computer anymore for a positive reason.

If you are like me, you have contacts working for companies that provide a cell phone. Sometimes it is possible to give up your personal phone and use the company provided cell phone exclusively for all your mobile communications. But in many cases the number of minutes are limited. There may also be security and other concerns. So you want to keep your own cell phone along with the company provided cell phone. All was fine until end of 2010. I had the iPhone until end of 2010.

This year I got a Samsung Focus, a Windows Phone 7 phone. How many “phone” in that, it still feels weird to say it.

After setting up the phone, I realized that my contacts can only have one cell phone. Who in the world carries more than one cell phone anyway? Microsoft has made that decision for me. So, it is convenient. Except, in my case it is not. Well, I could label it as work phone 2 you say, which is what I did. The only problem is that I cannot send texts to the so called work phone 2 by selecting it from contacts. If it is not labeled as mobile, it won’t appear in the drop down for sending text messages.

OK, I can go to contacts and copy and paste the number. Wait, there is no copy and paste on Windows Phone 7. Who needs copy and paste? Microsoft could not come with a scenario where copy and paste would be useful right? I just described one.

I recently moved to Office 2010 at work. I like it mostly. This is on Windows 7 Enterprise x64. Here are some of my observations.

Outlook 2010 crashes a lot more often than Outlook 2007. Recovery from the crashes so far has been seamless. So, I am not worried much about it.

I just noticed a problem in Outlook 2010 calendar regarding meeting cancellations. When I receive a cancellation notice and click on the remove from calendar, it didn’t remove it from my calendar. It still showed up as a reminder to a canceled meeting. I was annoyed and searched about the problem. There seems to be a way to automatically accept meeting request and cancellations. I definitely would not want to automatically accept a meeting request but automatically remove a cancellation. That is not an option that I would enable.

Anyways, I went to the deleted folder and found the cancellation notice in there. Clicked again on the remove from calendar and the message disappeared from the deleted folder and the meeting disappeared from the calendar. I think the reason it still showed up on the calendar was because the message was still in a folder. Only when it gets permanently deleted, the item gets removed from the calendar. May be a side effect of the new features.

Kindle is a one trick pony in my opinion.

The problem with one trick ponies is that your travel bag is heavier, you trash the environment more often, you probably use more energy, carry more chargers and until all your information is in the cloud you will be missing on integrated features.

With Kindle app available on most platforms, I wouldn’t get one even if it is offered free of charge. I have no problem with the Kindle books at least as of now.

Another one trick pony is handheld game consoles. These are expensive toys with expensive games. You can keep adding gimmicky features to them and they are still one trick ponies.  The trick may look a bit fancier but wear you out soon.