Skyway West Recommended: January 23rd-29th

New blog feature! Each Monday we’ll pass on links to articles we thought were well worth reading from the previous week, kind of a Digg-lite for those who live where we do (British Columbia, Canada), work like we do (high speed business internet), and drink the same kool aid we do (internet trends, internet privacy, cutting-edge technology, etc.). If you don’t want to wait ’til Monday, we usually tweet and link to these as we come across them

Vancouver Courier: Canadian ISPs forced to disclose your personal information without warrant or judicial oversight (pub Jan 23)

From the intro: 
“Sometime soon, in a frontal assault on Internet freedom, the Harper government will table legislation known as “Lawful Access,” which will rob Canadians of privacy online. And we can thank, in part, the Vancouver Police Department, which runs a national pro-Lawful Access campaign out of VPD headquarters on Graveley Street.”

New York Times: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work (pub. Jan 21)

“Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.”

What happened to that work? What’s happened to “Made in America”?

Washington Post: Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out (pub. Jan 24)

“Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web. The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTubeGmail and its leading search engine.”

Advertising Age: Google+ Prepares to Revolutionize the Local Landscape (pub. Jan 26)

” …there’s something even more massive that Google could be doing with business pages that would transform the online business space. Google, through its Maps and Places services, already has information on millions of businesses. If the information on each of those business’s pages, complete with address, phone number, photos and customer reviews, were put into a Google+ page, Google+ could become a local-business powerhouse.”

The Atlantic Wire: How Not to Get Censored on Twitter (pub. Jan 27)

“[While there was some mass flipping out when Twitter announced it had developed the ability to censor tweets for specific countries], digging into the details of Twitter’s new ability to block tweets reveals that the new censorship-enabling technology is actually pretty easy to get around. We bet they planned it that way…”

New York Times: For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews (pub. Jan 26)

Trust those online reviews you’re counting on?

“In the brutal world of online commerce, where a competing product is just a click away, retailers need all the juice they can get to close a sale. Some exalt themselves by anonymously posting their own laudatory reviews. Now there is an even simpler approach: offering a refund to customers in exchange for a write-up.”