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Cisco climbs down another rung over unpopular Connect Cloud service
Cisco has already tried to soothe angry customers by scrapping a key section in its new Linksys privacy agreement -- a clause which allowed the company to monitor a person's internet history via their router. However, realizing that probably wasn't enough to quell the sense of intrusion, it's now gone one step further. Writing on an official blog, Cisco VP Brett Wingo has declared that Linksys customers will no longer be pushed into signing up for Connect Cloud, the service which lay at the heart of the problem: "In response to our customers' concerns, we have simplified the process of opting-out of the Cisco Connect Cloud service and have changed the default setting back to traditional router set-up and management." In other words, you'll no longer have to hook up to a convoluted cloud service just to access advanced settings on your router, and neither will you have to sign away an even greater chunk of your personal space -- which is just how it should have been (and indeed how it was) in the first place.
Cisco backs down over right to see your internet history
Got any spare sympathy for Cisco? The company just can't catch a break with its various hardware schemes, and now it's getting aggro from an unexpected direction: users of its generally reliable Linksys routers. Owners of E2700, E3500 and E4500 models recently discovered that their router login credentials stopped working following an automatic firmware update, and instead they were asked to sign up to the new Cisco Connect Cloud platform to regain access. If they sought to avoid this by rebooting the router, they reportedly lost control over their advanced settings, which led to a sense of being cajoled. To make matters worse, the Connect Cloud service came with a supplemental privacy policy that explicitly allowed Cisco to peek at a user's "internet history," "traffic" and "other related information." If Cisco discovered you had used your router for "pornographic or offensive purposes" or to violate "intellectual property rights," it reserved the right to shut down your cloud account and effectively cut you off from your router. Now, much as the world needs moral stalwarts, in this instance Cisco appears to have backed down and removed the offending paragraph, but not before alienating a bunch of loyal Linksys customers like ExtremeTech's Joel Hruska at the source link below.
UK's National Media Museum opens permanent 'Life Online' gallery
Planning to be in the neighborhood of Bradford, England anytime soon? Then you may want to set aside some time for a visit to the National Media Museum, which will tomorrow officially open what's being described as the "world's first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet." Dubbed "Life Online" the new gallery will feature one permanent section focused on the history of the internet, and another section that will change each year and feature different "experimental themes" commissioned by artists -- the first being an examination of the open source movement. As the BBC reports, that's the result of some £2 million in funding, as well as contributions from the likes of Vint Cerf, who's featured in some of the videos produced for the exhibit (you can see those at the YouTube link below).
The Deleted City visualizes GeoCities as it was, today
GeoCities may be no more, but, unlike some other bits of internet past, its entire contents were thoroughly archived before the site was completely shut down in 2009. That opened up some interesting possibilities for anyone interested in playing around with the 650 gigabyte archive, and this so-called "Deleted City" project may well be the most interesting yet. Described as a "digital archaeology of the world wide web as it exploded into the 21st century," the project appropriately visualized GeoCities as one large city, which can be dived into and explored at will (complete with a soundtrack supplied by "nearby" MIDI files). Unfortunately, it's not clear when or if folks will actually be able to try it out for themselves, but you can at least take a guided tour in the video after the break.
