Yep, it happened again. Something I purchased was reduced in price shortly after I bought it.

In the particular case it was a Kobo ereader, although it doesn’t matter what it is. I buy a stock, it immediately drops a few percent–even on an “up” day. On the rare occasion I buy a vehicle I’ll see pretty much the same one a week later for five grand less. And let’s not even talk about technology…

After all the years and years and many, many, many transactions experiencing this phenomena I should be used to it. But I’m not. One thing has changed. I no longer become angry. It doesn’t do any good.

I’m resigned to my fate. It is obviously my calling to be a bellwether of price change. Read the rest of this entry

…and, furthermore where I am is not your business, either.

That pretty much sums up my opinion of “geolocating”.

To provide clarity and reason for my brusque statement please read the following, which is reprinted with express permission, from TalkBiz News, August 26, 2010 edition. Thank you, Paul Myers.

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“The Portable Voyeur”
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In the last issue, I put out the idea of looking at your  online networks and niches as “virtual neighborhoods.” Nothing  especially new in that concept, except that almost no-one in  the marketing field talks about them that way. That discussion  is mostly left to forum operators and social networking geeks.

In this issue, I want to talk about something closer to home.
Literally IN your home.

People spying on you using your own electronics.

Let’s start with the least intrusive, and work up to stuff you  may not believe is happening.

The last few are downright creepy.

….

There’s a thing called “IP geolocation,” which uses a database  of IPs (numbers locating your computer on the network) and  physical areas to show where a computer is located. There are a  bunch of these, and the accuracy can be anything from very  close to wildly off the mark. The good ones can narrow it down  to a few blocks, in most cases. Sometimes to a specific  building.

You can see this most often when you notice an ad on a site  that’s used by people all over the world, but mentions your  city by name. “[YourCity] mom discovers…” or “Man in  [Hometown] loses 47 pounds using…” That’s IP geolocation in  its mildest form.

Twitter has offered the option for a while to attach your IP  address  to a tweet, basically trying to tell people where you  are. You have to opt into that, though. It’s turned off by  default.

Facebook’s new “Places” settings options enable a more  advanced function by default. The idea is to make it easy for  your friends to know where you are. Unfortunately, it also  makes it easy for people you might not want to share your  location with to find you. Or know when you’re not home… Read the rest of this entry