…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

Snipe signs. You’ve seen them. Typically they consist of a 18″ x 24″ corrugated plastic panel, affixed to a wire stake, and driven into the ground on the shoulder of a road. They have advertising messages applied to them, usually, by self adhesive vinyl lettering or screen printing. Sometimes the really cheap one’s are handwritten with a permanent marker.

Many political jurisdictions in the United States have ordinances prohibiting them.  These laws have been enacted for several reasons. Chiefly because they’re placed on property not belonging to the sign owner. Other justifications include safety and aesthetics.

Imagine for a minute you’re the owner of a fast food restaurant located at a busy intersection. You have your legal signage–perhaps a large yellow arch–and the guy who owns a competing burger stand down the street comes by and plants a dozen or so signs adjacent to your property featuring a regal personage wearing a crown. You’re unlikely to be thrilled.

Let’s switch gears for a moment. You own one, two or a hundred websites. Virtual real estate. Over time you’ve worked your butt off to buy domain names and pay for hosting. In addition you’ve spent considerable time and effort, and possibly money, to design, build and upload content to your sites. You have things working well. You’re in control of your property and you’re looking for a return on your investment.

When people pull up in front of your restaurant or see your site you don’t want them distracted. It doesn’t matter what the distraction is. It may be a competitors sign or a notice of a local carnival that catches their eye. If it takes their focus off your hamburgers it’s not good. Online if it distracts people or changes their focus from your site’s message it’s not good.

I wonder what Google’s reaction would be to several hundred snipe signs appearing overnight in Santa Clara County, CA? Particularly if they read Bing or Yahoo!

The Google Sidewiki is a virtual snipe sign!

The shoulder of the road does not belong to your competition.

The side of your site does not belong to Google.

PS. For a more in depth treatment of the Google Sidewiki debate read this from Paul Myers:

Google steals the web

PPS. For the record: I do not hate Google. On this issue I think they are flat out wrong!