Mercury is the god of communications, rogues, thieves, and social media gurus

Normally, you’d think backing up your data was a safety precaution, akin to flossing your teeth, eating right, and looking both ways before crossing the street. Normally, you’d be right.

But what about when you and your existing site have to part ways? What if your web host goes under, leaving a big hole in the internet where your site used to be? What if you want to move to another server? What if your DNS starts PMSing and your website is MIA?

Your backups can be your guarantee of freedom and mobility.

If you have an up-to-date backup, you can relax. Okay, you can pour yourself a stiff Diet Coke and THEN relax, because you haven’t really lost anything; it’s just temporarily offline, suitcased, and you can put it anywhere you want: new address or old. Once you get your new web home, you can simply upload your old contents and you’re up and running! Try re-creating a lost website from traces left on Google Cache and the Wayback Machine and you’ll never again forget to do your weekly (or more frequent) backups!

And yes, sadly, that is the voice of experience talking. If you’re not the detail-oriented type, you can always have a qualified professional take care of it for you. Now, gee…where would you find one of those?

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Truly it hath been said that all websites are created equal, but some websites are equaller than others. So it is with Google.

The search engine behemoth actively strives to index everything that, however briefly, pokes its nose into the Internet, and it employs a number of lawyers to make sure nothing interferes with its ability to do so.

Apparently, it employs at least one other lawyer to make sure nothing confidential to Google shows up there, or, if it does, it sleeps with the fishes in an expeditious manner.

Odd, then, to see Stacey Wexler, litigation counsel for Google, send New York tech blog Silicon Alley Insider an email asking it to take down references to a YouTube advertising contract in a story about the video site’s new revenue-sharing program for ads sold by video creators. Odder still to see Silicon Alley Insider post the email to its site, then take it down…

What part of “don’t be evil” does this fit under, exactly?

YouTube Agreement –

Whether your company has a policy of openness or discretion on the level of omerta, it’s important for both PR and security purposes to maintain that policy throughout the company and its actions. Unless IT knows what to protect, it’s just playing a guessing game and sooner or later you will lose. Don’t take that chance; be transparent, if not with your documents, with your policies.

Not content with merely snapping some shots from space, the camera crews of the Google Empire are spreading their tendrils unto your very driveway in their quest to document every single physical feature on the face of the planet.

One town stands against them or if you could get a Google Earth shot of the place, that would be awesome. Google Earth won’t run on my damn computer!]

North Oaks, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul, is an upscale, private community with an interesting set of laws; the entire town is ringed with No Trespassing signs, and entry is by invitation only. Think of it as a gated community, but with “air gates.” With household incomes nearly twice the American average, North Oaks may be the best example yet of the fact that privacy is the greatest luxury of all.

The streets, you see, actually belong to the homeowners on either side; each lot goes right up to the yellow line. Thus, all streets in North Oaks are private property and without an invitation from a bona fide resident, anyone using the streets is by definition trespassing.

North Oaks has contacted Google Maps and demanded that all photos of North Oaks be removed from the site, and they have been. Google also confirms that they have cooperated when individual homeowners have contacted the site and requested their houses be removed from the photo archive.

Now, there’s no word on the situation for renters, nor for those in collective buildings such as apartments. But it’s not hard to imagine that somewhere in North Oaks sits a bored teenager with nothing better to do than thwart the wishes of the town council. One legitimate invitation to town is all it would take.

I’m just sayin…