Tech Features

It's been an explosive week in the world of technology - the Internet wars have kicked off in a big way and 'privacy' seems to be a word completely forgotten by the web.

Our American brethren set the ball rolling months ago with the introduction of an anti-piracy draft of legislation to Congress. The now infamous SOPA has since become an umbrella term for all copyright legislation around the world. Now we look back at the week that was in tech with our top five stories.

Megaupload founder's continued downer

The Megaupload story trundled on this week as the US authorities continued to enjoy their one victory over the worlds of pirated content. However, what was most fascinating about the death of the file-sharing giant was the back story of its tech bad boy founder Kim Schmitz, aka Mr Dotcom.

He and his cohorts had a serious liking for guns, luxury cars and having large amounts of cash hanging around. Even more spectacularly odd was the news that Kim is the world's best Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 player. And to give an Irish flavour to proceedings, he held a lavish weekend of duck hunting in Co Wicklow back in 2009.

We can only hope next week will bring as many light relief tidbits about the embattled website founder.

Once masterful Nokia losing ground

Nokia, that phone maker we all couldn't get enough of in the past, bowed its head wearily this week as the death knock grew ever louder. The Finnish company's late fightback with the Windows-based Lumia seems unable to claw back any of the touch screen market share from Apple and Samsung.

Apple managed to flog 37 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2011 and become the world's most valuable company. In stark contrast, Nokia's Lumia has only sold 1 million since mid-November and their fate looks an awful lot less rosy.

They are still the biggest mobile phone manufacturer by sheer volume, but they're consistently failing to break back into the market they once dominated. We know who's losing the smartphone war.

Google to build complete profile of users

Google took another giant step towards owning us and everything we do this week after announcing a new privacy policy. Pretty standard you might say - but you'd be wrong. Google's new super policy will replace over 70 separate policies which it maintained up till now for its sites and services.

The upshot of this move is that Google now wants your agreement to create a complete profile of yourself and myself. Unfortunately, and completely intentionally, there's no opt-out on information you don't want to be used.

Gmail may be pretty slick, but be careful what you mail off electronically, Big Brother Google's keeping tabs.

Facebook forces Timeline down our throats

Facebook has gone and done it now. That last straw, the one that will well and truly break the camel's back. It's going to force the Timeline profile on us all.

Yes, like it or not, you're getting Timeline. A wonderful new mish-mash of everything you've ever done, or at least what Facebook knows of, mashed onto one page in a delightfully nonsensical manner.

Mark Zuckerberg has always been one to tinker with the site constantly, but it now seems like he's just a great believer of the ethos 'throw enough sh*t and eventually something will stick'.

Still, most users seem to fear the move to Timeline.

Of course it's clichéd at this stage for everyone to be raving mad about a Facebook update before quickly realising it's of no worldly importance whatsoever. So, get the ranting out of your system now, as within a month you'll have forgotten what the cherished 'old Facebook' even looked like.

SOPA Ireland looks likely to take away our free stuff

Ireland has decided the best way to deal with the need for updated anti-piracy laws is to draft some vague bit of legislation and then leave it up to the judiciary to 'interpret' the laws, in other words make them up. The social media world has been up in arms this week protesting Junior Minister Seán Sherlock's plans to take all the free stuff off the internet.

The big fear that manifested itself was that our favourite social networking sites could be for the chop if the judges interpret the law too strictly. Whatever the effects of the law, 'hacktivists' Anonymous weren't best pleased and they took their anger out on Irish governmental websites.

While it will be debated in the Dáil next week, that won't change much. The new rules will be put in place by ministerial order as statutory instrument. With over 60,000 signatures on the petition by Friday, don't expect this one to go away too quickly.