Michael Janke has posted a nice list of “a few semi-random thoughts on application logging”

Machine parseable (yet human readable) format
Single line events
Date/Time stamp
Rational message prioritization
Unique identifiers
Sufficient information to link the logs
Logging of failures
Timeliness
Serialized numbering on log messages

A few things caught my eye (like information disclosure, logs on a compromised system do not have to be presumed tainted, and logging successes is just skipped over) but overall a good read.

Regular readers of this blog may remember when I raged about the “statistical mess” reported in the news when it comes to which mobile phone is “winning”. That was a couple months ago (or six decades in mobile years).

Reuters, for example, headlines with “Google’s Android takes lead in US consumer smartphones: Android devices had 33 pct share in Q2”. Open the article, however, and you you see that they compare Android to RIM. That is like comparing Linux to Apple Laptop sales. One is an operating system, the other is hardware with an operating system.

This time I went straight to the source and found Nielson is actually reporting three phone OS trends. No hardware and software mixing and such, thank you very much.

The chart makes it tempting to call RIM the biggest OS loser, but in fact it starts the year two points ahead of Apple’s OS and then ends the year…wait a minute! Does that chart say 25% is higher than 26%? WTF?

I swear I did not edit that image. Nielsen currently tells the public that the Apple’s iPhone OS or iOS (they seem to make it interchangeable) has leaped ahead of RIM’s OS with 25 points, while of RIM’s OS trails behind at a sad 26 points.

A mistake, surely. The Nielsen blog text gives another view:

…Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS are in a statistical dead heat for second place among recent acquirers

The next graph shows Google’s Android OS gaining ten points in just six months while RIM’s OS lost five and Apple’s iOS lost one.

Android is now only ten points behind iOS. Can they keep up the pace and pass iOS in the next six months? Looks clear to me that Google will rocket past Apple:

Will people dump Apple’s iOS because of hardware lock and privacy concerns only to find Google’s Android OS is playing from the same deck of cards? These are questions I wish Nielsen had tried to answer.

I also wish they had mentioned the Symbian OS. Nielsen omits its trends entirely, which gives me the impression the data has serious geographical bias — Apple-merica. The iOS and Android, in other words, would be lower, maybe significantly lower, than BlackBerry OS and Symbian if this were a global test.

The BBC chart I mentioned before was confusing, but it still paints a more complete picture than Nielsen.

Many people worry about what companies will do with all the data they are collecting on web behavior. Virtually every major website is keeping tabs your behavior through a variety of tags and various web analytics and tracking technology. Most are just tracking your actions on their site, but more and more companies are coming up with new innovative ways to track your behavior as you cross web domains, principally through the use of tracking cookies.

A recent Wall Street Journal article examining the 50 most popular US websites comments on the fact that many top internet firms aren’t even aware that 3rd party vendors are using their site to place such code on your computer. These 50 sites collectively placed over 3000 tracking files on a test computer with over 2/3rd of those files installed by 131 other companies “many of which are in the business of tracking Web users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold”.

Companies will claim that this monitoring is the price we pay for free services on the internet. Basic economics state this is not the case.

Companies have the ability to make a buck based on your work and are seizing it without even a thought towards compensating you for you data. Many don’t even ask for you permission and some have developed new flash-based cookies that redeploy themselves even after you have deleted them. At least supermarket, department and other big box stores have to ask, if you want to sign up for their “preferred customer tracking cards” and then use incentives to use them each time.

Since the data carries no value to a consumer, tremendous value to marketers and there is little harm in sharing, I say compensate consumers for their data. This practice is common place in surveys and study groups. All I’m saying is you should get your 1/10th of a penny.

New America calls a feature in the latest Google Android phone “A Malicious Root Kit”.

…one of the microchips embedded into the G2 prevents device owners from making permanent changes that allow custom modifications to the the Android operating system. This is the same Android that purposefully opened up its source code under the Apache License, allowing anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the operating system code even if they choose not to contribute back to the development community. Even among other Android computing devices and phones, the G2 is touted as an open platform.

Unfortunately, the hardware in this device completely undermines this license by allowing mobile network providers to override end-user changes to the source code. Wireless network operators have deployed a hardware rootkit that restricts modifications to a device owned by the user. This would be akin to a computer sold with Microsoft Windows containing chip that prevented users from installing Linux or another operating system of their choice.

How excited are you to buy one?

Imagine a car that each time it started would remove all your performance enhancements and return to stock.

Imagine a house that every time you opened the door had the same wiring and plumbing (issues) as when you first bought it.

Yeah, me either. Why does HTC’s Android phone want to race with Apple to the opposite of cool?