Google Street View, the search giant’s street level photographic mapping service has come in for more criticism in the UK.

UK campaign group Privacy International are concerned that it will break data protection laws; despite Google’s efforts to protect personal privacy. (more…)

The number of people browsing the web with mobile devices is rocketing, according to a report from Juniper Research.

Juniper’s study indicates that 577 million people now use mobile internet services; and predict that the figure will exceed 1.7 billion by 2013. (more…)

On December 1st 2007 John Darwin, a canoeist missing for five years and presumed drowned, walked into a London police station claiming to have no memory of anything since the remains of his red canoe washed up on a Hartlepool beach.

Yesterday a photograph surfaced in a UK national newspaper that appears to reveal him to be a fraud. The picture shows John, 57, and his wife (who, on the understanding her husband was dead, pocketed a large life insurance payout) posing last year with the owner of a real estate agent in Panama.

The photo found its way on to the Move to Panama website of real estate agent Mario Vilar and eventually came to wider attention when someone suspicious over Darwin’s disappearance searched Google for “John, Anne and Panama”.

A remarkable story I thought, and a great piece of publicity for Move to Panama. Being so closely connected to a news event of such magnitude is a link builder’s dream.

So, since the story broke has Mario’s site been deluged with traffic? Probably. Has his number of inbound links exploded? Nope. So what went wrong?

(more…)