Down at the Crossroads

By David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2004

I went down to the crossroads. And it was then that fell down on my knees, asked the good L-rd, have mercy if you please.

And I needed it. For at the crossroads, there was a door. The door, it seemed, was a doorway into the digital future. How did I know? Because of the sign on read, "Doorway to the Digital Future." Well, that should have settled it, right there and then; how could I, of all people, resist entering into the digital future?

But something just wasn't right here – somehow, it just didn't feel right. After all, this was The Crossroads – and everyone knows what happens there.

So I couldn't really be sure of the identity of the fellow who appeared out of thin air (although I did notice a wisp of smoke trailing him). "Why don't you go in," he urged. "Don’t stand outside like a stranger; all are welcome in the Digital Future!"

Unaccustomed to such direct discourse, I queried the stranger as to his name. "Please allow me to introduce myself," he said. "My name is unimportant; I go by many. But you can call me Lou." Hmmm.

"So what are you waiting for?" asked my confidante. "Go through the door. Many wonderful things wait for you on the other side – you can trust me!" he said.

I asked him what he was offering. Specifics, not a lot of rah-rah-isn't the Internet great kind of thing. I needed details here. "I have many gifts for those who enter the portal," he said. "How about a free program to help you manage digital pictures automatically? It's a great application, formerly a commercial program, but now available free for the downloading. Picasa is its name, and it automatically finds and organizes your digital pictures, letting you create slideshows or send e-mail photos in one easy step. You can even crop pictures and fix "red eye" – although I personally like that color. It's my favorite! Anyway, Picasa is perfect. How can you lose?"

Not so fast, I said. I know Picasa, I told him, and it was an excellent program. It was formerly a commercial application, but now was being distributed for free, by Google, of all people.

Ignorance is bliss, they say, and if I had not come across this program before, I would have thought that this deal was perfect. In fact, because I was familiar with Picasa from its commercial incarnation, I thought it was a little too perfect. I downloaded Google's version of the program, and it indeed worked as advertised, and as I remembered it. Picasa is an excellent digital picture organizer and slideshow program, to which you can add music; overall, it is far better than the program that came with my digital camera. If you connect your digital camera to your PC via USB port, Picasa will automatically identify it and start working. Picasa can set up on-line picture albums, edit and crop pictures, insert keywords into pictures (which makes it easier to organize multi- file albums) and it even does movies.

You can also use it to order digital prints on-line from Google, a new service that should come in handy for the many people who miss photos but like the convenience and power of digital cameras. Picasa also works perfectly well with pictures that you create in programs like Photoshop, not just photos that come out of a digital camera. There are a lot of free programs out there, but few of them are Picasas.

I installed it on my computer and let it run by default, scanning my hard drive for digital pictures, tiff and jpeg files, etc. It found them all without a problem. But it also, apparently, found something else – my e-mail address! After I installed it, I received an e-mail thanking me for installing the program, offering me a tip sheet on how to get more out of Picasa. Problem was, I hadn't sent them my e-mail! So how did it find my address? Surely no program would be so crass as to have a piece of spyware that could check out Outlook Express accounts?

"The answer to that question is simple," said my new friend. "Because I like you, and I believe we will soon be working together, I shall reveal this secret to you.

"Open your registry (start menu > run > regedit) and have a look at the key located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager\E-mail. See? It's got all your local e-mail addresses! Any program that has access to your Registry – and they all do when they install stuff – has access to that Registry setting. And if the program in question 'phones home' – meaning, it checks with the provider's Web site for updates and the like- it's a simple matter to send that information to the site." (NOTE: It's probably tempting to erase this information in the hope that you will be able to revert to anonymity, but don't try it. Erasing this information will not make you anonymous – "They" have other ways of getting what they need, and you will only succeed in messing up your system.).

So that's how it worked! After checking with other users, I found I wasn't the only one who had had this experience, too. This doesn't sound right to me, I said. Fantastic piece of free software or not, what gives them the right to go rooting about my hard drive and search for my e-mail?

"Come now, we're both men of the world! You surely don't expect them to give you something for absolutely nothing! All they want is a piece of information, so they can send you more things – many of them free, I'm sure. What's the harm? 
 
"Anyway, you agreed to allow them to do this when you downloaded the program. The user agreement states very clearly that "a Visitor that… downloads… products shall be considered a User." And, it adds, "Picasa collects every User's name, billing and/or shipping address, email address, credit card information with related expiration date." 
 
"But it doesn’t matter. They know everything there is to know about you already. What's one more e-mail address? These are good people – you can trust me on that!
 
"This is what's beyond the door. It’s a world without care, where your every need is taken care of. See? They give you free software, free e-mail, free access to newsgroups, free blogs (www.blogger.com belongs to Google now, too). And all they want is to try and sell you stuff. Now tell me – where's the harm?"
 
I had to admit it – everything he said made perfect sense. I couldn't really blame Google. They were certainly not the only ones doing this, and at least they had products that helped people gain access to information and organize it more easily. Their on-line tools are far better and easier to use than those sponsored by many other companies. And they had a right to make money, too – if they could figure out a way to make that money from "eyeballs," also known as advertising, then why not?
 
So this was what was beyond the Doorway to the Digital Future. It's inevitable, isn't it? Why not just walk through? So they get my e-mail address, favorite color, credit card numbers, and even "intimate" Web surfing habits. Business is business, and if this is the way they do business today, well, that's the way it is.
 
So I was ready to make my deal, so to speak. I got up and started to slowly walk. Lou said, "yes, yes, you’re doing the right thing. Go through the portal – attaboy! Think of the fun, the happiness, the freebies on the other side. You'll be glad you did it."
 
And all the while, Lou had the strangest smile. There was an odor in the air – sulphuric? - and it was getting hotter, and the closer I got to the doorway, the stronger the odor got and the hotter it became. And then I saw the strangest thing – a little flash of red right behind Lou. That set off to thinking – just who is this guy, anyway? But it was too late; I peered through the door – and there was a whole display of Picasas, ripe for the taking. I had my suspicions, of course, but who wouldn't sell their computer's soul for a good, free piece of software? 
 
Download Picasa from http://www.picasa.com. For all Windows systems. Free, but…
 
With apologies to Robert Johnson. Questions/Comments to ds@newzgeek.com