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This year we spent our summer vacation in Hellendoorn, at a place called Camping Eelerberg — a very nice camp site, where we rented a log cabin for two weeks. The site is run by a friendly couple, who not only take care of the administration and reception, but also the facilities, the swimming pool, the snack corner, and the restaurant, where they cook delicious meals from fresh biological products, some of which even home-grown on the camp site itself.

Hellendoorn is right on the side of the Sallandse heuvelrug (Salland hills), which offers beautiful nature, and several colour marked walking tracks. On the far north side of it, (about 40 minutes cycling from the camp site), there are the Lemelerberg and Archemerberg, two beautiful "mountains" (respectively 48 and 76.5 meters above sea level) covered in heather and pine and juniper trees. For some reason, Google maps shows the Archemerberg as Lemelerberg, and simply ignores the Lemelerberg itself.

Naturally, I took lots of pictures during these two weeks, and have uploaded a selection of them for you to see, in the photography section of the site. Hope you like them :-)

Any person with two brain cells will be able to figure out that if you check your Twitter and RSS feeds continuously, get IM-ed and emailed throughout the day and you respond to every beep your computer gives you, you will repeatedly if not continuously be distracted from whatever work you were supposed to be doing.

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Just an update on what I've been up to lately :-)

- A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my birthday and got these funny little Rebel Duckies from my brother.

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Last week I got a phone call from an Indian lady trying to sell me programming services. I said I was not interested, but I guess my accent sounded as difficult to her as hers did to me, as I had to repeat it twice before she hung up without saying goodbye.

I just assumed she called from India, but I'm not so sure anymore now. This morning I got a spam.. eh.. promotional email in my inbox from IPH, Indian Programmers in Holland. Offering programming services. On location. Like, *in my office*.

The email included a read receipt request. I declined. Will they be ringing my doorbell next?

... of the Black Crowes at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam last night. I'd post more, if I had any that were worth showing. Phone camera without telelens and low light and such.

Yesterday the Olympic flame passed through London, and there were several festivities planned on different locations. The one I was most keen to see, was a mini-carnival at Ladbroke Grove, at 11am. I like the yearly Notting Hill Carnival in August, so why not have a taste of it in April, and get the tropical feeling going a bit already. Or that's what I thought.

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Josh Catone of Read/WriteWeb calls it the Lifestreaming Backlash.

I call it 'What were they thinking?!'

First we all lived happily in our respective communities, and we talked to the neighbours about the new family that moved in two streets away from us, and discussed the weather with the baker's wife. Then the internet came along (yes I'm skipping radio and TV and telephone), and all of a sudden we were all important people who had a blog to tell the world about the new family that moved in two streets away from us, and about the weather in our small part of the world. Then.. Twitter came.

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Last year I asked: "Can we still get some privacy in 2008?". At the time I was mainly thinking of all the web 2.0 sharing options that appeared not so optional, and human error that accidentally got people's personal information out on the street. Of course, human error will never cease to exist, but at least I have control over which web 2.0 communities I join. So I should be reasonably fine, right? (well, except for that FBI plan to store our biometric info of course)

Today I read that three major UK ISPs are planning to give away your surfing habits. Unfortunately, you can't surf the internet without using an ISP's services, so basically, we're stuck. The reason they have to share our surfing information with a 3rd company, is so they can force-feed us targeted ads, next to the websites we see, or even in them.

As both a web author and a user, I feel this is invading my privacy on both sides. First of all, my website does not have any ads. Now, when BT users surf to my site, they will be served ads with it? Not what I want! And then, more importantly, when I surf to a site about hamsters, the ISP records that and tells a 3rd party I went there, so they can serve me hamster ads next time I go anywhere on the web. Or worse, the next day my kids will be surfing the web, and they will see the hamster ads on the Lego site, and figure out I've been watching hamster sites!

There's also mention of an opt-out plan. But even if that works, it only means you won't get served those ads. It may not mean that your surfing habits aren't given away, and it certainly doesn't mean that my site will not be accompanied by ads when being looked at by those who didn't opt out.

From the comments on various sites I can see I'm not the only one who's concerned with this, but will it stop them? Seriously doubt it. The amount of money these ISPs could gain from this set-up, is just too big.

So, if you would be (or are!) with BT, Virgin Media or the Carphone Warehouse, would you be thinking of changing to a different ISP?

2007 was the year in which it became obvious that our perceived privacy is actually non-existent.

• Facebook 's Beacon feature notified your friends of your purchases on other sites
• Google Reader started emailing your chat buddies your shared items
• In England 25 million people's details got "lost"
• Dutch insurance company CZ left their website wide open with personal details of their clients (in Dutch - couldn't find the story in English)
• In the USA, the FBI is ready to get our irises scanned for future purposes

I'm not affected by any of the above yet, as

• I don't live in the USA
• I don't live in England
• CZ is not my insurance company
• I don't do Facebook
• I have never liked the idea of adding my contacts to online webmail address books

But..
I realise it's only a matter of time before everyone will be affected. I'm on Linked In, I use gmail accounts occasionally, sometimes I make use of my credit card, I appear to have friends who tick "yes" and hand over their passwords to companies who want to send spam ("your friends will love this information as much as you do") to their entire MSN contact list. Any company that has my details legitimately could make the error of misplacing a couple of CDs or have their database hacked, and if biometrics are hot in the USA now, no doubt it will happen on this side of the water soon enough too.

Instead of people with identities and privacy, we've become a global mix of consumers and potential terrorists. We're trading our privacy for a false sense of security, and sell out our friends to advertisers.

Is it reversible? Could it be if we all wanted it to be?

Sometimes I wonder how many people are really aware of the fact that their privacy doesn't actually exist. I'm amazed at comments by people on various forums who like all those new "features". Just because they want this one feature in their app, they seem to be blind to the fact that it just is not as good if you were *not* planning on sharing your private data.

So, in order to safeguard myself from privacy leaks in online social networks, should I delete my LinkedIn account? And will I have to stop using MSN too?
And if I do, and get all my contacts to switch to Jabber (yeah right), will Jabber too become a privacy threat?

What I'd like for 2008:

• to be able to contact my friends, family and clients when I want to, and send them the information I want to send them. Entirely by myself, at the time chosen by me.
• people to wake up to the fact that even if all our irises, finger prints and DNA would be scanned and filed in a database, this would not stop any terrorists.
• Oh, and world peace of course, but hey, I'm not that dillusional.

Good posts on other websites on more or less the same subject:

• An Inalienable Right to Privacy
• The Internet Brain Implant: Why We Should Say No

Also, I'm reminded of this song by Anti-Flag, which ends with the proclamation "I'm a human being". I think we need to wake up to that fact, and refuse to be treated as numbered potential terrorists.

Last but not least I have a request to anyone who has my email address: please stop sending me requests to join Facebook, MySpace or Hyves. I'm not interested. If you plan on giving your MSN password to anyone, please delete me from your contact list first. And if you feel compelled to type my email address on *any* site that wants your friends to be as happy as you are with their services: DON'T! Please.

Is this really possible?

Of course I can say I'm glad I don't live in Italy, but if they would pass a law like that, who says other countries wouldn't follow?