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Is the White House changing its YouTube tune?

Editors' note: Correction, March 3, 12:46 p.m. PST: This post, which originally carried the headline "White House ditches YouTube after privacy complaints," significantly misconstrued the White House's policy on and use of YouTube. In the interests of disclosure and transparency, we are leaving the contents as originally posted, with two subsequent update notes and with the exception of the headline change. See also our follow-up story, "No, the White House hasn't ditched YouTube."

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Updated at 5:50 p.m. PST March 2: The New York Times is reporting that … Read more

A user-friendly history cleaner and privacy utility

Clean Space launches a clean, user-friendly interface with tabbed navigation that categorizes its scanning areas by Windows, Browsers, Media, Internet files, and Miscellaneous. Users won't be distracted by needless graphics and jarring colors; instead, this tool clearly lists the items it will delete in detailed fashion.

This utility performed very well in our tests. We liked how clearly it presented its info, and how easily we could disable proposed deletions. Whitelisting individual cookies and Registry items was very simple to accomplish. And we very much liked how Clean Space divided file types into categories, such as listing separate entries … Read more

The 404 268: Where I don't care, subject to you!

Alternate show title: Where Wilson Tang is the worst son ever. As much as we love Wilson's Mom calling in and recording her voice for us, we can't help but give Wilson flak for exploiting his own flesh and blood. Today's show starts off innocently enough with a story about a disgustingly delicious Super Bowl snack, but in typical 404 fashion, it quickly sinks to dirtier waters (pun intended) thanks to yours truly. You know what? I don't even regret it! And special thanks to our surprise visitor, listen in to find out whom!

Filthy filthy … Read more

White House yanks 'YouTube' from privacy policy

Someone at the White House appears to be listening to those of us in the privacy community.

For the third time in just six days, the Obama administration has modified the White House Web site privacy policy in response to criticism from the blogosphere.

When the site launched on January 20, it exempted YouTube from federal anticookie tracking rules that would have otherwise cast a legal shadow over the use of embedded videos on the White House blog.

Reacting to criticism from the blogosphere, the White House first modified its Web site on Friday to limit the cookie exposure to … Read more

White House acts to limit YouTube cookie tracking

Just 12 hours after this blog highlighted the privacy problems associated with the White House's use of embedded YouTube videos, the Obama team rushed to deploy a technical fix that significantly protects the privacy of many (but not all) of the site's visitors.

Since its launch three days ago, President Obama's White House Web site has included several embedded YouTube videos. While this certainly demonstrates that the 44th president is Web 2.0 savvy, the decision to embed YouTube videos has also enabled the Google-owned video-sharing site to sneakily collect data on the millions of people who … Read more

White House exempts YouTube from privacy rules

Update: 12 hours after posting this story, the White House (partially) reversed itself. The rather dubious YouTube-only waiver from federal Web privacy rules has been maintained, but the White House Web site has been updated to limit the exposure of visitors to YouTube's tracking efforts to only those people who actually click the "play" button on a YouTube video. For more details on the new changes, read this blog post.

The new Web site for Obama's White House is already drawing attention from privacy activists and tech bloggers. While the initial focus has been on the … Read more

Six cookie cutters in one

Hearts, clovers, and all the rest of the cookie cutters are currently taking over one of your kitchen drawers if you're anything like me. I like having a variety of shapes when I make cookies--but I don't like storing them. The 6-Sided Cookie Cutter provides an alternative to letting all those cookie cutters rattle around your drawers loose. In one cube, you have six shapes: a heart, a 4-point star, clover, cross, diamond, and spade shapes. And it's all in one 3-inch square package. You'll never have to use the diamond cookie cutter for Valentine's … Read more

Not your average batch of Christmas cookies

This year in my holiday care package from my mom, I'm expecting to get a batch of her staple Christmas cookies. Free from fancy ingredients, these cookies have the potential to bore those with the taste for more exotic ingredients, but some of my fondest holiday memories are centered around the afternoons when we got to hang around the house in our pajamas and decorate sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles. Gadgets like this Christmas tree cookie kit allow for a new interpretation of this holiday standard.

The set isn't technologically complicated, but looking at it inspires … Read more

Holiday cookies you can sink your teeth into

Ah, the holidays. Company descends upon the house, forcing you to live in a state of cleanliness not normally seen; forcing you to play the gracious hostess, with trays of home-baked goodies and endlessly flowing libations; forcing you to welcome yet another long-lost relative you really don't care about.

Well, now you can get a little bit passive-aggressive and have a good time doing it. When you make your next batch of gingerbread men, use these absolutely fantastic "ABC" (already been chewed) cookie cutters. If they don't make you laugh, you just don't have a … Read more