I am usually eager to embrace new updates, but when a vendor, whether a Web services provider, or a software developer, makes changes that mess with my data, it's not a good thing. This afternoon, it looks like the Google Reader team just made some updates, to enable more uniform reading of items, but with the addition came subtraction, as the update wiped out my historical data, showing which sites are most frequently updated and shared.


A very empty snapshot from Google Reader Trends this afternoon!

My Google Reader Trends page tends to be a wealth of information, acting as a blogosphere barometer for what sites are topical, and which offer new items rapidly.

Just last week, Robert Scoble posted a story on his "favorite 35 feeds for the past month", powered by Google Reader, but if he tried to do that test again, it's likely his data would be gone. I know mine is.

With Google owning more and more of my data, my present and my past, from my RSS feeds to my blog to my e-mail and news, the idea that the company could arbitrarily wipe out any part of my data without warning is very concerning. This is a nasty bug, Reader team.

WWDC and Macworld Expo come only twice a year - and that's too bad. Because twice a year, the Mac community gets all excited when Santa Jobs comes in bearing presents and we all can't wait to see what's there to unwrap. I've been following each of these keynotes for the better part of ten years now, and while some have been disappointing, the surprises outweigh the doldrums.

Today's surprise? Apple announcing that the browser wars aren't over by a long shot. After the company's success with iPod and iTunes for Windows, they're branching out by bringing the somewhat popular Safari Web browser to the forbidden platform.

Web browsing on Windows today is yucky. I noted here a while back that I actually preferred Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser to Firefox for Windows, but that just goes to show how bad the offerings are over there in Redmond.

Will Safari take off on Windows the way iTunes has? I really don't know. I think the barriers to entry in the Web browser market are very big. Microsoft went to court to defend their monopoly in this space already, and many a browser has come and died in the face of the IE juggernaut. I also don't know that there's a groundswell of Windows users begging for Safari, which isn't perfect in itself.

But if I ever have to power up my Dell laptop again, you know one of the first things I'll be doing is downloading Safari for Windows and seeing if it's as fast as Steve Jobs told the WWDC crowd it was just this morning.

I'll say one thing though. Apple never gets boring.

Last week's cable outage wasn't just inconvenient because I lost our WiFi connection. The sudden interruption in service rendered our TV completely inoperable as well, cutting short the episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" we were watching. Halfway through seeing the recorded show on our TiVo, we were met with static and a mixture of garbled video and sound.

The outage lasted for a little over an hour, wiping out the rest of the Studio 60 episode and Thursday night's show of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. In theory all channels were out at that time, but those were the ones our TiVo was watching.

Thank goodness for iTunes. Rather than being in a panic due to the show's miss, or calling somebody out of area to see if they recorded the show on VHS, this evening, I just went to the iTunes Store and downloaded the Studio 60 episode. Sure, it cost me $1.99, but that's a small price to pay for convenience, and finding out how the show ended. Given NBC's reticence to treat the show with any kind of commitment, it's likely the only time it will ever air, and we've come this far, seeing every episode, starting with the pilot.

Apple may make headlines for the crazy cool hipsters in the company's iPod ads, but iTunes is always there for me when I need it, even for little things like this. Comcast? Not so much.

Cross-posted to Athletics Nation...

For some reason, the A's of the last few seasons have always saved their best efforts until after May was over. With that ugly month behind us, the team has surged forward, taking 3 of 4 from the challenging Red Sox and SWEEPING the Giants. It's a story we've seen before...


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