There’s been a bit of controversy over Digg.com’s DiggBar, which shortens URLs and provides Digg-specific features. The main criticism is that you get the bar if someone sends you a Digg-ed URL, but it’s also annoyed website owners because it frames their content.

Digg announced some big changes to the bar yesterday that will address the problems, but in this Techradar piece I’m arguing that they shouldn’t have designed the bar the way they did. Framing was evil ten years ago, and it’s still evil now.

To give you an idea of how silly this can get, let’s go back to our YouTube bookmark. If we share the Facebook framed version on Digg, we now have two frames: the Digg one first, then the Facebook one.

If we then share the Digg link on the URL shortening service ow.ly, we get three frames: Owly, then Digg, then Facebook.

A few more shares and we’ve got a browser that’s all frames and no content.

It’s Tuesday!

Over the weekend, Twitter exploded with anger directed at Amazon.com. The bookselling giant had effectively blacklisted GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) books by blocking them from search results and sales rankings.

We’re not just talking about explicit books, either. The affected books included scholarly works, award-winning novels and even Brokeback Mountain.

Depending on whom you believe, there are three possible explanations for the sudden disappearance of more than 50,000 titles: human error, hacking or a sinister plot.

The teachers’ union ATL wants Wi-Fi to be ripped out of schools because of its evil brain-eating properties. Amazingly, I have an opinion about that. Techradar:

Our kids are growing up in a confusing world. Marketers use pseudo-science to flog their products, online misinformation abounds and newspapers are all too happy to run scare stories that don’t stand up.

That means teachers are invaluable: we rely on them to help our kids separate fact from fiction, truth from trash and scaremongering from science. Which is why it’s so depressing that the teaching union ATL has resurrected the killer Wi-Fi scare.

[The teacher behind the motion] also mentions the Swedish use of tinfoil hats – well, anti-radiation paint – and instead of coming to the logical conclusion, which is that the Swedes are completely nuts, he persuaded the ATL to lobby the government to investigate the “considerable biological and thermal effects” of wireless networking – despite an investigation already being in progress, and there being no evidence of “considerable” anything.

The Windows Rookies campaign is really quite cute:

It doesn’t exist. So I’ve invented it!

Your web browser is probably the most important thing on your computer – and you almost certainly spend more time with it than you do with family or friends.

It’s no wonder, then, that browser battles cause so much controversy. Some browsers don’t render sites properly, others don’t include useful features, and yet more won’t let you tweak them to suit yourself.

That’s why we’ve decided to create a manifesto for our own. TechRadar doesn’t build browsers, but we think you’ll agree: if we did, it’d probably be the best browser in the world.

Opinions? I gots ’em! Me on Techradar:

The problem is that far too many online services haven’t a clue how they’re going to make money, and in many cases the business plan appears to be a single sentence: “Get bought by Google”.

Twitter arguably falls into that category, because it’s yet to find a way of generating significant income. That’s not a big problem if, like Twitter, the sites are doing something new, but if they’re competing against existing businesses then it’s bad news for the wider economy.

Me, on Techradar: GhostNet is a wake-up call. Upgrade Windows or switch to Linux.

Compromising old Windows boxes is like stealing candy from a baby. Compromising Linux boxes is more like stealing candy from a baby that’s locked away in a subterranean vault with armed robot guards, packs of savage Rottweilers and lots of Indiana Jones-style traps. On the moon.

Techradar:

Starter Edition is essentially Windows 7 with a completely arbitrary three-application limit. This restriction is “designed to ensure that users get the best possible performance” from their netbook. That’s kind, isn’t it? Why not go the whole hog and slap the Windows 7 logo on MS-DOS? That’d go like lightning!

Me, on Techradar:

Before we pay too much attention to the headlines and the soundbytes, though, we should perhaps wonder if there are more sinister invasions of privacy than a Google car taking shots in the street.

For example, we could start with newspapers.