08 June 2001

Explorer Smart Tags Microsoft's new operating system Windows XP, will be out in October. Bundled with it, the new version of the Internet Explorer Web browser has a feature which is both subtle and chilling. The feature is called 'smart tags'. You know how in Microsoft Word, a misspelled word acquires a wiggly underline? And you can right click on the underlined word to show a list of alternative spellings? Imagine you're reading the N.Y.Times on the web in the new Internet Explorer and you come across a word with a wiggly underline. Hey, that might be useful - up pops a list of links to other pages some how related. Hang on, who chooses the links? The N.Y.Times? Hey, you're ahead of me here - that's right, Microsoft rather than the Times chooses the links. Imagine another web page. The word 'Linux' appears in the text, and Microsoft have underlined it and linked to 'alternatives' which takes you to a page extolling the benefits of Windows on their own website. How twisted is that? There are simply no circumstances in which that would be appropriate. The only time Microsoft should have the ability to provide links, is from pages on their own sites, and I guess the technology to do that has been around for a while. This story originally came to light on the Wall Street Journal. Here is a screenshot of what they actually look like from Scoble. And here typically penetrating comment from the Register. 12:18:01 PM