Skills for the New Digital World

One of Google's many initiatives is Google Digital Garage, an entry point to many courses designed to assist people with skills necessary to negotiating the online world. According to the introductory material:

Grow your career or business at your own pace, with flexible and personalised training courses designed to build your confidence and help you thrive.

• Discover tools to make your business succeed
• Improve your interview skills
• Prepare for the career you want

Well worth a look for anyone wanting to enhance their digital skills, whether for business or other purposes.

Information is Dangerous to a Dictatorship...

Repressive governments are in the business of keeping secrets from their own people. The Chinese Government has attempted (with much success) to filter the Internet anything critical of their practices and record. To get a sense of the huge repressive enterprise involved in scrubbing the Internet of any inconvenient truths, have a look at some of these sites. And give some thought to the long term intellectual consequences of institutional dishonesty.

Go Duck Go

If you'd like to search the web without every keystroke being logged, analysed and monetised, try Duck Duck Go, "the search engine that doesn't track you" (and is blocked in China). Of particular interest is escape from the "filter bubble". Many google and Facebook users are unaware that search results are subtly tailored to their user profile and history on that service.  So you may miss out on interesting links because Google automatically demotes them according to your perceived preferences. 

Get Friendly with Google Search

Make sure your website is ready for the little glowing screens by visiting this google-authored web page. Given that Google is now adding mobile-readiness to its search engine secret sauce, this is a big deal for businesses wanting to rank well in google search.