I think I remember what your talking about. It was like "sticky" notes for webpages. It was originally touted as a way for user to comment on corporate or distributors webpages as a way to rate it without having it filtered. It died a horrible death if I remember Curtis On Thursday 07 June 2001 06:34 pm, Ted Harding wrote:
On 07-Jun-01 Ben Rosenberg wrote:
When you get slammed by the WallStreet Journal..you've been slammed...all I can say is DAAAAAAAAAAAMN!
http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB991862595554629527.html
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Smart Tags are something new and dangerous. They mean that the company that controls the Web browser is using that power to actually alter others' Web sites to its own advantage. Microsoft has a perfect right to sell services. But by using its dominant software to do so, it will be tilting the playing field and threatening editorial integrity.
I'm a little bit puzzled by this. Does the above (quoted from the final paragraph of the URL given) mean that someone who uses Smart Tags when accessing, say, my web page will alter the content of my file which is on my server for my web page?
Or does it simply mean that the view -- on their own computer -- which that person obtains will be different from the view I intended them to get (without altering my original file)?
If the latter, this reminds me very much of something which was going the rounds a few years ago, whose name I've now forgotten (let's call it "graffiti") which enabled people to _apparently_ write all over other people's web pages (or, as it was euphemistically put, "add commentaries".
The principle was, that a user would install the "graffiti" software. When a web site was apparently accessed, "graffiti" would in fact access a remote "graffiti" site and look up the URL in a database. The purported web page would then be retrieved from the database instead of the true URL. But of course, by this time the version on the "graffiti" database had been scribbled all over by other users; and the user making the access could himself add scribblings to the version in the "graffiti" database.
In effect, therefore, someone using "graffiti" would not in fact be accessing my real URL at all, but a modified "copy" stored on the "graffiti" system. And only users using "graffiti" would enjoy this privilege: other users would see my original.
There was some concern at the time about misuse for libellous purposes. For instance, a University might have introductory pages about its courses for prospective students. "Graffiti" would allow disgruntled [ex-]students or other malicious persons to add comments like "this course is crap and Professor So-and-So who teaches it is incompetent", which is what would first be seen by prospective students who were also "graffiti" users.
Are we talking about the same sort of thing with Smart Tags?
Ted.
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