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Browzar browser trouser rouser howler

I've been meaning to comment on this for a while but, frankly I had better things to do!

Browzar a newly released web browser allows you to "search and surf the web without leaving any visible trace on the computer you are using." apparently its a kind of a Winston 'The Wolf' Wolfe for web browsing.

OR SO IT IS CLAIMED!!!

On its launch some of the press go very excited - exhalting the merits of the claims made by the Browzar marketing effort, as did much of the blogosphere, faithfully republishing their stories without reference or critique as is so often the case. I suspect many were swayed by the fact that Ajaz Ahmed 'founder' of Freeserve is behind the venture, indeed Techcrunch UK (in one of the better researched stories) almost admitted as much:
"As one of the UK's better known and most successful entrepreneurs who have to think he has got a cunning plan in mind" (sic).
Then over the next few days some people actually took the radical step of testing the thing before writing about it and lo-and-behold found the safety claims far from sound. Though in the interests of fairness I should point out the Browzar is in Beta and the team there encourage feeback and bug reports.
Bloggers edited their posts and the professional media admitted their mistakes and wrote follow ups to the story.

My interest in this story has little to do with 'private browsing'- though if that floats your boat have a look at Torpark which seems a lot more robust. No, rather I've long been researching the notion of trusted information sources. Tracking this incident I was both alarmed by the ease in which such uncorroborated claims of software capability get published on the web (which is now out there for all time as misinformation) but I was also slightly heartened at the sight of the web 'healing' itself as some of the sources backtracked, apologized and corrected; once again Ted Nelson's notions of how to implement translusion strike a chord.

On a more personal note, I couldn't help but chuckle at the notion of Ajaz still harbouring interest in browsers given the fact that many years ago while running the technical producer team at Freeserve, Ajaz tasked me with the project of building a custom browser. I did eventually manage to kill the project. It seems though in an era when many innovators are dreaming of stable, standard browser environments to use as platforms for Web Applications there are still those trying to lock it down for their own ends - How very Web 1.0!

Finally, apologies for the slightly crude connotations of the post title - not to mention the half rhyme at the end!

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